Council chiefs at Selby are proposing a cover-up after a spate of Full Monty striptease shows.

They are concerned that some acts may be going too far and offending public decency, as well as putting members of the audience in embarrassing and degrading situations.

District council officers want to restrict the degree of nudity, and prohibit audience participation, sex acts and simulated sex.

They also want to impose an age restriction of 18 on punters, and make the presence of door staff a condition of the public entertainment licence.

Three strip shows have been held recently in Selby district. One was at Tadcaster's Riley Smith Hall, which was a sell-out, and two at the New Inn at Newthorpe, near Sherburn in Elmet.

Council officers are also recommending to members that striptease shows should require special permission, with the licensee giving 28 days noitce of the event to the local authority.

A report to the council's health and environmental services committee says an official and a police officer visited the shows at Tadcaster and Newthorpe, which involved male strippers.

The report says: "Discussions with the police both before and after the event concluded in the need to have additional conditions attached to the licence."

The report added: "At the shows where audience participation has taken place, this has varied between encouraging audience members to rub body lotion or similar on the performer, to audience members being taken on stage and placed in potentially embarrassing and degrading circumstances in a situation where they are not in control."

Selby District Council's environmental services chief, Mike White, said: "Our main aim is to avoid members of the public being put in situations where they lose control. Having your head thrust down a pair of trunks is perhaps taking things too far."

David Ball, manager of the New Inn, David Ball, said: "We have staged two shows with male strippers. There was no audience participation and no simulated sex, and we had doormen. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves."

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