The time is 11.30pm, it’s a cold weekday evening in London’s Soho and down a litter-strewn alleyway, a fashionable crowd has gathered on the pavement outside an anonymous-looking wooden door.
The outfits being showcased are achingly fashionable. The super-thin girls wear barely-there dresses which clearly cost the earth. Each has painted her lips in what appears to be the same shade of scarlet.
The men are foppish, well-spoken and clad in designer suits. They eye the girls with the detached insouciance only the privileged can carry off.
The outfits being showcased are achingly fashionable. The super-thin girls wear barely-there dresses which clearly cost the earth. Each has painted her lips in what appears to be the same shade of scarlet.
The men are foppish, well-spoken and clad in designer suits. They eye the girls with the detached insouciance only the privileged can carry off.
Welcome to The Box, London’s hottest new nightspot, favoured by royals and A-listers alike. Conservatively billed as a ‘theatre of varieties’, The Box, in truth, offers the cheapest of thrills for the most expensive of tastes.
Prince Harry, his cousins Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, Kate Moss, Emma Watson and Keira Knightley have all partied here until dawn.
I have heard The Box puts on the most sexually explicit show in town. What goes on inside has reportedly shocked even the most jaded of seen-it-all-before socialites.
But few reporters have ever managed to get past the ‘clipboard doorkeepers’, who control access to the club, to offer an eyewitness account of what goes on inside.
I have heard The Box puts on the most sexually explicit show in town. What goes on inside has reportedly shocked even the most jaded of seen-it-all-before socialites.
But few reporters have ever managed to get past the ‘clipboard doorkeepers’, who control access to the club, to offer an eyewitness account of what goes on inside.
Tonight, I have managed to get a ticket. One of my friends is having a birthday party and we have each agreed to pay a £50 entrance fee on the door.
Can this place really be as decadent as it is billed, I wonder, as I arrive outside The Box, or is it just over-excited hype?
What I see during the subsequent few hours leaves me in no doubt. For the ‘erotic entertainment’ I encounter is not exciting, edgy or cool. It is, quite simply, hardcore pornography of the most repulsive kind.
Can this place really be as decadent as it is billed, I wonder, as I arrive outside The Box, or is it just over-excited hype?
What I see during the subsequent few hours leaves me in no doubt. For the ‘erotic entertainment’ I encounter is not exciting, edgy or cool. It is, quite simply, hardcore pornography of the most repulsive kind.
That such a place could have become a favoured haunt of royalty and celebrities is beyond belief.
The night begins as my friends and I are kept waiting at the club’s doors for 30 minutes, despite arriving early.
The door policy is super-strict and a tousle-haired, sharply-dressed man in his early 20s steps outside to survey the crush of people every ten minutes or so to decide who he will let in — and who he won’t.
By the time I am ushered through, I feel pathetically grateful to have passed his test. After all, most of our fellow revellers have had to spend thousands of pounds to reserve a table, or are famous enough to have had their names placed on a guest list. Even then, they are not guaranteed access.
Table prices start at £1,000 on a week-night, rising to more than £3,000 at weekends.
The night begins as my friends and I are kept waiting at the club’s doors for 30 minutes, despite arriving early.
The door policy is super-strict and a tousle-haired, sharply-dressed man in his early 20s steps outside to survey the crush of people every ten minutes or so to decide who he will let in — and who he won’t.
By the time I am ushered through, I feel pathetically grateful to have passed his test. After all, most of our fellow revellers have had to spend thousands of pounds to reserve a table, or are famous enough to have had their names placed on a guest list. Even then, they are not guaranteed access.
Table prices start at £1,000 on a week-night, rising to more than £3,000 at weekends.
Once inside, there is little at first to distinguish The Box from many other West End nightspots. It’s spread over two floors, and visitors climb a gold-carpeted, wood-panelled staircase before entering the club’s small, dimly-lit inner sanctum. In the flickering light of the hallway, bespoke wallpaper features X-rated cherubs gleefully fornicating together — setting the tone of the evening to come.
The club’s main room is fashioned like a turn-of-the-century music hall with deep red wallpaper adorned with hazy mirrors and antique-laden booths with starched white tablecloths.
