The impressive sports car pulls up to greet me. I crouch to get my Sass & Bide bum on the crème leather seats. Turning to thank the driver, her piercing blue eyes make me wonder why I’m not on a Balearic beach at this time of year. I remember – it’s because I’m devoting my summer to meeting an eclectic mix of authors. Self-help, confessions, fact and fiction – these writers are forming my summer reading and the results will hopefully help you to find yours. Or it better, because I hear that beach is amazing right now.

This particular author- a young, blonde, beautiful lady who paradoxically could seem to pass for both a schoolteacher and a glamour model – comes first. It feels right to include this review in Big Smoke Soirees. Her book of naughty memoirs is set in the sweet smog of the Big Smoke and is inspired by specific events that (mostly) occur after Outlook has turned in for the night and the real fun begins. I have spent many nights in London’s strip clubs, bars and pubs. Sometimes for fun, sometimes for money (don’t ask) and sometimes just because it could be the only place serving a decent daiquiri on a Monday night. Although, I must admit, this was the first time I would take a strip club to bed…

Ellouise Moore is clever. Very clever. It may not be an adjective often associated with those who are, or have been, full-time professionals in the often-derided occupation of ‘dancing’ (a much-loved industry euphemism for slipping off your knickers in exchange for snapping up some cash). However, when it’s referring to a ‘retired’ 28 year-old lady with an enviable property portfolio; a stunning house; a gleaming sports car; a charming boyfriend and a published book to her name, then it doesn’t even seem to come close.

A childhood diet of ‘boiled rice and barbeque sauce’, awful abuse and downright bad luck does not seem to be a recipe for success which would come recommended by the parenting gurus of any generation. For many, it would mean a continued life of struggle and hardship. For Ellouise Moore, it meant kick-starting a dogged determination to make her world a better place.

The jeans-clad, Lumberjack-shirted Ellouise who wears her drive, confidence and motivation so clearly, casually and with complete comfort is difficult to associate with the naïve young girl who, as described in her book, would rather hide in a nearby bush than be in the same house as her father. Her story could’ve been a familiar one. Fortunately, for the readers of Girl in High Heels, it’s not.

Girl in High Heels is confessional in context. Yet it lacks the over-done drama and sympathy-seeking aspirations, which many of the other titles in this prolific genre suffer from. For some, this is a downside. A reader posted a review on the book-buying website, Amazon, which read; ‘there’s something about Moore’s book that made me feel she was holding back’. And I agree. She is holding back – but that’s part of the charm. In this bare-all age, we have a book by a girl who bared all in the most literal sense and yet when the time came to write about it, she left out any juicy details about her own sex-life and the intricacies of her deepest and darkest thoughts, fears or desires. So a mystery remains that makes me like her all the more. It also makes what she does write brilliantly believable.

This is an expose of the UK stripping industry that was gleaned old-school style. Ellouise tells me with a cheeky smile how she exported her material;

“Towards the end, I used to pull notices down from the notice-board and write things down on the back. What the girls were saying, stories I’d just been told, things I knew I wanted to write about”.

And despite her holding back, what she does choose to write about is definitely entertaining. Ellouise draws us into the dark world of ‘dancing’ through the bright lights of Stringfellow’s, where she has her first, nerve-wracking audition. With snappy sentences such as ‘I was like the Super Saver budget version of a lap-dancer’ and a chapter entitled ‘Girl in an over-sized G-string’, Moore’s self-effacing style helps the reader to realise that these girls, for all their glitter and Gucci, really are as normal as the next. Although, perhaps with a slightly fuller purse (and chest). As a former String’s employee myself, I found it fascinatingly accurate and observant in its portrayal of the backstage backstabbing and dancer dramas, but also of the incredible kindness that can unexpectedly be found in such a place.

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