Former Dreamboy stripper Alan Reeves tells his story to Dave Jarvis

Being a stripper isn’t exactly a career you plan on when you’re growing up.

I was brought up in Swadlincote in Derbyshire and was really into sport so I had been working out with weights from the age of about 11.

When I left school at 16 a friend of mine offered me a job in a hairdressing salon. He said: “The place is full of girls and we play snooker every lunch time.”

I didn’t have to think about it. “When do I start?” I asked and that was that.

But to be honest at that age I wasn’t chasing girls very much. I was the romantic type. I had a steady girlfriend who I was with for about four years and I was very faithful.

I dabbled in a bit of modelling and kept my weight training up to look my best and was pretty happy with life. I had qualified as a hairdresser after two year’s training and set up my own salon. I have always been a bit of an entrepreneur and even at that age I believed in myself.  Things were going well when I saw an ad for the Dreamboys in the Daily Mirror. They were looking to recruit male strippers. It was totally new at the time and there was a real buzz about it. The Dreamboys were meant to be the answer to the Chippendales from America. My manageress at my salon in Burton-on-Trent said I should go for it after seeing a Chippendales show, so I did.

I thought there may be some money in it and that it would be a laugh. That was about as much thinking as I put into it as a 19-year-old kid.

I had to go down to London. I was terrified when I got there. It was so scary. To be honest at first I thought it may have been a gay club thing but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I have always been pretty confident. Not because of my looks or my body but because I did a lot of acting at school. I loved drama and had some big roles. And my dad had always instilled confidence in me too. So I overcame the stage fright and went for it.

There were women in the audience at the audition and I got the right reaction. I was in.

I immediately gave up hairdressing and more or less gave away my salon to my manageress and threw myself into stripping full time.

I realise very soon that I had to be super confident on stage.

You couldn’t afford to be nervous no matter how big or wild the audience was.

If you looked shy on stage some audiences would eat you alive. I learned to look the audience in the eye and go for it no matter how I was feeling.

The Dreamboys became massive over night. I thought I was going to be rich. Unfortunately my steady girlfriend Rachael couldn’t handle what was happening and we split up.

The Dreamboys were all over the tabloids in no time. We were the first male strippers in Russia, and we got banned from Dubai. I travelled the world. I went out with Miss Norway and everywhere we went there were women. For the first year I was in shock. Women just threw themselves at us wherever we went. Seriously, it’s not an ego thing. That is what it was like. My romantic side took a back seat. I saw a very different side to women.

At my third show a woman asked for my autograph which I found very flattering.

Then she just came out and asked me for sex. I couldn’t believe it. We were at in the Starlight Rooms in Enfield. It’s not there any more. All I can say is I performed on stage but I didn’t perform too well round the back. I knew the boys were watching. I was a Dream Boy virgin and they were all waiting for me to break my duck.

A couple of months previous to that I had been cutting hair and now women were throwing themselves at me and I was in the newspapers. It was pretty heady stuff for a 19 year old.

It was crazy. At the time I thought it was wicked to be honest. My attitude was notch up as many conquests as you can while it lasts. I knew it was the show that drove them crazy, not me in particular. I think it is fair to say during that time I was a male slapper as well as a stripper.

So many women on hen nights would ask for sex saying it was there last night of freedom. I drew the line there though because it wasn’t there last night of freedom – that was the night she fell in love with her fella. My advice now to any fiancé or husband would be “don’t let your girl go to a strip show” - I know what can happen.

Something weird takes place. I don’t know what it is but in a female strip club men sit there quietly. But at a male strip show the women get legless and go berserk. I don’t know why they are so different but that is the way it is. I hope I’m not a chauvinist or anything like that. It is just my observation.

There was one night in Tenerife when we had to be locked into the venue because there were 2,000 screaming Spanish ladies just going mental. And that is frightening, I can tell you.

The security wasn’t good enough. They were trying to kick in the doors of the changing rooms.

