Mum who owns strip club said 'whoa' after 'mad' experience in basement

A mum-of-four who opened a gentlemen's club in Liverpool without having set foot in one before said she had a 'mad' experience which she still gets flashbacks of.

When she was in her early twenties Amy Gwynn, started the Rude Gentleman's Club on Duke Street, Liverpool. She told podcaster James English that the idea came at a time when her DJ boyfriend was struggling to find work.

She said: "He wasn't earning the money he was before, and all of a sudden we went from having all this freedom to having nothing. We were in a one-bedroom flat."

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With a duty to provide for her young child, Amy, then a model, was brainstorming methods to generate some additional income. It was her partner who proposed kickstarting Rude.

She said: "He started talking about strip clubs and said 'you can earn a lot of money off them because you've got different ways of earning revenue. You've got your bar, you can charge on the door, and you're offering naked women.'".

Amy arranged for some space in the basement of a club where her boyfriend used to DJ, but after that the hurdle was finding dancers. She added: "I remember going down to audition them. At this point I'd never been a dancer and I'd never been in a strip club, so I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what I was looking for.

"I was sat there and I said to them 'do you want to do a dance? ' I had taken my friend with me because I was so nervous."

Amy, now 36, added: "These girls come and they start dancing I remember sh*****g myself. This one girl, who went on to be a porn star, she started dancing. I still remember the song it was Jason Derulo's In My Head, and every time it comes on like it just gives me flashbacks.

"She starts dancing, she took her bra off, and then she whipped her knickers off and I said 'Whoa! ' It was so mad. I didn't know what I was getting into."

When Amy first started the club, the dancers took advantage of her inexperience and she had to work to earn their respect, reports the Daily Star. She explained: "There was this real sense of sisterhood between them, but not with me because I was the boss."

Amy was "petrified" when it was time to ask the dancers for their fee for the night. She said: "These girls were just running rings around me. I'd hold these meetings and they'd all talk over me.

"I was petrified I'd speak to them and they'd like really get up in my face. My heart would be pounding. It was not enjoyable."

It took a lot of hard work before she won them over and she recalls the moment when she realised they had accepted her. She said: "This football team came in and they were absolute a***holes and they were speaking to the girls like s***. I was behind the bar, filling jugs up and they were shouting over to me nothing horrendous but just being really disrespectful."

However, the dancers defended Amy, instructing the footballers to demonstrate some respect. At the end of the evening, she visited the dancers' dressing room to express her gratitude for their support: "They said 'Oh yeah babe, it's fine. Don't worry about it we get that all the time'."

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