I’m a Dreamboy – I’ve been bitten & called up by furious husbands… there’s a part of the country where women are wildest
IT's seen as a bit of fun, a chance for women to let their hair down with their mates while enjoying some harmless titillation.
But four Dreamboys today reveal the naked truth about being a male stripper - and how some women struggle to control themselves during performances.
Instead of being shy around the muscle-bound hunks, they claim drunk girls regularly grab, grope and even bite members of the dance troupe.
One woman even clawed at a naked Dreamboy so hard he was left with blood streaming down his ripped torso.
The men spoke ahead of the release of the new Magic Mike film Last Dance, out next month, starring Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek. Disney+ is also streaming a new drama - Welcome to Chippendales - about male stripping.
Pjay Finch, 32, from Birmingham, has worked in the business for over a decade.
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The , who featured in the last series of Married at First Sight UK, said: “Women can be much worse than men and the more alcohol they consume, the crazier they get.
“I often walk out on stage and find they are already shouting ‘Get it off’ while throwing their thongs and bras at us.
“Any city or town up north is always the rowdiest and sometimes people take it too far.
“If you venture out into the crowd, people will be trying to grab you, or scratch and bite you and do weird things.
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“I’m like, ‘Come on, this is a professional show, and we don’t want to leave with bite marks on our bum cheeks’.
“I always do a big reveal at the end of my performance and girls will come up afterwards and say, ‘That’s not real'. I tell them, ‘How on earth would I get a fake d***?’
“Some will come over during a meet and greet and start grabbing you up.
“I always think, ‘If this was the other way round and I was doing the same thing to a woman, I would be arrested’.
“But people seem to think that they’ve paid for their ticket and they want their pound of flesh. It can make you feel like a piece of meat.
“I once had someone playing with herself during a performance and looking directly at me as she did it.
“She was in her 30s, professional looking and proper going for it. I didn’t know what to do, and the next minute she was sick all over herself.”
I always think, ‘If this was the other way round and I was doing the same thing to a woman, I would be arrested’
Pjay Finch
The troupe was founded in 1986 and today there are regular Saturday night Dreamboys performances up and down the country.
The roughly two-hour long shows feature group performances by professional dancers and individual stripteases by fellas who work out as much as seven days a week.
In the new eight-part Welcome to Chippendales series, actor Kumail Nanjiani plays Indian immigrant Somen "Steve" Banerjee, who made a killing in the 1980s after coming up with the idea for the first all-male erotic show.
The story has a disturbing twist, as Steve was just 48 when he was found hanged in his jail cell in 1994 after he was charged with hiring an ex-policeman to bump off rivals.
But his legacy lives on and the Chippendales are watched by two million people annually all over the world.
'Grandmas have the time of their lives'
The series is expected to generate more interest in an industry that has already been given a huge boost by movies like Magic Mike (2012), Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) and The Full Monty, released in 1997.
The Dreamboys have seen a 20 per cent increase in sales in the last year alone.
Max Hunter, 30, who performs at their Liverpool venue, said: “The Dreamboys has taken off on the back of these films.
“I love it because you get grandmas and aunties coming to see us now.
“I get them up on stage and by the end, they tell me, ‘I’ve had the best time of my life'.
“And it’s grandmas that end up being the worst because you bring out this youngster in them that has been hidden away for years.
“Once I got this one lady, who was well into her 80s, to rub my chest. The next minute her hand was straight down my boxers."
'British women are wildest'
Dreamboy Rogan O’Connor did a stint working with the Chippendales in Las Vegas but says English audiences are even wilder than the ones he gyrated for in the States.
Rogan, 33, from Stratford-Upon-Avon, said: “Women really let their inhibitions go when they come to see us perform.
“If they are on a hen do, it’s their last night of freedom. If it’s a divorce party, it’s possibly their first.
“Working as a Dreamboy has definitely opened my eyes to a few things.
“If I tried to touch a girl performing in a strip club I would be beaten up and thrown out the backdoor.
“With Dreamboys, they just go for it and if a girl grabs my bum or whatever I don’t take any notice.
“Sometimes they throw their knickers on stage and I went through a phase of putting them on my head, which was probably not the smartest thing to do.
“One time I walked off stage with the adrenaline pumping and realised a girl had scratched me a little bit.
“I looked in the mirror and all down my abs were three claw marks and there was blood all down my stomach and legs.
“Girls do hit on you after a show - they are there to watch you get naked so of course they are going to.
“But most of the guys including me are loved up with girlfriends so we won’t give them our phone numbers.”
Furious husbands
Stripper Chambers Whittle, 30, from Birmingham, has worked for the Dreamboys for over eight years and is now the firm’s Midlands area manager.
He said: “One night, soon after I first started, I was throwing a girl in her 20s around on stage when a chicken fillet wrapped in a plastic food bag slipped out of her bra.
“She tried to laugh it off as she pushed it back in, but it was pretty embarrassing.
“Another time I was doing a Fifty Shades of Grey routine and gave the girl’s hair a tug, and her wig came clean off.
“She took it really well, surprisingly. The worst girls are the ones that get absolutely hammered and keep interfering with your routine.
I looked in the mirror and all down my abs were three claw marks and there was blood all down my stomach and legs
Rogan O’Connor
“This one girl was at a hen party and I swear she was on drugs because I’ve never seen anyone react to a performance the way she did.
“She was trying to pull my jacket off and kept biting and pinching me and grabbing my nipples.
“She was pulling my hair too and in the end, I had to be really firm and say, ‘You need to stop’.
“I had to cut my routine short in the end because she wasn’t listening.
“The other issue is jealous partners. Husbands or boyfriends will call and text all the time.
"The girls will tell us, ‘We’ve had her husband on the phone and he’s going mad because he’s seen pictures on social media of what she’s done on stage’.
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“They probably realise that their Mrs is more outgoing than they'd ever imagined – and doing things with another bloke they never thought she would.
“I understand why they get jealous, but at the end of the day it’s a bit of fun. We never overstep the mark.”
