Lolly Jackson was expelled from primary school for making a lewd drawing of his art teacher. He was thrown out of high school at the end of Grade 8 for punching his principal. He was a diamond cutter, second hand car salesman and sweets salesman before beginning a series of businesses that would culminate with his opening of the largest chain of strip clubs in South Africa.
In this extract from his autobiography, Stripped, The King of Tease, as told to Vincent Marino, he speaks about his running battles with his corporate neighbours in Bedfordview, east of Johannesburg.
- Once Midrand was up and running smoothly and all the legalities and hassles had been ironed out, I started looking afresh for another property to purchase for the purpose of a new Teazers.
Living in Bedfordview, east of Johannesburg, I wanted a locality close to home, which I could call my headquarters and set about looking for suitable premises in the Edenvale/Bedfordview area.
At the beginning of 1998, on my way home, close to the turnoff that I habitually use, I saw a building close to the N3. The first thing that struck me about the building was its advertising potential being so close to the highway and a second bonus was that it was an established O'Hagan's restaurant, right there on my doorstep.
Bingo!
The blood was speeding through my body with excitement, as it always does when I think I'm onto something big. The restaurant-cum-bar was part of a franchise group, under the name of its creator, Basil O' Hagan, who by then had a string of them around the country.
I went around the front and found the restaurant closed. It looked as if it had been closed for sometime. The first thing I noticed was that the place had ample parking and it was slap bang in the middle of a busy commercial district. An office park housing the Head Offices of the Pick 'n Pay group and Liberty Life were a mere stone's throw away.
Little did I know that the adjacent office park would be the cause of endless sleepless nights, court interdicts and the reason why I had to close down my third Teazers operation.
The premises seemed ideal and I decided not to go through the broker, but instead tracked Basil down and found that he was very receptive to sell if the price was right. There was the rub! But he wanted a ridiculous R2 million.
I decided that an evening out with the old 'Irishman' might soften his heart and sharpen his pencil. This was done on the premise that all good 'Irishmen', who own bars, like the odd tipple themselves. He decided that I should meet him at his house towards sundown.
On arrival he offered me a drink and throughout the evening we drank and the more we drank the more the old man and I connected.
By the time we came to signing the contract the figure had dropped to R1.7 million. Pleasantly drunk and in high spirits I left his house gripping what I thought was to be my finest negotiation, although some sceptics thought that the old man had signed the document upside down!
I renovated for the next month spending nearly all my available cash. This was a sizeable restaurant with a large kitchen, where I would be able to serve a first class meal with a classy stripper for dessert.
For the first two years Bedfordview was my flagship. It constantly bettered the other clubs but I should have known, everything was just going too well. I should have been watching my ass, because a pretty nasty bullmastiff was closing on it with fangs bared and slobbering at the mouth.
The first inkling that something was amiss happened a few months after the winter of 2000. Rumblings from the corporates in the nearby office block began to reach my ears.
Then a letter courtesy of Flionis, Attorney and conveyancer arrived on my desk. Opening it I found that the lawyer concerned was acting on behalf of a whole group of companies, most of them resident in the office park on the other side of the road. The biggest were Pick 'n Pay, Murray & Roberts and Liberty Life Properties, the latter were also the landlords of the office park.
I glanced over the contents, which briefly threatened to seek legal action because I did not have the correct business licences, or a valid Liquor Licence. They also demanded that I cover up all advertising because the signs facing the N3 were in contravention of road regulations.
I had already run into similar flak in Midrand, so I wasn't too anxious about their threats. I wrote a genial letter back explaining that I had applied for all the necessary documents for the business and they would be transferred into my name within three months. As for the Liquor Licence, I told them that I was still operating under the O'Hagans licence, but I had applied for my own from the Liquor Board and it was pending.
I soon found out that the main ringleader was Sean Summers from the Pick 'n Pay group who had started a crusade against the club, because a few of his staff had been abusing their lunch hour and were spending more time at Teazers than at their work desk. At first I took scant notice but soon I heard that he petitioned a number of other companies in the office park to try and close me down.
He had obviously gone to this lawyer and had dug up some old documentation that could be used against me. I tried to arrange a meeting with Summers to try and negate his moves, but was rebuffed. The next minute he was telling everyone that I was intimidating him. Me, one small club owner, against the might of ten large companies, such as Pick 'n Pay, Murray & Roberts and Liberty Life. Who was really intimidating whom here? To any normal company, having ten major companies, six of them PLC's, trying to close you down is extremely intimidating.
