We dancers aim to please. It’s essential to our earnings – if we don’t please you, our audience, you’re not going to stay and put money in our collection jug and there’s our rent money gone. It’s not like we’re paid in advance for the gig.

Many people assume dancers are paid by the venues, which would make sense – we’re providing the entertainment that is bringing customers in, particularly in these days of plummeting pub attendance numbers. In actual fact we pay to work; we pay the agencies that arrange the shifts and in many cases we pay the venue a ‘house fee’ to perform there too, sometimes also a cut of any private dance takings, plus the train and cab fares to get to places that are often in the middle of nowhere. If we don’t make enough money from the customers to cover these fees and costs, we are left out of pocket.

So we need to keep you, the audience, happy! And that means catering to special – and sometimes strange - requests. Never be afraid to ask for what you want, we can always just say no.

Guys come to a strip club to see a girl get naked, right? Sometimes, no. Now and then in the private dance area a guy will ask, “can you keep your knickers on?”. Men who don’t enjoy private dancing say it’s not an enjoyable experience to be teased and get all horny and then not be able to do anything about it – like watching and smelling a great meal being prepared and set on the table in front of you then not being allowed to eat it. I can empathise with that – when I was little and staying at my uncle and aunt’s, my uncle used to slice me a piece of ice cream Vienetta (a luxury we didn’t have at home), read theatrically from the box “allow to soften for five minutes before serving,” then set the plate down in front of me along with a stopwatch, leaving me salivating and increasingly frustrated as the time stretched on (much to the family’s amusement). At least I could scoff it in the end though, I wouldn’t have liked it to be whipped away from me just as the timer rang, so maybe if was a man I wouldn’t enjoy private dances. But some of you are such suckers for a tease that you even want to be kept from seeing pussy. A current regular of mine likes to feel he’s been a bad boy, and his punishment is that I don’t take my knickers off in the private dance room – his suggestion, not mine.

I have to admit the opposite request is more common though; not to wear knickers at all. A stripper without panties under her dress – does that make her saucy or lazy? The ultimate laziness is being knicker-less under a tube dress which you pull down at the top to show your tits then up from the hem to show your arse and fanny, leaving it bunched around your waist, then when the show is over just pulling in back into place as you walk off the stage. I personally always thought that was a bit disrespectful to the audience who have paid to see striptease... but I now have a customer for whom that is the ultimate fantasy, that total-easy-access sluttiness, so maybe I’m wrong!

What’s under the knickers is also the subject of requests. Most commonly for those of us with pubic hair ‘landing strips’ is that we shave it all off. This isn’t one I often bend to, as I prefer a strip of hair. Last week though the offer of £100 persuaded me otherwise (so I am writing this with a prickly pudenda as it re-grows). On these rare occasions I make sure to email all my customers who I know like full shaving to tell them: “Rare chance! Solitaire is Totally Bare!” and remind them of my shifts that week. Meanwhile I have a photographer I work with who wants the opposite- the hairier the better. That’s not really an option for me at the moment (though one girl I used to work with at Sunset Strip who sported a full luxuriant bush did really well out of it) but I’d love one day to grant his request. Maybe if I go travelling for a few months, I’ll leave the razors at home and book a shoot with him for when I get home.

Some requests are very predictable. If you walk out of the changing room in glossy red lipstick, everyone’s going to be asking for a kiss on the cheek, an imprint of your red lips to wear triumphantly for the rest of the evening. But boys, be aware - some of these long-wear lip formulas really need specialist remover to get them right off, so if you’ve got a girl at home be ready to scrub your face raw with tissue in the gents before heading for home. The act itself of painting lipstick on is a big turn-on for lots of men, and I’ve been asked a few times to just sit and apply my lippy while a guy watches, rather than actually dancing.

Requests for certain outfits are common, and a good stripper will remember what her best customers’ favourites are and make sure to have them in her kit bag if she’s likely to see the gentleman in question. An awkward situation can arise though if a guy brings in an outfit or lingerie as a present. Usually he wants to see it on there and then. We then retreat to the changing room hoping to hell it fits or that it isn’t too hideous. If it’s the former, I’ve found it best to be honest, to avoid similar mistakes in the future, though in fact many men who visit strip pubs have a more accurate knowledge of women’s clothes sizes and figures than the average man, and I’ve been lucky enough to receive perfectly-fitting beautiful lingerie now and then. The latter, then it gets worn for one dance that day while he’s there, then is rarely seen again; “sorry, I wore it at home and it got ruined”.

On a rowdy sports day we will get guys asking us to wear their football kit. Often this earns us an extra tenner.... Then we get the same from the opposing team to do the same. I’ve been asked to bite a guy’s neck, to wear glasses, seamed stockings, to smoke, put my hair up in a ponytail, take it down again, to suck a drink through a straw, to make my ears poke out through my hair (someone taking the Lord Of The Rings obsession a bit too far there?!), wear thigh boots, dance barefoot, and to strip out of my street clothes.

When you consider the almost endless variety of kinks you guys have, if there’s something in particular you want to see, it really is better to ask!