Get Your Ironic T**s Out For The Middle-Class Lads

However, if you are one of the educated elite of Brighthelm, and chuckled knowingly at the (obvious) irony in the headline, then come on in, pull up a pew (or a chair or maybe a sofa if you don’t have a pew at hand), strap yourself in and enjoy the read.

My latest superbly written musings were inspired by a chance meeting with an old mate last week, but before I drop some science for da peeps, I must set the record straight about dear Jocasta and I. Many of you have been worried as to the health of my relationship with my dear transcendental angel, what with her myriad trips to Kama Sutra courses and erotic yoga weekends. Indeed, many a mother outside Middle Street school has been giving me the proverbial eye at home time in the (misinformed) knowledge that I was now a free (and easy) agent. Alas, ladies and indeed gentlemen of Brighton (I appeal to all sexual preferences), Jocasta and I are solid. Solid as a rock. You see trust like ours doesn’t grow on trees. Not at all. For us, trust is more a root vegetable, like swede or a turnip. You may not see its roots growing under the soil, but it ain’t half hard to pull out of the ground. Therefore, despite the fact that Jocasta is rarely at home in our Hanover hangout at the weekends, and the fact that she apparently keeps “bumping into” one of her old boyfriends, a 6’5” naturist and former body-building champion called Ivan, at these various courses, I still feel secure. Secure like a turnip.

Anyway, back to that chance encounter. As I was strolling back through Kemp Town after a meeting at Hotel du Vin with my tecchie-genius mate Julian Dipsforth (we are working on a comparison website for comparison websites, and if that takes off and other companies copy us, then we’ll unveil a comparison website for comparison websites for comparison websites), I bumped into my old mate SuSu Dubovsky (we met at a mental beach rave in Goa some time in the nineties). Raven-haired, tattooed and dressed head to toe in fifties vintage, this uber-quirky uber-glam Betty Page for the Noughties (so quirky she makes Bjork look like Anne Diamond), was checking out properties in the area, with husband Johnny (bassist with the UK’s best-kept electro-skiffle merchants, Pinochet Sex Machine) and their toddler boy, Quincy, in tow.

After decamping to the hilariously camp Tea Cosy café, where we yacked over a china cup of hilariously camp tea, it transpired that Queen of Quirk SuSu and co. were following the creative movers and shakers down to our funkytown (she’s been living in Dulwich for years), where she was planning to open a quirky/funky/retro clothes store in North Laine, and man does Brighthelm needs another quirky/funky/retro one of those. And in a rare case of perfect-timing, Johnny had just gotten word that he was to be transferred to the sunny south coast with his nine-to-five bank gig (keep the faith Johnny, you’ll make the big time one day, and then you can tell The Man where to shove his decent regular salary with health benefits and gym membership).

As well as opening a quirky/funky/retro boutique, dearest SuSu told me that she was also looking at getting back into the burlesque scene in naughty Brighton. The sassy entrepreneur had run a number of hopping burlesque joints in Londinium and even performed herself, Dita Von Teesing her way ‘round the kinkier nite-spots of the metropolis (her stage name is Fanny Von Treacle). But hang on, before you uber-feminists wade in with cries of “It’s only stripping for trendies”, let me tell you, I consider myself a feminist too. Indeed, I’ve burned plenty of metaphorical bras in my time, as well as one real one (a sorry affair involving an angry 10–year-old boy (moi), a box of matches and my mother’s underwear drawer).

However, while burlesque performers do indeed get their proverbial kit off, the fact that they are often well-educated and do it with a healthy dollop of irony for a mainly middle-class, knowing audience makes it creative and fun, not sleazy and demeaning. Indeed, you won’t get many shaven-headed, beer-bellied En-ger-land oglers at a burlesque show, but rather the kind of hip, right-on and plugged-in chaps (and chapesses) who’ll churn out a respectful yet witty tweet on their iPhone as the burlesquer on stage flashes her womanly assests in the direction of his ironically moustachioed face.

Being hip to the proverbial groove, (like an on-trend Jesus, I’m the zeitgeist incarnate), I’ve occasionally enjoyed the quirky cuteness of nu-burlesque shows from Bethnal Green’s (painfully-hip) Working Mens’ Club to Brighton’s Komedia, however I have as yet (to my credit) never entered a rancid semen-soaked old-skool strip club. Indeed, even on my stag night, when bessie mates Dillon, Joshua, Pierre, Ibrahim and Gunter had planned a retro-night of class A’s and Soho strippers (as they apparently were intrigued by what “normal lads do”), I managed to persuade them to shun the seediness and instead spend the evening with me in quiet contemplation in a Buddhist meditation centre down by Covent Garden. They may not have said as much, but I know that they enjoyed this metaphysical voyage of enlightenment just as much as they would have getting off their tits and ogling naked women all night.

As I eventually bade my farewell to SuSu and co, for the mo’ anyway, and made my way back up the muesli mountain to my Hanover bolthole, all that talk of burlesque got me thinking about our dear town’s saucy reputation. Yes, it’s fair to say that Brighton and sex go together like, possibly, love and marriage, or, arguably, a horse and carriage. Maybe even a car and garage (that last one was mine). And what with the 110-year-old Palace Pier penetrating the Channel like a huge electrified phallus (with bumper cars and wheelchair-accessible toilets), it’s easy to get caught up in the decadence of the place.

However, until Jocasta returned from her latest seminar (a two-day Native American intimate massage refresher course in Horley), I vowed to keep my own (proverbial) huge electric phallus (sans bumper cars or toilets) to myself.