His empire may be shrinking, but king of clubs is still wearing his crown at 75

Alex Lawson

The club move has come at a good time for Stringfellow. With late licensing for bars denting the nightclub market, investing in one flagship venue makes sense.

Turnover at Angels was flat at £3 million with losses of £354,731 in 2014, while Stringfellows Restaurants, the company behind original club, brought in £8 million with similar-sized losses in 2014.

Brexit has yet to take effect although more deals are being done in his booths while the pound is weak. “The Americans have a smile on their face,” says the Remainer.

His dancers earn “between zilch and £4000 a night” depending on how many private dances they can elicit from the financiers and tourists who come through the door.

But the 75-year-old — who beat lung cancer in 2008 — says he’s not slowing down. A virtual reality club you can visit via a headset and a franchised chain of “glamour bars” are among a plethora of plans, though none are nailed down. “Up until now, I haven’t really used ‘Stringfellows’ as a brand name so I’m going to do that. We’re going to bring out a lingerie range on the internet by Christmas and maybe we’ll find somewhere in central London to sell it as a flagship.” He’ll even branch into casinos if they’re allowed to host strippers. HE nightclub owner (he insists he’s not shrewd enough to be dubbed a “businessman”) admits his peers are all “retired on a boat” but he enjoys life, heading in from leafy Gerrards Cross when it suits, strolling up to celebs, saying “Hi, I’m Peter, I own the place”.

After decades of debauchery and adultery, he says his main focus is family. “I told [32-year-old ballerina wife] Bella, ‘if you wake up one morning and you want someone else, not me, then so be it, we’re finished. And vice versa’. That was our pact.” With a gulp, he adds that his daughter “can be anyone she wants to be”, including an erotic dancer, but he wants her to be a scientist.

He excitedly plays me Take That’s Greatest Day, aired at the couple’s Barbados wedding. It’s a far cry from the Beatles, The Who and Jimi Hendrix, whom he put on in his days as a music promoter, starting out in Sixties Sheffield.

He opened in London in 1980 and made waves in the late Nineties, battling for a licence for a premium strip-club experience. Padding through the Leopard Room, Angels’ VIP lounge which has a dance floor where the punters can party with his staff, you see how Stringfellow has carefully combined Soho’s reputation as the capital of sex, London’s ability to attract highrolling tourists and his clients’ desire to live like a celebrity.

He coaches his dancers on the psychology of dealing with punters: “I teach them about handling rejection if a man refuses a dance. Of course, it’s not real rejection because the man would crawl over broken glass in the real world to get them. The club is a man’s world but women control it and I own it.”

The empire may be smaller, but that power remains.