Soho's Windmill hopes to bring back naked dancing

The venue has long been a feature of Soho nightlife

A famous London venue is hoping bring back striptease dancing, several years after it was closed following claims it was "prostituting" its performers.

The Windmill Theatre, which opened in 1932, once boasted that it did not shut for business during the Blitz.

But the Soho venue was forced to close in 2018 after a damning investigation. It reopened as a cocktail bar in 2019.

A licensing application made last month reveals the Windmill wants to have striptease dancers return.

This would be "in keeping with the historic nature of the famous Windmill Theatre", the application says.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), the club closed after a women's rights group hired former police officers to collect evidence from the venue, and found that dancers "regularly broke no-touching rules".

• Strip club shut by council after alleged spikings

One investigator reported that he was offered a VIP dance for £150 and that the dancer gave a security guard £10 to get him to look the other way.

The women's rights group was not named in Westminster City Council's report, which also alleged the club allowed groping, pinching and slapping of its performers.

The Windmill Theatre first opened in 1932

The women's rights group called for better protection of the performers, calling them "artists and athletes, much the same as a Victoria Secrets model, but vulnerable without high-profile agents and some struggle to pay their mortgage".

It added: "They are within the control of management who could be pushing the boundaries and even prostituting them." The club's management at the time said it would "work tirelessly to ensure no future lapses".

Ninety years of the Windmill

• The Windmill Theatre was able to get around the rules on nudity in the 1930s by having its performers pose motionless

• The venue went through various changes over the decades, hosting comedians and other entertainers, and becoming a cinema in the 1960s before burlesque returned in the 1970s

• After its licence was revoked in 2018 it underwent a £10m makeover and reopened as a celebrity cocktail bar in 2019

• In 2021 it was rebranded again, as a 350-seat venue offering food, drink and cabaret