One day it is fiscal stimulus with Alistair Darling, the next it is sexual stimulus with Peter Stringfellow. Could life at Westminster get any more exciting?

To the Grimond Room and a session with the Culture Committee on that hot political potato of the moment - lap dancing. I kid you not.

Stringy, as he is apparently known, turned up, not in a gold lame jacket as someone unitiated in nocturnal matters of the third kind might expect, but in a sober pin-stripe suit supported by a gaggle of equally sharp-suited legal eagles.

Up against the lap dancing fraternity, or should that be sorority, was Sandrine Leveque, an eloquent advocacy officer for Object, a campaign group that challenges the "objectification" of women.

Next to her was an ex-lap dancer, who goes by the name of Nadine Stravonia de Montagnac - the most exotic of stage handles I'd ever come across - and is probably known as Beryl down the local launderette.

The thrust of Object's line was that lap dancing clubs should be treated like peep shows rather than like pubs and restaurants, which have a licence to sell alcohol, and should be licensed as "elements of the sex industry".

At this point, Stringy, still sporting his famous mullet hairstyle at 68, was cupping his ear to catch Ms Leveque's words and shaking his head as she made her argument.

The UK Government led, it is thought, by Harriet Harman, Hazel Blears and Jacqui Smith, is expected to unveil a new licensing regime for lap dancing clubs, which would subject them to the same tough rules as sex shops and make them apply for "sexual encounter" licences. Such things exist?

The famous mullet made clear he objected to the term "lap dancing club" and preferred "adult entertainment", or in the case his own establishment, "a gentlemen's club".

Arguing against any more laws, Stringy insisted his two nightclubs should be allowed to have naked women dancing away and that councils already had powers to object to nudity.

Then in a classic outburst, the club owner declared: "I'm not a sex encounter club and I don't want anyone coming in my club thinking they're going to get a sexual encounter." Heaven forbid.

The climax of the session, so to speak, came when Simon Warr, chairman of the Lap Dancing Association, insisted, with a completely straight face, that lap dancing clubs were "not sexually stimulating". Rather, he argued, they were there to provide "entertainment" with alcohol. "It's a place of leisure.

Alright the entertainment is in the form of nude, semi-nude performance. But it is not sexually stimulating."

Aripple of laughter swirled around the Grimond Room.

It was left to Philip Davies, the bluff Yorkshire MP, to introduce a bit of reality by saying that if people came out of one of his lap dancing clubs and said it was not sexually stimulating but a "big fat zero", then he would have a lot of dissatsified customers. More giggles.

Mr Warr replied by asking how one defined sexual stimulation. This was getting silly.

In jumped the mullet. "Of course, it's sexually stimulating. So is a disco, so is a pretty girl ... So is David Beckham with his Calvin Kleins. So are the Chippendales." No, no, no. This was getting out of hand. "I went to see them and I was the only man among 3000 females," he added. Should he boast about such things?

The session over, Stringy then made the committee an offer it couldn't refuse - all the members present just happened to be men. It was a free invititation to his London club.

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