At 10pm last Thursday night, Jonny Gould took to the stage in the ballroom at London's Dorchester Hotel. "Welcome to the most un-PC event of the year," he roared.
The sports broadcaster was there to host a charity auction — the centrepiece of a secretive annual event, the Presidents Club Charity Dinner. The gathering's official purpose is to raise money for worthy causes such as Great Ormond Street Hospital, the world-renowned children's hospital in London's Bloomsbury district. Auction items included lunch with Boris Johnson, the British foreign secretary, and afternoon tea with Bank of England governor Mark Carney.
But this is a charity fundraiser like no other. It is for men only. A black tie evening, Thursday's event was attended by 360 figures from British business, politics and finance and the entertainment included 130 specially hired hostesses. All of the women were told to wear skimpy black outfits with matching underwear and high heels. At an after-party many hostesses — some of them students earning extra cash — were groped, sexually harassed and propositioned.
The event has been a mainstay of London's social calendar for 33 years, yet the activities have remained largely unreported — unusual, perhaps, for a fundraiser of its scale. The questions raised about the event have been thrown into sharp relief by the current business climate, when bastions of sexual harassment and the institutionalised objectification of women are being torn down.
The Financial Times last week sent two people undercover to work as hostesses on the night. Reporters also gained access to the dining hall and surrounding bars. Over the course of six hours, many of the hostesses were subjected to groping, lewd comments and repeated requests to join diners in bedrooms elsewhere in the Dorchester. Hostesses reported men repeatedly putting hands up their skirts; one said an attendee had exposed his penis to her during the evening.
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But the auction offers a hint of the evening's seedier side. Lots included a night at Soho's Windmill strip club and a course of plastic surgery with the invitation to: "Add spice to your wife." The accompanying brochure included a full-page warning that no attendees or staff should be sexually harassed. The glossy auction catalogue distributed to attendees during the evening included multiple images of Marilyn Monroe dressed in revealing, tight dresses.
The nature of the occasion was hinted at when the hostesses were hired. The task of finding women for the dinner is entrusted to Caroline Dandridge, founder of Artista, an agency specialising in hosts and hostesses for what it claims to be some of the "UK's most prestigious occasions". At their initial interviews, women were warned by Ms Dandridge that the men in attendance might be "annoying" or try to get the hostesses "pissed". One hostess was advised to lie to her boyfriend about the fact it was a male-only event. "Tell him it's a charity dinner," she was told. "It's a Marmite job. Some girls love it, and for other girls it's the worst job of their life and they will never do it again . . . You just have to put up with the annoying men and if you can do that it's fine," Ms Dandridge told the hostess.
Two days before the event, Ms Dandridge told prospective hostesses by email that their phones would be "safely locked away" for the evening and that boyfriends and girlfriends were not welcome at the venue. The uniform requirements also became more detailed: all hostesses should bring "BLACK sexy shoes", black underwear, and do their hair and make-up as they would to go to a "smart sexy place". Dresses and belts would be supplied on the day. For those who met the three specific selection criteria ("tall, thin and pretty") a job paying £150, plus £25 for a taxi home, began at 4pm.
The backgrounds of the dozen or more hostesses met by reporters were varied: many were students, hoping to launch careers as lawyers or marketing executives; others juggled part-time jobs as actresses, dancers or models and did occasional hostessing work to make ends meet. Upon arrival at the Dorchester, the first task given to the hostesses was to sign a five-page non-disclosure agreement about the event. Hostesses were not given a chance to read its contents, or take a copy with them after signing.
At first, hostesses were assembled in the Dorchester's Orchard Room, where a team of hair and make-up artists prepped women for the evening ahead. During the pre-event preparations, some of the women new to hostess work sought advice from those with more experience. The feedback was mixed. A number of the hostesses seemed excited about the evening ahead. It was a fun night, they said, especially as — unlike most hostessing assignments — you could drink on the job. One experienced hostess acknowledged that a portion of the men were likely to be "arseholes", but said others were "hilarious". "It really depends on the luck of the draw," she added. Others were more apprehensive. One woman who had last worked at the event five years ago sighed to herself: "I can't believe I'm here again."
Towards 7pm, during a staff buffet dinner, Ms Dandridge entered wearing a smart black suit and gave a briefing; she said if any of the men became "too annoying", the hostesses should contact her. Hostess uniforms were distributed — short tight black dresses, black high heels and a thick black belt resembling a corset. Once dressed, the hostesses were offered a glass of white wine during the final countdown to their entrance into the ballroom.
As the 8pm start time approached, all of the hostesses were told to form two lines in height order, tallest women first, ready to parade across the stage as music began to boom across the venue: "Power", by British girl band Little Mix. Entering in twos from opposite sides on to a stage positioned at the front of the ballroom, hostesses presented themselves to the men before walking towards their allocated tables alongside dinner guests. This continued until all 130 women were spread across the room.