The man behind The Box is 31-year-old Simon Hammerstein, a public-school educated grandson of celebrated lyricist Oscar Hammerstein.
The club’s main room is fashioned like a turn-of-the-century music hall with deep red wallpaper adorned with hazy mirrors and antique-laden booths with starched white tablecloths.
The man behind The Box is 31-year-old Simon Hammerstein, a public-school educated grandson of celebrated lyricist Oscar Hammerstein.
He has described his nightclub as a place of ‘mystique, mystery and sexual openness’. The London venue opened five weeks ago following the success of its sister club in New York’s Lower East Side.
In Manhattan, The Box’s explicit stage shows quickly sealed its reputation as the place to be seen after it opened in 2007.
Jude Law and Oscar-winning actress Rachel Weisz sat on the club’s board, and celebrities queued up to experience its outrageous erotic atmosphere. The club quickly acquired a reputation for sexual and chemical excess — with rumours rife of customers having sex and snorting cocaine off their tables.
In Manhattan, The Box’s explicit stage shows quickly sealed its reputation as the place to be seen after it opened in 2007.
Jude Law and Oscar-winning actress Rachel Weisz sat on the club’s board, and celebrities queued up to experience its outrageous erotic atmosphere. The club quickly acquired a reputation for sexual and chemical excess — with rumours rife of customers having sex and snorting cocaine off their tables.
Now its London counterpart seems to be causing the same stir and Hammerstein believes the English will love his erotic cabarets.
‘I love the humour, the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm and dryness over here,’ he has said. ‘Our show has that humour the English really get with panto and music hall.’
So it is that I move into the heart of the club, expecting the stage equivalent of a saucy seaside postcard. My friends and I find a place to stand at the bar where we can observe fellow clubbers drinking at the exclusive booths on the edge of the room.
Champagne by the bottle ranges from £140 to an eye-popping £20,000 for a special edition Dom Perignon. Iranian caviar and seared tuna are on offer as snacks.
Erotic-themed cocktails including the Dirty Lady, a mixture of gin and Moet, and the peach-infused Between The Sheets cost £15 each. A house cocktail made of Cognac and bourbon is a startling £70.
Kevin Pietersen went along with his agent and cheered from his front row table
Among the Sloanes and Russian businessmen who pack the club, I am surprised to spot England cricketer Kevin Pietersen drinking shots with his agent. He has only recently returned to Britain from the World Cup Cricket tournament in India, which he was forced to pull out of after requiring supposedly urgent treatment for a hernia.
I wonder what his team-mates would think if they knew that instead of lying on a hospital bed he is here, partying at London’s most notorious nightclub.
When contacted by the Daily Mail yesterday, Pietersen’s agent confirmed the cricket star was at The Box on Wednesday night. Adam Wheatley said: ‘I was there with him. His brother was also there with someone who works at the bar.’
I also spot Arsenal footballer Nicklas Bendtner flirting with a mystery woman. (Later he will disappear into a toilet cubicle with her — presumably to get to know each other — as the attendant turns a blind eye). The footballer, who earns £2.5million a year, recently split from his Danish fiance, Baroness Caroline Luel-Brockdorff, just a few weeks after she gave birth to their child.
But any Gunners fans in there might be more surprised that he is not keeping a lower profile, for when I spot him it is just one day after he missed the golden goal opportunity that may have seen the club through to the Champions League.
As the night wears on, the atmosphere at The Box grows tense and expectant. The performances are about to begin. A semi-naked American master of ceremonies, with bleached blond hair shaped into devil’s horns, leather waistcoat and bare tattooed torso, appears on stage flanked by topless dancers and sings into a microphone as the audience cheers.
Introducing himself as ‘Raven O’, he announces that ‘here at The Box, anything goes’ — to the delight of the whooping crowd. And just in case anyone was in any doubt about what he means by that, he brazenly encourages everyone to ‘take medicine, do a line, let’s get ‘f****d up’
‘I love the humour, the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm and dryness over here,’ he has said. ‘Our show has that humour the English really get with panto and music hall.’
