THE FURY surrounding Newcastle’s only lap-dancing club, Four Your Eyes Only, reached a farcical level when the management announced a monthly ‘laydeez night’.
The region’s top male stripper, The Penetrator, will be getting his kit off with four others, in a move which is hoped will appease the women who have been protesting outside the club since it opened, last November.
The Penetrator and his colleagues will be charging women a ten-quid entrance fee.
"On stage we will do the full the full monty," he told a local newspaper. "But for private lap-dances, it’s just down to the thong."
Women had been protesting about this venue long before the local Labour council backed its application for a licence.
Since then they have stood outside photographing punters as they arrive and emerge, shaming them on a web site called www.theyhavetopayforit.com.
Friends of the club responded by dubbing the protesters ‘ugly’, and posting their pictures on a web site called www.thesewomencantgiveitaway.com .
The opening night of the club was covered by the Chronicle, who noted that the owner of Burger King on Northumberland Street, Eric Harrison, was present.
Hopefully, he’ll be taking his Double-Whoppers and warm muffins off the menu, lest anyone gets the wrong idea.
The irony is that For Your Eyes Only occupies a building which was once Manors Labour Club and, like dozens of Labour clubs throughout the region, had strippers on every Sunday lunchtime throughout the seventies and eighties.
In a rare effort to check our facts, Newcastle Stuff rang a well-known striptease agency in Gateshead, to ask what kind of impact For Your Eyes Only has had on the close-knit community of women prepared to get their kit off for blokes.
Were her ‘girls’ now enjoying the £500 tips, reported in the Sunday Sun?
"For Your Eyes Only recruit and employ their own girls. Yes, we’ve lost a few to them. Good luck. We’ve got plenty girls left, what you got in mind?"
We then rang a working man’s club in Blaydon which has ‘exotic dancers’ on every Sunday lunchtime. The bloke who answered the ‘phone was quite frank.
"I’ve never been to this place [F.Y.E.O.] but we’ve had girls on here every Sunday lunchtime for years. We’re getting a right set of mingers now."
Men who pay money to see tits and arses, are themselves, usually tits or arseholes. Serves them right if they’re named and shamed.
But for the vast majority who will never visit the club, it’s providing endless free entertainment.
Bring on The Penetrator.

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HOW TO GAN ON IN NEWCASTLE Lesson 2: Starting A Fight

TOWARDS THE END of your first night out in Newcastle, your alcohol intake will have reached double-figures and you will be blessed with double vision. You may wish to round the evening off with a fight, and your condition will make things twice as easy. Try some of the pubs around the Grainger Market. If you are from ‘down south’ (around here, ‘down south’ is anywhere in England other than Newcastle), you might try pushing people aside at the bar while demanding a ‘pint of Newkie Brown’. You will be noticed immediately, but not necessarily by the barmaid. Capitalise on the attention by claiming it tastes better out of a can, and you’ve just met a whole lot of other people who like to round the evening off with a fight. A more subtle way to get things going, is by ‘looking’. This really is as simple as it sounds. Why not try it? Cast your drunken gaze around the bar until you catch someone’s eye. They’ll soon rise to the bait: unless you grew up in the same street or are a close blood relative, it will be assumed you’re looking for trouble. If that doesn’t work tip them a wink, and you’ve got a result. Out on the streets, there’s ample opportunity for a scuffle. Again, simply ‘looking’ often does the trick. Charvers are most obliging. Glance in their direction and they will say: "Hev a got a telly on me heed?" This is considered to be the height of wit in their circles, so if you don’t laugh, serious offence will be taken. Of course, if you’re a peaceable type, these observations should help you avoid trouble. And if you’ve reached double-figures on Brown Ale, you’ll wake up the next day feeling as though you’ve had a good kicking anyway.

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Send your thoughts and suggestions to the address on page 3, or email us at comment@newcastlestuff.com
This month’s Star Letter wins a kebab supper with Chico out of local Peruvian-pipe band, Apu.
You pay.

IT SEEMS TO BE be such a shame that what has the potential to be a useful and informative web site and publication is presented in such an uneducated and uncultured manner.
This poor imitation of VIZ is just that - second rate.
Your stories are poorly informed, the cheapest and most obvious jokes are constantly made - which quickly becomes dull.
Your feature on Gateshead is the cheapest of all jokes. It is as if you don't care what good things are going on to regenerate the region, you will ignore it all so long as you can get a cheap laugh.
The overall impression you give is that Newcastle is an uncultured place full of charvers, criminals, drunks, and sluts - and I am sure that this view will only be exacerbated by the Southern students you are obviously appealing to.
To be frank, I am disgusted.
Luckily as you admit yourself, you're useless at selling advertising, so with a bit of luck you'll never afford to print the next issue.
From someone educated in Gateshead who can not only read - but write as well...
Karen Wake
Robson Brown Advertising
Newcastle

Your bosses were paid a fortune for the illiterate and patronising Buzzin campaign, which we took the piss out of, last issue. If you want to kiss their ass, do it somewhere else.

GREAT PIECE about Gateshead’s contribution to the City of Culture bid.
The town centre is a dump, if anyone says otherwise, they’re blind or stupid.
As a gay man who’s lived in Bensham all his adult life, there’s been little tolerance for us since Big Viv left the Azure Blue, for heavens above.
Anyway, on a lighter note, I’ve often wondered about a shop opposite Tesco, in the town centre. It was always closed when I tried to visit, and now it’s gone forever.
I suspect it sold fruit and veg, but hope dearly that Gateshead town centre is at last developing a Gay Quarter.
Please print my pic, and keep ramming it up the council.
Danny B.
Bensham

Happy to oblige, see above

R.E ‘LENZ A TAB’: Excellent piece on the art of scrounging.
But my favourites are the idiots who stop you on your way to the pub and ask if you’ve got any spare change.
How are you supposed to know if you’ve any spare change, until the end of the night?
Jeff Carr
Boldon

WHAT A polite lot you are on Tyneside. Around our way, it’s ‘Giz a tab’. Saying you don’t smoke does help, though.
You’ll be give a look of pure pity.
Andrea Collins
Ashington