I contacted Liberty Life's CEO and tried to negotiate a compromise, so that I would not be forced to close down Teazers. These discussions went on for about two months before the court case, but to no avail. Summers had started a witch-hunt and I was the witch that was going to be burnt at the stake no matter how innocent I pleaded.
The first summons arrived one Wednesday afternoon and I phoned my lawyer and made an appointment with him. It appeared that Pick 'n Pay and the nine other complainants, requested that the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality tribunal shut down my club because it was a strip club and not a restaurant. I didn't take the legal aspects seriously, because the laws were archaic and did not have much relevance to the standards that exist today.
I have always thought and still do to this day, that Teazers was primarily a restaurant and the strippers a subsidiary to the main business.
Judge Hussein, who presided, reasoned that our prime business was not food, but in fact a strip club. I fought back desperately by showing the court the accounts from the club, the food and alcohol bills, but he was adamant. Teazers must close because I was not a bona fide restaurant.
In open court, Pick 'n Pay's lawyer claimed that the presence of a strip-club 'tarnished the image' of the area. He referred to the unsavoury kind of people that my business was attracting, not realising that a third of my customers were indeed his clients from the office park.
The rest were made up of successful businessmen from Bedfordview, Edenvale and surrounding areas. Many took offence when I told them that they had been classed as 'unsavoury' characters.
I was distraught. All the hard work, the planning and the legal wrangling had come to nought. I really felt bitter towards the judicial system, which could close a functional restaurant like mine down on a technicality and put good employees into the street without a whiff of remorse.
I decided to keep my staff on for the next 3 months and went back to the drawing board. I went down to the Bedfordview Council and applied successfully to rezone Teazers as a strip club, which was granted a month later.
Bedfordview was momentarily open again and amongst the first patrons to visit us were the very employees of those companies that had taken a lawsuit out against me. The guys came in their droves, incognito, without any corporate clothing to identify them, but all the same congratulating me on the reopening and slagging off their bosses for taking away their favourite recreational spot.
However I had only a 3-day reprieve before an urgent interdict was bought against us to stop the publication of the rezoning in the Government Gazette. The judge ruled against us and we had to take the matter to the appeal tribunal.
Except for the three day's grace, my club had remained closed and under renovation since the proceedings started. I had lost millions, but I still believed that in the long run I would come out on top. I had held the place for three years and still not succumbed to selling the property. I have always believed that I have done the right thing and I believe to this day that those companies that unjustly stood against me, with unfounded accusations and biased tongues, had no right to judge me, or my patrons, or my girls on any moral grounds.
Now that Bedfordview had been closed for good, I sorely wanted to get back at those who closed me down, sitting in their offices sniffing their cognacs and smirking at their cheap victory. Toasting one another from their leather back chairs.
I began to plot and plan my revenge and although I believe in what goes around comes around, karma sometimes comes along too late and usually when you're not looking, so your enemies get away with it anyway. I prefer direct action, a tooth for tooth, an eye for an eye sort of stuff. I wanted to make laughing stock of them.
I wanted everyone to throw rotten tomatoes and eggs at them. I wanted to expose them for what they really are, so I began my campaign...
Since I still owned the club I had to utilise it in some manner that would be legal. But first I wanted to make it an eyesore to all who looked upon it and a disgrace to the corporates in the vicinity. A number of nasty little ideas came to the fore during these brainstorming sessions. A Black Metal venue with Cradle of Filth blaring out of the speakers all day and all night and during the day it would be let out to an assortment of out of tune musicians to practise their dubious arts. At night it would be frequented by androgynous bat people throwing up on the office park steps.
Instead I got a whole lot of bright pink paint, and gaily (excuse the pun) painted the entire building this hideous colour. I then advertised for gay waiters and barmen and dressed them in scant clothing. I invited every gay I knew to the opening. The opening of what you might ask?
Aah, 4 Q's Summer's Gay Restaurant of course, which was painted on all walls facing the office park and consisted of a number 4 with four Queen of Spades painted below the letter. The name was emblazoned on every possible wall that faced the offices. So that morning, noon or night they would be reminded of their folly. Not to mention the transvestites who wore less clothing than my Teazers girls did!
Unfortunately, it was not Summers that got me to close down the Gay Restaurant but the gays themselves. After six months I had had enough.
