BADA BING
Strip Club Wars, Corporate Espionage & Organised Crime in Soho
Soho’s Windmill Theatre, the grand dame of British strip clubs, may have survived the Nazi Blitz, but the last few years have seen the iconic London venue besieged by a police corruption scandal and corporate espionage.
A key figure in these recent troubles is the corrupt nightclub boss Ryan Bishti, who recently benefitted from the overcrowded prison crisis to get an early release from a four-year sentence that he and his man-bun had only just begun.
Bishti was jailed in September 2023 for corrupting Metropolitan police licensing sergeant, Frank Partridge, the self-proclaimed Sheriff of Soho. Hotels, hookers, home improvements and nights out at his Cirque Le Soir nightclub were all part of the Bishti bribe bundle.
The dirty cop was filmed at his flagship nightclub with a snake around his neck singing to KRS One’s Sound of Da Police before a Catwoman danced around his trouser truncheon that the married father of two was too smashed to use on account of all the free booze.
Arrogant as he was reckless and unsupervised, Partridge, 51, remains inside doing 7.5 years, apparently on the nonce wing to avoid the general prison population.
Bishti, however, can be found pounding Soho’s streets, but hopefully not the prostitutes, after his brief lay down at his majesty’s pleasure.
The 44-year-old is still on license and any serious infraction could see him back inside. Those big nights holding court at Cirque, where the lines of yeyo were almost as thick as the VIP rope and clientele, would have to wait.
Bishti must keep his nose clean in other ways and sources say a Frenchman from his early club promoter days has stepped in to give him a job at a Mayfair bistro/bar.
The Met’s anti-corruption squad’s arrest of Bishti in 2016 for bribery did not dampen expansion plans for his Cream group of bars, clubs and restaurants.
In 2018, he teamed up with a UAE-based businessman about whom little is known to restore The Windmill to its imperial glory among rivals.
How the man-bun got involved with The Windmill is an everyday story of business in Soho.
The cast list includes a crooked and sleazy owner, corporate spies, the Adams crime family, a fake feminist organisation, bent cops, Asian money men, prostitutes but no happy ending.
