XX CLOSED MK45 2EH Shaylers, Ampthill

[The Great Smell Of Brute]

A couple of posts on Stripping The Illusion, about an as yet unnamed club set to open in the Bedfordshire market town of Ampthill:

Carry On Stripping in Ampthill

Ampthill Revisited


(Update: the name of the new club has been since confirmed as Shayler's - see below)

[saltydog]

Didn't there used to be a pub with dancers there a while back?

[martinash]

Ampthill?? Jesus really! Prepare to be assulted by tomatoes bought from the local Waitrose by Armani wearing locals.

Thats one of the last places in Bedfordshire I would have thought that would tolerate a stripclub. I will await developments with interest from a safe distance.

[The Great Smell Of Brute]

After a little more Googling, it became apparent to me from this Anglia TV news item that John Shayler also owns Junction 9 Exotic, formerly the Waggon & Horses. Well, well...

[zante]

Shaylers, 4 Church Street, Ampthill, Bedford MK45 2EH

Long time coming, massively campaigned against, but Shayler's opens on Friday 30th November.

Well done John!!

[The Great Smell Of Brute]

[ady]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-be ... s-20566978

Looks like the front of someone's house!!

[The Great Smell Of Brute]

To judge by some of the comments left on this post to Stripping The Illusion, some of the local anti-club campaigner are planning to make a submission to the council re alleged minor violations of the licence: clutching at straws?

[martinash]

According to local radio Shaylers is reverting to be a normal nightclub without dancers. Purely economic reasons apparently, I always thought that Ampthill would struggle to support a strip club, partly because of the local population demographic which is very middle class green welly country set (see the amount of local opposition to the club in the first place) and also that the town has very poor transport links. It has no railway station, local buses do run to Flitwick and Bedford, but they pretty much stop after 8pm.

Some self appointed spokesman for the population was sounding off on the radio about this, the locals are now concerned that having got rid of the dancers, that the noise and local rowdiness generated from a normal club will increase. To be fair I think he was trying to tie it to an increase in numbers attending now it is a normal nightclub, but it did make me smile all the same.

The local yoof tend to go into Bedford for nightlife, and I understand there is an application going through for a SEV licenced premises there. This is also meeting a lot of local opposition, who are trotting out the same tired old arguments around safety etc. Bedford is a completely different kettle of fish to Ampthill, in that the local high street is effectively a no go area after 9pm on a Friday and Saturday, unless you happen to be under 25 and very pissed! The town already has 4 or 5 nightclubs, so the addition or conversion of a club with dancers should not encounter the argument that it is changeing the wholesale look and feel of the town.

[The Great Smell Of Brute]

According to local radio Shaylers is reverting to be a normal nightclub without dancers...the locals are now concerned that having got rid of the dancers, that the noise and local rowdiness generated from a normal club will increase.

There a certain poetic justice in that.

The local yoof tend to go into Bedford for nightlife, and I understand there is an application going through for a SEV licenced premises there.

I suspect that a strip club would also be commercially unviable in Bedford, for slightly different reasons - mostly to do with the supply of dancers, rather than customers - but let's see what happens...

[zante]

The place had a very hard time filling dancer shifts due to it's location. When you don't know if there will be girls there it's off putting to us customers.

Bedford at one stage had two clubs, both very underused.