So it is that I move into the heart of the club, expecting the stage equivalent of a saucy seaside postcard. My friends and I find a place to stand at the bar where we can observe fellow clubbers drinking at the exclusive booths on the edge of the room.
Champagne by the bottle ranges from £140 to an eye-popping £20,000 for a special edition Dom Perignon. Iranian caviar and seared tuna are on offer as snacks.
Erotic-themed cocktails including the Dirty Lady, a mixture of gin and Moet, and the peach-infused Between The Sheets cost £15 each. A house cocktail made of Cognac and bourbon is a startling £70.
Kevin Pietersen went along with his agent and cheered from his front row table
Among the Sloanes and Russian businessmen who pack the club, I am surprised to spot England cricketer Kevin Pietersen drinking shots with his agent. He has only recently returned to Britain from the World Cup Cricket tournament in India, which he was forced to pull out of after requiring supposedly urgent treatment for a hernia.
I wonder what his team-mates would think if they knew that instead of lying on a hospital bed he is here, partying at London’s most notorious nightclub.
When contacted by the Daily Mail yesterday, Pietersen’s agent confirmed the cricket star was at The Box on Wednesday night. Adam Wheatley said: ‘I was there with him. His brother was also there with someone who works at the bar.’
I also spot Arsenal footballer Nicklas Bendtner flirting with a mystery woman. (Later he will disappear into a toilet cubicle with her — presumably to get to know each other — as the attendant turns a blind eye). The footballer, who earns £2.5million a year, recently split from his Danish fiance, Baroness Caroline Luel-Brockdorff, just a few weeks after she gave birth to their child.
But any Gunners fans in there might be more surprised that he is not keeping a lower profile, for when I spot him it is just one day after he missed the golden goal opportunity that may have seen the club through to the Champions League.
As the night wears on, the atmosphere at The Box grows tense and expectant. The performances are about to begin. A semi-naked American master of ceremonies, with bleached blond hair shaped into devil’s horns, leather waistcoat and bare tattooed torso, appears on stage flanked by topless dancers and sings into a microphone as the audience cheers.
Introducing himself as ‘Raven O’, he announces that ‘here at The Box, anything goes’ — to the delight of the whooping crowd. And just in case anyone was in any doubt about what he means by that, he brazenly encourages everyone to ‘take medicine, do a line, let’s get ‘f****d up’
Raven O, who has arrived from New York to take charge of the club, introduces the first two acts, contortionist male dancer Conechi, and a pair of near-naked male and female rope dancers who swing from the ceiling over a raised platform in the centre of the room. But this performance pales into insignificance when a transsexual named Rose takes to the stage.
Introduced as the ‘Whore Of New York’, Rose’s act begins with a strip show. It’s obvious from ‘her’ face that Rose is a man, despite his naked, surgically enhanced breasts. But when all his clothes are removed, the audience is left in no doubt.
I can barely contain my horror when he proceeds to perform a sex act on himself with the neck of a vodka bottle. But, seemingly, I am alone in my discomfiture as the rest of the audience roar their approval.
Cheered on by Pietersen (who has secured a table at the front of the room) the stomach-churning act finishes with Rose drinking from the vodka bottle and spraying the contents over guests seated at the nearby tables.
Next up are a pair of female dancers who perform a version of the famous ‘Full Monty’ strip routine to Tom Jones’s You Can Leave Your Hat On. At the end, the two women stand and face the cheering crowd completely naked .
Then Raven O returns to the stage to introduce transsexual Rose once more. This time, the performance descends to levels that would shock the most open-minded observer.
After decorating his genitalia with pink lipstick, Rose proceeds to perform an outrageous conjuring act which involves him producing objects from within his own body. The depraved act ends with champagne being tipped over his naked body and sprayed into the audience.
Many guests with the most direct view of this disgusting performance are screaming with laughter and react by applauding him wildly and calling for more. Maybe they are used to such explicit displays. Perhaps they were at the club on the nights when, according to some reports, sexual threesomes openly took place, and men dressed as pigs licked food off strippers’ stomachs.