We had to escape out the back clutching our bags and shoes as we legged it for the bus. I dread to thing what would have happened if a frenzied mob like that had got their hands on us.

At another show in Barrow-in-Furness

A woman got on stage and went for me. She ripped my shirt off and scratched me all down my back with her nails as she hugged me. I thought she was a psycho. Security had to drag her off stage.

With all this sort of stuff going on I became a bit of a woman hater at one stage - for a couple of years I would say.

With everything that happened I just never let a relationship develop and yes, women just became sex objects. But that is all I was to them too.

I wasn’t seeing women at their best. They were usually drunk and out of control. I dread to think what the audiences would be like today. I think I lost a bit of respect for women because of it. But at the same time I was up for it as well. But it is true to say in then end I got tired of it too.

I was certainly always aware that whatever was going on with the Dreamboys I was always searching for the right woman. That romantic side of me was buried for a long while but it wasn’t totally dead.

The Dreamboys has definitely affected me in everything I have done. Particularly towards the end when I started to wonder if a girl would want to go out with a stripper. She might want to sleep with you but would she want a relationship? That started to worry me and I thought more and more about it.

Things started going wrong for the Dreamboys after we appeared in the Spice Girls movie, Spice World. That was the peak of our fame but soon after The Full Monty came out in 1997 with Robert Carlyle and that really was the beginning of the end.

Before the Full Monty there were about three male strip groups but after that loads of blokes got into it. There was a lot more competition and they undercut our prices. The work started to slowly dry up.

The Dreamboys didn’t do the Full Monty, as it were, and a lot of new groups were doing that. We kept going and the Dreamboys are still going today but I knew the time was coming for me to get out.

The party was coming to end. I was settled down with Sarah, my girlfriend at the time.

She persuaded me to go back to hairdressing. But it felt like a big step down.  After all I had been a star.

But I had no money. I had spent 10 years on the road with the Dreamboys, had been with about a thousand women and was exactly £1,000 in debt.

By about 2001 I knew it was time to get out. My dad leant me the money to get my own barber shop going in Ruislip in Middlesex which is where Sarah is from and I went back to cutting hair.

My life is very different now. I feel very proud of the fact that I have made a go of Alan’s Barbers.

I have paid my dad back and when I look around the local pub in the high street I can see a lot of customers.

I’ve made my own business work and that is a great feeling.

Unfortunately Sarah and I have broken up and meeting woman these days is a very different proposition.

After Sarah I had a long relationship with Sally, but we split up too. It just didn’t work out.

I am very cautious now with women. I have a nice business and a nice house so I want someone who wants me for me, no because I’m doing ok.

I would like to meet someone to settle down with someone. I’m definitely looking for love and would love to have kids.

Things are very different now. I’m on Friends Reunited and I’ve got a date through that with an old flame called Louise. We split up years ago because she hated me stripping. She couldn’t handle it. But she got in touch with me through the web site and who knows what may happen? Maybe now that I’m not stripping things will be different.

I definitely believe that in relationships it is the woman who holds the power over her partner. But in a strange way The Dreamboys – at least for the time we were on stage – reversed that and we had the power. Don’t ask me why though. I haven’t a clue.

I don’t know if the Dreamboys has ruined my life or made it. But I wouldn’t change it.

I have regained my respect for women again and the old romantic side is back to the fore. Yes, I’ve been a slapper. But not anymore. I’m not interested in one night stands anymore for my ego. The ego has definitely landed and I want nothing more than to be a good family man. Fingers crossed.

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written by Dia, April 20, 2008

I saw one YouTube clip of a guy who was supposedly with The Dreamboys in the early 90's and his show was done to 'Unchained Melody' and he was in a suit at first with the best long dark hair and handsome face and eyes, and it was like watching a really romantic date when he got a gal out of the audence (probably planned) and they went to a hot-tub and popped champagne. I wish I could find that clip again, as YouTube took it off, because it was not the flesh, but the artistic part I liked, and no, I've never been to a male strip show.

I don't know how old this article is, but wish you well. I'll keep searching for that clip.

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