A lap-dancing club - in pictures

In the heart of Soho, the Windmill club has staged striptease shows since 1932, and describes itself as the only club in London that stayed open throughout the war. Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

Oscar Owide has run the Windmill for 18 years, since buying it from Paul Raymond. He says he's worked in Soho clubs for more than 50 years, but won't say how old he is. 'You can ask but I'm not going to tell you.' Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

Women arrive in the club's cramped basement changing rooms in anoraks, dirty trainers and fusty brown tights, and spend an hour transforming themselves into beautiful, heavily made-up night peacocks, in floaty dresses and leopardprint bras. Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

For a newcomer, the most peculiar thing about the club is the unusual contrast between the fully-dressed men and the near-naked women. Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

The women keep arriving until around 11pm, when the club's owner likes the place to be packed. 'We need 40-45 girls, so that he and his mates can have a choice, can have dances with different types of girls, whatever their fancies are.' Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

Once the women are ready, they make their way in spiky heels up to the nightclub, where men pay them to take off their clothes again and perform an 'intimate dance'. Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

The club enforces a strict dress code for the women and dancers can be fined if they fail to adhere to it. Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

Women have to invest in clothes to fit the club's different nights, themed according to underwear colour. If they forget to wear the right colour, the 'house mother' will sell them underwear she keeps in a big red Family Circle biscuit tin. Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

One of the basement changing rooms has flooded in the rain, so women are stripping off their clothes wherever there is space, getting changed in the corridor. Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

Women are allowed to retreat to the changing rooms downstairs occasionally to have a cup of coffee or rest their feet. Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

Customers can buy nude dances for £20, and are taken upstairs to private booths by the dancers. In each booth there's a man in a suit pressed into the back of his chair, bolt upright; in each there's a naked woman, writhing and shaking her flesh in his face. Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

'When I first came here,' says a woman who's worked at the Windmill for five years, 'I was a bit shell-shocked at girls taking their clothes off… I knew how to dance, it was just getting past that stage fright.' Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

A woman who has been dancing around the pole on stage hobbles off. Her high heels are remarkable – transparent plastic, with maybe 4cm wedges at the front, flashing green lights with each tottering step. Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian

Windmill owner Oscar Owide believes lap-dancing is harmless fun, 'a respectable business… Most girls, I think they would like to get up on the stage and dance like this once in a lifetime.' Photograph: Linda Brownlee for the Guardian