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A number of men stood with the hostesses while waiting for smoked salmon starters to arrive. Others remained seated and yet insisted on holding the hands of their hostesses. It was unclear why men, seated at their tables with hostesses standing close by, felt the need to hold the hands of the women, but numerous hostesses discussed instances of it through the night. For some, this was a prelude to pulling the women into their laps.
Meanwhile champagne, whisky and vodka were served. On stage, entertainers came and went. It was soon after a troupe of burlesque dancers — dressed like furry-hatted Coldstream Guards, but with star-shaped stickers hiding nipples — that one 19-year-old hostess, recounted a conversation with a guest nearing his seventies: who had asked her, directly, whether she was a prostitute. She was not. "I've never done this before, and I'm never doing it again," she said later. "It's f***ing scary."
According to the accounts of multiple women working that night, groping and similar abuse was seen across many of the tables in the room. Another woman, 28, with experience of hostess work, observing the braying men around her said this was significantly different to previous black tie jobs. At other events, men occasionally would try to flirt with her, she said, but she had never felt uncomfortable or, indeed, frightened. She reported being repeatedly fondled on her bottom, hips, stomach and legs. One guest lunged at her to kiss her. Another invited her upstairs to his room. Meanwhile, Artista had an enforcement team, made up of suited women and men, who would tour the ballroom, prodding less active hostesses to interact with dinner guests.
Outside the women's toilets a monitoring system was in place: women who spent too long were called out and led back to the ballroom. A security guard at the door was on hand, keeping time.
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According to the 28-year-old hostess, while men danced and drank with a set of women on one side of the room, a line of younger women were left seated on a banquette at the back of the room, seemingly dazed. "They looked shocked and frightened, exhausted by what had happened," she said.
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By midnight, one society figure who the FT has not yet been able to contact was confronting at least one hostess directly. "You look far too sober," he told her. Filling her glass with champagne, he grabbed her by the waist, pulled her in against his stomach and declared: "I want you to down that glass, rip off your knickers and dance on that table."
https://www.ft.com/content/075d679e-0033-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5
More reading: https://www.ft.com/content/c6c8d488-0060-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5
But as that unusual legal note on harassment suggests, there appears to be a seamier side to a Presidents Club night out. "A boob job for the missus — ten grand to get me started," bellowed broadcaster Jonny Gould, the man in charge of whipping up the crowd into a bidding frenzy. His introduction to lot 8 was typical — a course of plastic surgery donated by 111 Harley Street clinic, whose founder, Dr Yannis Alexandrides, was on the guest list.
"Close your eyes and you're sleeping with the most beautiful woman in the world," Mr Gould added, before bringing one of the hostesses hired by agency Artista up on to the stage as a living advertisement and watching as she pointed out the various parts of her anatomy that had been "done" at the clinic.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...-and-sexually-harassed-at-london-charity-gala
Miller said: "British business need to take a long hard look at itself. How seriously is business taking equality at work if they are still using men only events for entertainment?
"If business leaders are simply paying lip service to equality issues then perhaps it's time the government gives the Equality Act some real teeth?"
Labour MP Jess Phillips, a leading campaigner in efforts to tackle a culture of sexism and harassment, said: "This is horrendous example of rich men acting with disgusting entitlement.
"It cannot just be me calling it out, let's hear from the establishment, the Conservatives, business, that this is disgusting and not in their name."
The deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, said the report was "simply stomach-churning".
She said: "More than 300 rich businessmen were perfectly happy to attend such an event, which shows the rotten, sexist culture still alive and kicking in parts of the business community. Time's up on this crap."
Sophie Walker, leader of the Women's Equality party said: "Men from across political, business, and entertainment worlds are implicated in this grotesque circus of sleazy rich men pawing at young women and buying crude 'lots' in the name of charity.
"Those who are worried that women's confrontation of sexual harassment has gone too far and turned into a 'witch hunt', look no further."
Conservative MP Anna Soubry said: "I should imagine the charities will be appalled that their good name has been sullied in this way.
"It was never acceptable but it's 2018 for goodness sake and I thought – hoped – we'd moved on to being a more civilised decent society. Well we need to."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ad-groping-harassment/?utm_term=.51d486ac3717
Each year, for 33 years, "The President's Club Charitable Trust" has organized a fundraising dinner at London's exclusive Dorchester Hotel to benefit "worthy children's causes."
The attendees last Thursday, as in the past, were an elite from Britain's business, finance, fashion, entertainment and political establishment, an "esteemed" group if ever there was one, as the club's website says — esteemed to the man because it was, indeed, a "men only" event.
Men only, except for 130 "hostesses" hired to cater to the needs of the roughly 360 attendees.
Among the hostesses this year, however, were two who were not men, a female journalist from the Financial Times named Madison Marriage and a woman working with her who went undercover to report on the event. They applied for hostess jobs and got them.
