A student club night featuring naked wrestling in KY jelly, topless girls and a ‘fetish snake show’ has sparked an investigation by police this week.
The probe into a potential breach of licence was launched after revellers visiting the Kukui nightclub on Wednesday October 29 were astonished to find that a virtual sex show had been laid on as entertainment.
The event, organised just days before the start of Oxford
University Student Union’s Gender Equality Week, had been billed as “one of the naughtiest nights of the year,” and has been condemned by students who attended.
One undergraduate described how she entered the venue and found herself surrounded by raunchy performers.
“There were girls covered in jelly and wrestling with each other,” she said.
“They were only wearing small t-shirts, which they then ripped off and continued as good as naked except for tiny thongs.”
She added that there had also been a topless woman only partially covered by a 12 foot long snake she was carrying, whilst others put on performances of topless fire-eating.
Another shocked student said that she and her friends had been left disgusted by the naked displays.
“There was a group around the girls that seemed to think it was great, but my friends and I were really embarrassed.
“The whole thing just descended into something that was really vile and made a lot of people feel a bit uncomfortable.”
Adverts for the event on Facebook had told partygoers to adopt a “scary” dress code and prepare for “f**ked up Halloween sh*t,” with promises of “KY Jelly Wrestling ‘Naked'” and “Fetish snake shows involving a 12 foot albino python.”
Rachel Cummings, OUSU Vice-President for Women launched a scathing attack on the night and condemned it as hugely inappropriate.
“It’s unacceptable for club organizers to use women in this way,” she said.
“Such acts demean women in a city where they have fought for their rights to be taken seriously as intelligent, autonomous individuals.
“Its accounts like this that prove the need for continuing campaigns on gender equality.”
The spokesperson for Five Star Entz, the Oxford based company which organised the night, declined to comment when asked about this issue.
He did however defend the entertainment as “a kind of Halloween fetish show.”
“It wasn’t all centred around the KY Jelly wrestling, although obviously this is something that we gave a lot of publicity to as it is a big student thing,” he explained.
There have however been efforts to run follow-up wrestling events since the initial night, which was mainly attended by students from Oxford Brookes.
A similar ‘KY Jelly Wrestling Election Special’ night, run in conjunction with club promoter Balreick Srai, was cancelled on Tuesday at the last minute.
The Rock Entz head said, “We cancelled the wrestling because we didn’t want the negative publicity.
“This is a new club and we don’t want this to be the first thing written it. It’s not the image we want to present.”
As accounts of the event filtered through there were additional concerns that organisers may have potentially violated licensing laws regarding in-club entertainment.
A spokesperson for the Licensing Authority of Oxford City Council confirmed that an investigation into the legality of the performances had been conducted in conjunction with officers from Thames Valley Police.
He said however that officials were now satisfied that no crime had been committed.
“As the law stands at the moment there is nothing to stop them extending their current license for dancing and putting on pole-dancers and the like.
