Spend enough time on TikTok and you’ll come across StripTok, a section of the app populated by strippers from across the world. They post videos on what a day in the life of a stripper is like, or how to walk in seven-inch Pleasers – but even more eye-catching are the stacks and stacks of cash in every other video. Sure, you have to deal with some dickheads, but who doesn’t like literal piles of money?
From being given a bundle of cash to just sit and chat for the night, to being bought an entire house, working in a strip club means being exposed to some of the country’s richest people.
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To find out more, I asked strippers about their richest ever clients.
‘He was wearing studded Louboutins’
I’ve only been stripping for about five months now, and it was the second or third weekend I’d ever worked when we had a really rich guy come in. It was his friend’s stag do, and they were all very wealthy guys. I actually clocked on to him because I noticed he was wearing these studded Louboutin shoes. I was like, ‘Okay, men do not wear those shoes. I’m gonna stay with this guy.’
He went into one of the VIP rooms and was like, “I wish I could just have all the girls in the room at once,” and I was like, “Oh, unfortunately we can’t do that because some of us have to be on the floor.” He was asking if there was a way to get around that, and I told him he could buy out the club if he wanted. I said it would be £1,000 per girl – I kind of just made up that number because I wanted £1,000 – and he did it! – Kyra, 22, Devon
‘He would say that he has millions of pounds buried’
I travel around the UK for work, and most of the time the richest clients are probably in smaller places where you wouldn’t expect it. Obviously, in places like London, it’s definitely better, but one of the richest clients was in a club I worked at in Nottingham. It was a man who was in the military and he was very, very, very strange.
He used to give all these different stories about how he was, like, a serial killer – whether that was related to what he was doing in the military or not, I don’t know – but he would say that he’s got millions of pounds buried around the UK in packages. There would always be these crazy stories, and we all knew he was lying, but he used to come in and spend so much money that we’d all just kind of go along with it.
Sometimes he’d spend so much money – like, tens of thousands – and we’d have to close to other customers because he would literally book out every single person and buy however many bottles of Dom Pérignon. It was like his own private party. – Destiny, 22, East Midlands
‘Regular clients spend the most money’
The club I’m at now, in Torquay, probably has some of the richest clients. I’ve been there a long time and I’ve managed to be able to get more regular clients over time, and they’re the ones that spend the most money. I lost a lot of people over lockdown, but at the minute I do have a gentleman that comes in every weekend to see me. He always spends a good couple of hundred quid when he sees me.
There have been millionaires too, but after a while some of them want more, and when they realise you won’t see them outside the club is when they stop coming in and spending. But I do know a girl that had an American barrister that came in and dropped £25,000 in one night on five girls. There can be a lot of money in the bigger cities like London though. – Scarlett-Mae, 31, Torquay
‘I don’t think the money he spent even mattered to him’
I now run a pole dance collective called Chrome Club, prioritising BIPOC, LGBTQI+ people and sex workers, which raises awareness and funds for sex workers. But the most I ever saw a client spend in the club was a tech bro dropping 10k casually for a group of girls for the night when I was working at Stringfellows in London. Watching the money girl type in 10k into the EFTPOS machine [card machine] – and the way he swiped his card like it was nothing – hurt. It was just a normal night out for him.
The most a client has ever spent on me was over 20k in total, to accompany him on a business trip overseas, including a daily allowance and business class flights. I couldn’t handle the non-stop emotional labour, though, and ducked out while he was at a business meeting two days into the trip. He sent me angry messages asking me why I’d emptied out the mini-bar when I left. I don’t think the money he spent even mattered to him. He was just mad that he couldn’t have a drink immediately when he felt like one. – Linhqu, 29, Melbourne
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
