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Next door to a school: The Soho Cabaret |
Law closes two ‘hostess clubs’
TWO “hostess clubs” in Soho were closed down this week in what police hailed as a “Christmas crackdown” on street crime, writes Paul Keilthy.
Twilights in Rupert Street and the Soho Cabaret in Great Windmill Street were boarded up on Friday as police and the council used new legal powers under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act to close them for three months.
Arresting two men and two women at the venues, the authorities claimed to be delivering another blow in a long-running battle against clip joints.
Soho Police Sergeant Matthew Butterworth said both clubs had been “a constant focus for severe anti-social behaviour and have made the lives of residents and visitors to Soho a misery over many years.”
The clubs are in very different surroundings. Twilights nestles among a cluster of peep shows, live and well-advertised Erotica floor shows, and revue bars at the livelier end of Rupert Street.
The Soho Cabaret, its sign depicting a naked woman in neon, is next door to Soho Parish School in Great Windmill Street.
In Rupert Street yesterday (Thursday), the closure of Twilights was largely unregretted. “They should have been done under trades descriptions years ago,” said hot dog salesman Tom Mullery, “for the use of the terms ‘sexy’ and ‘girls’.”
Outside the shuttered club, a police notice dating from before the closures warned that customers lured in for a £5 entrance fee were likely to be both disappointed by the services on offer and have to pay £300 when they tried to leave –sometimes under compulsion.
Describing the customers of clip joints as “vulnerable people”, Westminster’s community protection chief Councillor Daniel Astaire said: “There is no place in the West End for establishments which defraud members of the public and we, along with the police, will take firm action wherever necessary.” |
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