The real problem is that I am straight and I couldn't associate with men that like to kiss one another. But at the same time I realised that if I disparaged or belittled the gay community, I was doing exactly what my detractors were doing to my clubs and me.
So although I shut the doors on them to lots of "oohs" and "aahs," I did not look harshly upon the homosexual fraternity. We are all adults and we all have our own needs and indulgences to fulfil and if that's their kick they're welcome to it.
I think Summers and company realised by now that I was really pissed off. One day I realised that this stress wasn't good for a bloke that had already had a bad heart attack and a quadruple bypass and if I didn't let my anger subside it would kill me.
I let the property out to a number of people who operated a variety of successful nightclubs, but in April 2006, I decided to sell and use the money to expand and revamp Teazers Rivonia and open Teaze-Hers, an exclusive all women's strip club.
Extracted from Stripped, The King of Tease, which goes on sale on Monday, November 27, at bookstores across the country at a cost of R250.
In Midrand, between Johannesburg and Pretoria, there's an organisation called LAW (the Local Authority Watchdogs) and it is run by a bunch of old mother grundies. These are women who personify conventional social disapproval and narrow mindedness. A woman by the name of Janet Schofield headed LAW. In all honesty I could write and belittle these people but I would like to thank Janet Schofield, Hester Stevenson, Sharon Plumb and Laney Tol for the excellent job that they have done as my 'public relationship managers'. For without them I would never have received the mileage they got me.
Can you imagine if I went to the media? Places like eTV, Mnet, SABC or any of the print media groups and said, "Guys I'm opening up an upmarket strip club in Midrand and I think it's going to cause a bit of a controversy. It will definitely be newsworthy, please come along."
What do you think they would have said? Do you think they would have given me weekly exposure, let alone front-page coverage and numerous opportunities to put forward my point of view? No I don't think they would have bothered. So once I realised that I could use Janet Schofield and cronies, I put them to good use, as a powerful and dependable ally to get my message out to the masses. The coverage that I could never have paid for, these dear old ladies went all out to get me
So on a much lighter note, let me treat you to a story of two chancers who attempted to get into the Rivonia Teazers without paying. At Rivonia there is a receptionist at the entrance who greets the customer, takes the cover charge and hands them whatever pamphlets or promotions that is on for that week or month. Behind her sit my clerical staff, Ricardo, my right hand man and usually one of the managers in attendance. This specific day two fellow Greeks walked into the establishment and demanded to be let in free. I happened to be passing to my office and winked slyly to my receptionist and took over from her. 'Hi gents, may I help you?' I'm Demetri and this is Stavros, Lolly's our connection."
"Yeah" nodded his buddy. "We know Lolly, he's one of us, been chinas for years,' crossing his middle and index finger, and thrusting them in my face. "He said we must just pop in and he'll let us in for free." "Really" I said, rubbing my chin before continuing, "Lolly's never mentioned you guys before and you know he doesn't let anybody in for free.' Demetri looked at me, "Lolly will really get p*****d off, if you don't look after his friends and I don't want to get you into trouble, you know." I smiled at them and said, "Sorry gents can't let you in. Its fifty bucks each."
"China you better let us in, or we'll get you fired. Lolly's our big mate, we even went to school together." Demetri was getting a little agitated, "If you don't let us in I'll phone Lolly, and then you're in k*k china." "Please phone him, sir." By this time I had walked around the counter and was standing in front of Demetri, who pulled out his phone and started dialling.
As soon as the phone started ringing, Demetri looked at me and pointed, "Your phone's ringing, china."
"Excuse me guys," I apologised to the two buffoons standing in front of me. I turned my back and answered my phone, 'Hello,' and turned around to face them. Stavros started poking Demetri in the ribs and was pointing at me, but Demetri kept talking, "Hello, Lolly, hello, hello."
Stavros was fidgeting something fierce, realising who I was, and this time I looked at Demetri and said, "Lolly here, smile you're on candid camera," and all his swaggering crumpled as if he had drunk a litre of sour milk.
I put the cellphone back into my pocket and didn't say a single word, waiting. Stavros turned, paid his entrance fee and walked in. Demetri was standing in front of me with his mouth open so I stuck out my hand palm down and slowly he put a fifty rand note into it and turned to walk into the club.
"Whooooah, hang on the guys, come-on lets go for a drink, after all you're supposed to be good friends of mine."
As we sat down I looked at them and smiled, "Oh by the way, the drinks are on your bill." I sat with them and drank on their tab until the sun came up.