Feature 

Lolly would!

I meet Teazers boss Lolly Jackson for the first time on a sunny summer’s morning at his Rivonia branch, where he maintains a suite of offices overlooking the club. Phones are ringing off the hook; assistants are darting about. I’m led into his office, where he’s fiddling with a copy line for a billboard. “Have a seat, I’ll be a minute,” he says without looking up. He orders a few waters with a bark before extending his hand. “You ever been to Teazers before?” he asks, eyeing me up and down. “Umm, no…” I mumble. “Why not?” he asks. I shrug. Jackson calls in an assistant. “Okay, let’s eff off the Greeks – send ‘em a little message on the billboard,” he chuckles explaining a double-entendre that’s about to make its controversial public debut. Turns out Jackson does all of his own copy lines. He explains its meaning: how the pronunciation of the Afrikaans ‘moenie’ (don’t) means something else, below-the-belt, in Greek. “How do you know Greek?” I ask. “Manoli Zakarides is my name,” he says. “My dad changed our surname when we came to South Africa.” Turns out that Jackson, quite literally, entered the South African market with a bang. Well, it was the Northern Rhodesian (now Zambian) market to be exact.

Flashback to the Belgian Congo (now the DRC), early 1960s. After much agonising, the Zakarides family decided to leave their adopted country, where they had established a general dealership in Elizabethville, for the relative safety of suburban South Africa. Too many neighbours, too close for comfort, were killed in the violence following a coup. After months of planning and preparation, the time came: little Manoli was awakened by his parents in the middle of the night – the family was gunning for the border in a reinforced Oldsmobile, packing whatever household effects they could squeeze. As arranged, Manoli’s parents stopped by his maternal grandmother’s house just before dawn. But, during the night she decided not to move to South Africa saying she’d “grown up in Zaire and no minor coup d’état was going to force her to run away” – and a dramatic showdown between Manoli’s parents and grandmother ensued.Settling in Germiston, little Manoli morphed into Lolly Jackson – “My father changed our surname when we arrived,” he says. “Both my parents are foreign-born. My dad’s an Egyptian-Greek. My mother was born in Mitalini in Greece and her family emigrated to the Congo.”

Jackson’s initial gruff manner softens as he discusses his  family. Before long he’s even smiling and laughing. Reflecting back, Jackson admits he was – and still is – a “naughty little boy”. You name it, he did it: fights, smoking, bunking school, lewd doodlings, pranks… The little devil even grew a secret ducktail, carefully tucked below his shirt collar. It wasn’t long before he was busted, recalling, “I was marched down to the headmaster’s office. He looked at me and the man was pissed off. He started ranting and raving, telling me that I was an uncontrollable ducktail and was in need of a haircut, saying, ‘Get outta here and go and have a haircut you ill-disciplined little runt!’” Jackson told the headmaster he didn’t have any money to get a haircut, for which he got six across the bum with a bamboo cane before being tossed 50 cents. Jackson, being Jackson, took the money and went to see The Guns of Navarone at the bioscope where he was promptly busted by the gym instructor for bunking school. It was back to the headmaster. A verbal spat ensued. Jackson recalls, “Enraged and totally losing it, he started screaming, ‘You… you… little Greek! You café owner! Who do you think you are? You think you people can come here, get a free education, make money out of us and go back to some little island? 'Bend!’ He was so angry by now, that he resembled a puff adder about to attack. His eyes were bulging, the veins on his neck and his forehead were pulsing purple and his lips were taut. In slow motion I saw the cane begin its downward swing towards my head. In an attempt to defend myself, I raised my right arm and the cane hit it between the elbow and the wrist. He hit me so hard that a welt appeared. The skin split and it began to bleed,” remembers Jackson in his 2006 autobiography, Stripped. Jackson instinctively gave the headmaster a bop to the chest. He had two choices: “Leave the school or face expulsion.

I never went back to school again and left school with a standard six education.” A stint in the army was followed by a few years of  lling and hustling. “As far back as I can remember I hustled,” says Jackson, who tried everything from car sales and repping to promotions and mobile DJing. It’s a story told a million times in Jo’burg, particularly in the immigrant communities of the 1970s. By 1983 he launched Impressive Paving. It was Jackson’s first foray into cheeky advertising – with bumper stickers reading “Hoot if you want to get laid: Impressive Paving”, driving the business until he sold it in 1991. If it was Monica Lewinsky who influenced Bill Clinton’s life, another Monica influenced Jackson’s. “Monica was a stripper I was involved with for a bit. Before I met her, I had the same preconceptions about stripping as most other people. Over time, she showed me around the circuit as she worked around town and I started seeing opportunities. I looked at the quality of the strippers and the food, the ambience, the service levels, sound systems, public abuse of the strippers – the general lack of professionalism and structure – and saw a huge gap in the market.

