Having rung around a number of establishments both in West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester, I had lined up four potentially interesting calls. The first one was on Winston's Health Club, the biggest massage parlour in Britain, it occupies a former cinema in Dewsbury Road, Leeds and has had its ups and downs over the years. Run by John Barrett and his son, Jasper, I had already seen Jasper a year or so ago. On this occasion, I was able to meet John as well, for the first time over ten years. It was good to see him again and both were looking well. We had a long chat about the industry and how it had changed over the past twenty years and my visit concluded successfully.

http://www.winstonsmassageparlour.co.uk

From here I headed down to Dewsbury, which bizarrely, as it is only a small town, has more massage parlours than any other in West Yorkshire and at one time it also boasted the most magnificent dungeon in Britain, in the form of Hotel BDSM, though that regrettably closed a long time ago. I would have visited the Office, but the proprietress was not going to be there, so instead I just visited Flair. Brian the boss, was around and we had a long and very pleasant chat about how things were at present and how they had changed over the years. Just as it had in Leeds, the meeting concluded successfully.

http://www.flairmassage.co.uk

That concluded my calls in Yorkshire and I now headed over to Rochdale, where the town's lone parlour, Bailey's, had changed management. In fact they had not only changed management, but also location. When I got to the town, which is still in the throes of extensive roadworks to accommodate trams, I parked just around the corner from where I thought they would be, only to find the premises locked up. Back in my car I rang them up and discovered they had moved a few hundred yards down the road. So I headed down to the new address and was very pleasantly greeted by the new receptionist. The lady who runs it, was due in any time, so after being shown around, and they certainly have plenty of room in this new location, I sat down and waited for the lady to turn up. It turned out that she was a very attractive 30 something year old by the name of Jamie, and we had a very useful and successful conversation, though it turns out that she is answerable to the lady who owns the business, who only pops in very occasionally. However I indicated I would come back next week, when hopefully, i will be able to come to terms indirectly if necessarily, with the management.

http://www.baileys-rochdale.co.uk

I now set out for my last call of the day in Levenshulme on Karen's, the only one of the two former parlours run by Karen, who so notably took part in the documentary that was broadcast on Channel 5 back in 2001, that is still operating. Only it is no longer run by Karen, who called it a day finally in 2013.The new lady running things was there and we had a good long chat about things in general, while a very talkative client, who was waiting for his masseuse joined in the conversation. He eventually disappeared and a black lady emerged from one of the massage rooms. who it turned out, remembered me from Swallows in Brighton, where she had worked ten years or so ago. It is a small world in the massage business. I agreed to e-mail Tracey, the new boss and then headed home getting back in good time.

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Wednesday February 19th

20/02/2014