Entertainment Ireland

'So, Highschool Musical Features Walks Into a Strip Joint...'

If you've ever been to Times Square, you've probably walked past Flashdancer's Gentlemen's Club. Having been there recently (New York, not the bitty bar in question), I can report that it looks like a suitably seedy joint - from the outside.

We saw groups of men leaving there, at varying levels of inebriation, and lone men (mainly the large, sweating and bearded of the species) being turned away. That's all very well and good, but what jarred me were the men that'd been recruited by the establishment to tout for business on the surrounding streets. We're talking pot bellied, middle aged, ruddy faced, boozed imbued vagrants in "Flashdancer's Gentlemen's Club" singlets, thrusting flyers in your face via a cruddy claw. To be frank, a lot of them looked homeless. Mmmm. Sexy. If these were the chosen representatives, what in the name of Jaysis would the creatures dancing inside be like?

Over to you, Zac Efron, who chose the classiest joint in the most covert spot in New York City to get his jollies: "The hardest part was calling my girlfriend beforehand. How do you start that conversation without feeling like a total a*shole? It was hard. She was fine with it ('cause she'd seen the cretinous men advertising the place)... I'm not really the type of guy that does that kind of thing often. I've heard a lot about these places, mostly from rap music (naww). It was supposed to be pretty reputable. I envisioned myself sitting on a nice couch, shades on, with T-Pain and Usher, making it rain money - and it just wasn't like that."

Yeah, so what was it like then?! Why are you going foetal? Eeeep, did some scrawny soul try to turn you on by juddering about onstage before passing out twirling round a poll... that's rough. Next time, consider the blokes handing out the flyers before putting yourself through that.