Tonight:
4°c
When I worked in Soho a couple of years back I enjoyed the way flickering neon signs in sex shop windows sat happily beside the area's trendy cafés and boutiques.
The district's slight air of sleaze is what makes it appealing, even thrilling. You can walk right past live girls in doorways luring punters into dingy dives on your way to Piccadilly Tube.
Soho thrives on sex, whether it's mating, stripping or prostitution and Paul Raymond, who died this week leaving a £650 million fortune, cashed in early on this notion with his eponymous Revue Bar.
But as I discovered last year, there's a big difference between the seedy glamour of a long-established sex district and the shock of finding a pole-dancing club in your own suburban backyard.
Fortunately, that didn't quite happen, but only because my neighbours ganged up against it. When we discovered the truth about the redevelopment of the Archway Tavern - a gigantic striptease joint was planned in the middle of the Archway roundabout - petitions were drawn up and taken round our streets, door to door.
Everyone signed, men and women alike. This was no po-faced feminist coup. We were all simply outraged at the idea of a bunch of sleazebags lurking around our newly gentrifying area - noted for good schools - on an almost 24-hour basis. And yes, we were thinking about property prices, too. The licence was rejected.
Now friends who live in Acton face a similar fight. Acton, like Archway, is moving upmarket, populated by professionals and young families. The High Street was smartening up too. Until the owners of the Captain Cook applied to turn their pub into an all-day pole-dancing bar with capacity for 600.
My friends were appalled and - along with the police, local politicians, a noise pollution group and 670 residents - are opposing the plans.
All of us are modern, youngish people with socially liberal attitudes. Yet the sex industry lost its allure at the first suggestion of private dances on our doorsteps. Had we turned into a bunch of nimbies, we worried? Perhaps, but when you look at the effects of these clubs on local areas, that's no bad thing.
The number of reported rapes near lap-dancing bars is three times the national average. And whatever proprietorssay, sex can be bought - a quarter of men in one study claimed they had sex for money on the premises. In Camden, which has at least half-a-dozen licensed adult clubs, women consider the surrounding streets "no-go areas" and complain of being harassed by touts. In some areas, taxis won't stop.
It would be naive to blame all this on Paul Raymond, but perhaps there is a link. Paid-for stripping, as pioneered by Raymond in his Soho club, has gone mainstream - it's technically part of the leisure industry. Pubs looking to turn an extra buck now install a pole and a podium.
London's seamier side might be enticing, but I don't want to find it outside my front door. If I fancy a pole dance, I'll go to Soho.