But for now, thankfully, Rose exits, blowing kisses to the crowd. Then comes the finale: An erotic pastiche of the children’s favourite, Alice In Wonderland, complete with topless dancers, acrobats and fire-eaters — all in full costume.
But after Rose’s performance, even the surreal spectacle of a trio of bare-breasted Lewis Carroll characters is received with indifference.
When the main show ends at 3.30am, an attendant says that on busier weekend evenings a selection of guests are sometimes invited upstairs to the VIP area for a more explicit version of the sex show where ‘anything goes’.
How these VIPs are chosen is shrouded in mystery. Staff will reveal only that the room is used as a private area for the most open-minded clients. But this evening most people appear to have had their fill.
I am certainly among them. Is it really possible to class the explicitly vulgar scenes I have seen tonight as entertainment. I feel sickened by the whole experience.
So what does the future hold for The Box? One member of staff is already on record as saying the shows are ‘going to get more and more daring. We’re going to build up to the sorts of things the New York club is famous for. It’s going to get much more dirty here’.
Why, I wonder as I leave, do the most fortunate in our society — celebrities and royalty alike — consider such a demeaning experience to be amusing fun.
Why can’t they see that the acts degrade them as much as they do the performers? By gracing such an establishment with their presence, they are reducing themselves to little more than over-privileged Peeping Toms. How sad.source
Introduced as the ‘Whore Of New York’, Rose’s act begins with a strip show. It’s obvious from ‘her’ face that Rose is a man, despite his naked, surgically enhanced breasts. But when all his clothes are removed, the audience is left in no doubt.
I can barely contain my horror when he proceeds to perform a sex act on himself with the neck of a vodka bottle. But, seemingly, I am alone in my discomfiture as the rest of the audience roar their approval.
Cheered on by Pietersen (who has secured a table at the front of the room) the stomach-churning act finishes with Rose drinking from the vodka bottle and spraying the contents over guests seated at the nearby tables.
Next up are a pair of female dancers who perform a version of the famous ‘Full Monty’ strip routine to Tom Jones’s You Can Leave Your Hat On. At the end, the two women stand and face the cheering crowd completely naked .
Then Raven O returns to the stage to introduce transsexual Rose once more. This time, the performance descends to levels that would shock the most open-minded observer.
After decorating his genitalia with pink lipstick, Rose proceeds to perform an outrageous conjuring act which involves him producing objects from within his own body. The depraved act ends with champagne being tipped over his naked body and sprayed into the audience.
Many guests with the most direct view of this disgusting performance are screaming with laughter and react by applauding him wildly and calling for more. Maybe they are used to such explicit displays. Perhaps they were at the club on the nights when, according to some reports, sexual threesomes openly took place, and men dressed as pigs licked food off strippers’ stomachs.
But for now, thankfully, Rose exits, blowing kisses to the crowd. Then comes the finale: An erotic pastiche of the children’s favourite, Alice In Wonderland, complete with topless dancers, acrobats and fire-eaters — all in full costume.
But after Rose’s performance, even the surreal spectacle of a trio of bare-breasted Lewis Carroll characters is received with indifference.
When the main show ends at 3.30am, an attendant says that on busier weekend evenings a selection of guests are sometimes invited upstairs to the VIP area for a more explicit version of the sex show where ‘anything goes’.
How these VIPs are chosen is shrouded in mystery. Staff will reveal only that the room is used as a private area for the most open-minded clients. But this evening most people appear to have had their fill.
I am certainly among them. Is it really possible to class the explicitly vulgar scenes I have seen tonight as entertainment. I feel sickened by the whole experience.
So what does the future hold for The Box? One member of staff is already on record as saying the shows are ‘going to get more and more daring. We’re going to build up to the sorts of things the New York club is famous for. It’s going to get much more dirty here’.
Why, I wonder as I leave, do the most fortunate in our society — celebrities and royalty alike — consider such a demeaning experience to be amusing fun.
Why can’t they see that the acts degrade them as much as they do the performers? By gracing such an establishment with their presence, they are reducing themselves to little more than over-privileged Peeping Toms. How sad.source
