After a glut of “I was a secret call-girl” memoirs, the publishing world is turning its attentions to the rest of the sex industry. Girl In High Heels - Intimate Confessions Of A London Stripper is the first dancer story to hit the best-seller lists, penned by now-retired Ellouise Moore.

As a London stripper myself I was dying to read this, as were many of my colleagues and customers. Once I started it I couldn’t put it down – however I have been to the places Ellouise describes and know or could guess at the real identity of many of the characters, which helped make it such a compelling page-turner for me. But even for someone with no experience of the industry, this book will still make a highly entertaining read.

The writing is deliciously intimate and the story well-paced. We follow Ellouise from her first audition at glitzy table-dance clubs Stringfellows as a naive teenager, through her meteoric rise up the ranks of Peter Stringfellow’s Angels, to the heights of dancing and modelling success. She burns out quite dramatically, but makes a gradual return to dancing, this time joining the pub scene. After a series of increasingly dark, sinister and downright nasty events, she finally makes her exit, having invested in property and embarked on a good relationship with a man for the first time in her life. Throughout she shares her emotional and psychological ups-and-downs, and thoughts on the industry and its varied players.

The sections covering her time at Stringfellows are glitzy, glamorous and full of stories of huge wedges of cash, evenings at Peter’s top table, drugs galore (though Ellouise is keen to point out she did not indulge), and tales of the different types of men who frequent such a club. There’s also a great breakdown of just how much it costs to maintain the full high-maintenance club stripper ‘look’ and lifestyle – a staggering £60k a year.

The book takes a darker turn however as it describes Ellouise’s terrible teenage years, and the series of events that led her to becoming a stripper. Things don’t lighten up when we get to the next stage of her striptease story, the pubs. She describes bitching among the girls, abuse (both verbal and physical) from customers, filthy working conditions, and a total lack of support from unscrupulous bosses. Add in stories of violence and racism from staff, stalking by an obsessive customer, and harassment by text message (so threatening that the police advised her to move home), and a pretty awful picture is painted.

“Is it really like that?”, is what my non-stripper mates who’ve read the book want to know. The answer is, “for me, not at all” – but the point of a memoir is it’s just once person’s story. Ellousie highlights well some across-the-board issues in the industry - the lack of support from venues, the precariousness of the job (you can get sacked on the boss’s whim), the ease at which girls can get sucked into the lifestyle and find it impossible to leave. But the abuse she describes from the men and the psychological damage the industry inflicts on her most certainly is not everyone’s experience. What she describes as nightly or weekly events I see only very rarely. There’s a whole chapter about the abuse from customers – punches, headbutts, spitting, and comments such as “I’m not paying you, you ugly cunt” or “Fuck off, you horrible bitch”. I’ve worked at over 30 venues, and never experienced anything like that.

The book exudes a heavy air of sadness by the end. “Being a stripper taught me much about insecurity, obsession, hatred, anger and greed”, Ellouise writes. She achieved the financial security she longed for, but at what cost? Throughout she says she disliked the job and never, ever lost sight of her only reason for doing it – the money. But in having money as her sole motive, she received that as her only return, and in my opinion missed out on the many other diverse rewards working in this industry can give.

As reflection of that, this book misses out on the many other sides of the stripper story that are out there. But it does tell the ‘doing it for the money’ story in a deliciously gritty, sometimes funny, and often shocking way.

This extract from the book describes Ellouise's first venture into the world of stripping:

My name is Ellouise, sometimes called Ellie and, occasionally, Ali, but you can call me Ellouise. I was a stripper, for want of a better word, for around nine years. I’ve done a lot but there are a lot of things I didn’t or wouldn’t do – those were the things I saw and heard. I’m now 28 and I’ve done the hardest thing for a stripper to do: I quit. I suppose I’d better tell you how I ended up here.

I’d phoned Stringfellows and asked for an audition. A girl I knew had suggested it when she found out I was broke. If you’ve ever wondered how someone decides to become a stripper it doesn’t involve major decision making, just a desperate need for money. I’d just come out of a destructive relationship; the culmination of three hard years having had to move out of home after my parents’ separation (more of which later). I’d been scrabbling around earning bits of money since I was 16 and I was fed up. I wanted to earn real money and be able to look after myself properly.