I owned a building in Germiston that was standing open and built her a club. “Coming up with the name was pretty easy,” he says, “as I tend to say what I mean and mean what I say. At the time there was the House of Lords and The Ranch. I mean, what the hell were you expecting to see with those names? Was parliament in session? Or a bunch of cows grazing? So, that’s where the name Teazers was born. That’s the secret of Teazers – the other places’ names never identified with the industry’s rule of the business: you sell a fantasy. The moment something becomes a reality it’s over, especially in this game. Our girls have nice nails, nice hair. They don’t drink and don’t smoke – well, that’s the fantasy at least.”

The first Teazers opened in June 1996 in Primrose, Germiston. People were queuing  by 10am. It was trial by fire. The DJ never pitched. The air conditioner groaned; and two barmen and two chefs couldn’t keep up. Jackson had to call in favours from former employees with whom he worked in the paving business, pulling them in to bartend. By 6pm they started running out of booze. Recalls Jackson, “I remember walking outside to take a breather. I felt excited and awed by what was happening inside.

I looked at all the cars in the street and, for the first time in the history of Primrose, there were millions of rands’ worth of shining beauties parked up and down the road. There were Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and ‘ ‘ The only complaints about our billboards come from Johannesburg’s northern suburbs someone even turned up in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce.

By the time we closed the doors that evening we had a foot count of over 600 customers.”  By the end of 1996, Jackson opened a second Teazers. More than 1 800 people turned out – as well as his first run-in with neighbourhood “mother Grundies” who he leveraged for increased media coverage. If Primrose was a tidy little base business, Midrand was the springboard to an empire that would attract attention to Jackson – favourable and less so – who started becoming known around town and in the media. There were regular reports of extravagant cars, police raids and tax raids and fall-outs with the Advertising Standards Authority. The two brands, his personal and business brands, began to overlap. Finding the ‘right’ strippers, male and female, forms a crucial part of the Teazers brand. “The most successful dancers tend to be foreign girls,” says Jackson. “Local girls have a number of things against them – they have families and histories here so the last thing they’d want is to be stripping in front of cousins or old school friends. Also, generally, South African girls can be a bit spoilt, especially the city girls. And they usually have too many tattoos – people come here to see bodies, not to read the girls like books! The small-town girls often tend to do better, but the foreign girls generally work the pants off the locals. They’re here to work, they have their visas to do so, and are out here to make money.

Around 70% of our dancers are foreign – some Brazilians have started coming in, but they’re mostly eastern European from places like Bulgaria, Russia and Romania where wages tend to be low; they can really clean up here and some of them support entire families with their incomes. If they’re going to stay in South Africa – and many do – it’s not unusual for some of them to buy property for cash. And if you speak to top retailers around Bedfordview and Sandton, you’ll soon find out that a lot of spending power comes from Teazers.” “I’m the first to admit that I’m a hard taskmaster,” he admits. “You won’t get second chances from me – especially when it comes to drugs and prostitution. Look, let’s be straight: we operate as part of urban nightlife, so those things are around; same as with most nightclubs, hotels and a lot of restaurants. But there’s a line one should never cross – and I won’t tolerate it. For starters, those are my personal views and beliefs. I’m still a family man after all, and my wife and son are with me in this business. And, secondly, drugs and prostitution can only ruin my business. As I said, you have to be fit and on top of your game to strip. No one’s going to pay to see someone who’s let herself go, whether it’s through drugs or donuts. There’s only one chance.” A recent media report saw Jackson accused of allegedly “charging” a client R50 000 for the “privilege” of falling in love with one of his strippers, a Ukrainian. The report noted Jackson wanted to be paid because, “she is still contracted [to Teazers] for another two years.” In an interview with the Saturday Star Jackson stated, “I have always prided myself on my slogan: the tease without the sleaze. That is the golden rule at my business, look but don’t touch. I want wives to feel comfortable when they send their husbands to Teazers. They must come here for the enjoyment of the girls. Then they must go home to their wives. This is not a place for men to come meet girlfriends and wives.” The Ukrainian woman described Jackson as “a horrible man”. But Jackson is thick-skinned. “Probably 99% of our complaints come from females about our billboards that feature females, although they’ve never complained about our banana billboard for Teaze-Hers,” says Jackson before adding, “and, strangely, although we operate in a half-dozen venues from Pretoria and the East Rand to Durban and Cape Town, the only complaints about our billboards come from Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. I think people here just have too much time on their hands!” Too much time? Or too much taste? “Peoplewill read whatever they want into things. If they see something else besides a guava or banana that’s their thing. Do we push the envelope? Sure. My duty to my staff is to get feet in the door. And my duty to my clients is to get the right girls. We must always be in the forefront of people’s minds which is why we’re a bit cheeky. Also, it’s become a ‘thing’ now – we put up our billboards; people react and we react to the reaction. “I’ve been called a pig and a tyrant,” he admits, “but I’m just straight-forward and sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. If a woman walks in and says she’s looking for a job and has boobs like serviettes and thighs that need a panel-beater, I’ll tell her. I’m told I’m nasty. But I’m nasty in private, in my office, during an interview. If you’re fat, I’ll tell you you’re fat – I tell it straight. And rather they hear it from me than from a half-dozen brandy-and-Coke drinkers. People can be cruel. For me, it’s a business and women – and the men for that matter – have to look the part. People know they have to look the part – gym, skincare, diet, dental work, surgery, whatever. It’s like trying to crack it in LA – there’s a certain ‘look’ that works. We’d never go for short, spiky hair on a woman, or short nails. You have to spend money to make money; the good ones can make up to R80 000 or R90 000 a month. But they have to take it seriously.”