That Tuesday afternoon I nervously dialled the number, half hoping that nobody would answer. ‘Stringfellows. Can I help you?’ It was a woman’s voice.

‘Uh, hello,’ I stammered, ‘I’d like to audition for a – um – job as a – um – dancer.’ OK, I meant stripper. But I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to call the job.

‘Auditions are held Tuesday evenings at 7pm. Come through the back entrance and tell them why you’re here. You’ll need to bring a cocktail dress, heels and a G-string. Don’t be late.’

Before I’d got the chance to thank her, let alone ask what the hell a cocktail dress was, the line went dead.

That was reasonably painless. I put the phone down, relieved until I realised that today was Tuesday. God, I had to get my act together and audition in a few hours. Where on earth was I going to find a cocktail dress? And a G-string? I know it might sound strange now but G-strings weren’t that popular back in the late 1990s . Sure, you could get them in underwear departments and speciality shops but they weren’t the sort of thing you’d find in your local high street. And that’s where I was, with hardly any money to spend. I also had to make sure I had enough to get the train from Kent to London for the audition. In a blind panic I went down the local market and, sure enough, there was a tacky stall selling the kind of knickers I wouldn’t even use to wipe the floor with now. They were horrible and only seemed to come in hideous colours like flesh and salmon pink. Not knowing anything about size, I picked up a G-string and bought it for 50 pence. The rest of my outfit would have to be put together from my severely limited selection of clothing: basically I had one dress and one pair of heels.

The dress was a floral-printed summery confection that looked like something you’d wear to tea with your granny. It stopped below my knees, which didn’t seem sexy. (I honestly had no idea what was sexy at the time; but I iust knew this wasn’t.) I took a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer and cut a random chunk from the hem. The shoes would have to be my only pair of heels, a four-year-old pair of ugly black wedges with an ankle strap. Looking back, I was like the Super Saver budget version of a lap-dancer.

I took the train and arrived in Covent Garden with about thirty minutes to kill. I wasn’t too far from Strings so I wandered into a shoe shop, looking at what I would later realise were the plastic stripper shoes that all the girls wore. There was a branch of Pret A Manger almost directly across the street from the club where I knew I could disappear undetected into the toilets and hide for a while. While I was there I applied my makeup – if you can call it that. I had 99 pence worth of brown eye shadow which I daubed across my eyelids with my finger, since I was not big on makeup and had never thought to buy a brush. I followed this with a sweep of equally cheap mascara. I still had ages before my audition and couldn’t think of anything else to do so I just stood in the toilet brushing my hair to kill time. Everyone raves about my hair now but back then it just seemed limp and mousey blonde. I hadn’t ever had it coloured and it’d been a long time since I had it cut. I actually reminded myself of my religious education teacher at school, who’d been a new age hippie. It was not a good look. Although I vaguely knew I was attractive and had a good figure, I was like a lot of girls in that I lacked both confidence and the knowledge to make the most of my looks, let alone how to present myself for an audition like this.

Finally it was time to head down the road to Stringfellows. I managed to find the back door, took a deep breath and opened it. Suddenly what I was about to do hit me, but it wasn’t nerves: it was excitement. I can only explain it in terms of the way my life had been going up till then, which was far from ideal. I felt that I had absolutely nothing to lose by going for this audition and it might just be the break I needed; the start of something better.

That feeling of euphoria changed almost as soon as I entered the dimly lit club. Any confidence and sense of anticipation deserted me and instead I was left with a horrible, sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach. Looking around at the plush furnishings, opulent chandeliers and enormous, brightly lit stages where the girls danced was pretty overwhelming and I broke out in a sweat. What was I getting myself into? It suddenly dawned on me that I knew nothing about this world. I’d never seen strippers and had no idea what the job really involved. As I was led downstairs past the ornate, gold baroque mirrors and the decadent red velvet curtains, I began to realise just how far out of my depth I really was. I was an ordinary little girl in a grown-up world.

You can pick up your own copy of Girl In High Heels at Amazon.co.uk, and to see another view on life as a stripper, make sure to read Solitaires very own Diary of a Stripper column here on Strictly News.