The acceptance rate is around one in four – “It’s harder to get into Teazers than it is to get into some universities,” laughs Jackson. “Most of them are here to make their money and move on. You can’t just dance – you have to set your goals, know what you’re going to do with the money, make it and fly. We have one stripper who’s still doing her thing here after 15 years. She’s in her mid-30s; stunning, at gym all the time and sees it as a career.” His Rivonia club’s walls are lined with photos of celebrities who’ve enjoyed the Teazers experience, ranging from Meat Loaf, Samuel L. Jackson, Tina Turner and ZZ Top to Richard Branson, Robert De Niro, Queen and Michael Jackson. “The business has changed,” says Jackson. In the beginning, 15 years ago, our client base was 100% all-male Blue Bulls supporters who drank brandy-and-Coke. Now, on Fridays and Saturdays, I’d say around 35% to 40% of our clientele are mixed couples who come for dinner, to see the show and drink wine or champagne. We try to look after our people,” he says. “To make things easier, we have in-store beauty salons where the girls can get their hair and nails done at some of our clubs – and we’ll have travelling stylists and beauticians who come to the clubs without permanent facilities. It’s a big operation – with more than a thousand staff, of whom 300 are dancers. And, as so many of them are foreign, we’ll help the girls get local accounts with cellphone companies and help them with Home Affairs.”

With me, Jackson is Dr Jekyll – gentle, well-paced and friendly. If urgent calls are put through by his PA, Hyde growls into the phone, rolling his Rs, chewing words into broken glass. Jekyll-Jackson walks me through the club. “Feel free to open any door you want, no secrets here,” he says. Up and down we go, from the strippers’ generously proportioned change rooms that look like the well-lit backstage make-up areas of any wellappointed theatre to the spotless kitchens and tidy storerooms. We walk into an empty Teaze-Hers, his women-only bar that features male strippers. Jackson spots a hole in the wall and Hyde takes over, barking into the cellphone’s mouthpiece, “Where you? What the hell you doing there? Who told you to go to Midrand today? Listen, I want you to get some paint and some plaster-patch and get back here! How long? No, not 15 minutes... Make it five!” He hangs up; friendly Jekyll returns, rolling his eyes heavenwards. “If people could just take a minute to report any damages it’d save us all a lot of time,” he sighs. I ask him point-blank: “You seem to have this tough public exterior but you actually seem pretty gentlenatured?” “I’m actually not a bad oke,” he smiles. Running one club on its own would make most of us pass out from exhaustion; Jackson runs an empire that stretches from Pretoria to Cape Town. Besides opening in Bloemfontein and other centres, he’s also keeping an eye on the World Cup. “We’re getting two doubledecker buses that are going to be gutted and done up so that we can offer Teazers-style transport so visiting fans can celebrate with us afterwards. Also, we’re going to be offering tour group specials throughout the World Cup so tourists can party together in groups,” he says. It’s a tough game, but it’s lucrative. Indeed, Jackson has received tax bills higher than the turnovers of many mid-sized businesses although we’re not the type of publication to drop crass numbers (okay, okay, he got hit for a heart-stopping R25 185 400 in 2002 although, to be fair to SARS, he was offered a rebate of R3 800 dropping the figure to a mere R25 181 600).

SARS aside, Jackson still manages to tool around town in more than a dozen big-ticket cars ranging from the Koenigsegg CCX to the Pagani Zonda. The money seems incidental – I think Jackson’s in it for the thrill. Must be the way his dad crashed through the border all those years ago. A half-century later, Jackson’s still breaking through barriers. Walking me out he says, “Hey, you know what? You’re welcome here any time. Feel free to grab a few buddies and enjoy a night out at Teazers…” He pauses for a moment, before adding, “Or Teaze-Hers. Whatever you want,” he cautiously smiles. I assure him I’ll e-mail him quote approval before going to press. He waves his arms dismissively, “Ag, man, don’t worry about it. I know who I am.”

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