Dapper Laughs launched his DVD in Spearmint Rhino, and it was a bit of a flop

Dapper Laughs attempted to revive his career with the launch of his new DVD, The Res-erection, at Spearmint Rhino.

Following a spectacular media fallout in late 2014, the self-proclaimed “Banter King” was in the Tottenham Court Road strip club on Sunday.

Expectations were high. Dapper had informed the invitees doors opened at 7.30pm and said they should arrive for 7 to “guarantee” entry. Tickets were easy enough to get hold of and, as advertised via Twitter and Snapchat, could be picked up for free with a simple email.

At 7pm there were a  grand total of four 19-year-old lads stood at the bar, complaining about the £6 price tag for a bottle of Budweiser. The dancers didn’t look particularly happy about trying to secure the business of boys whose last experience of boobs were their mother’s, and whose student loans would hardly cover a dance.

They knew

Hardly a promising start, and Dapper Laughs – real name Daniel O’Reilly – was nowhere to be seen, presumably waiting for numbers to pick up.

At 9pm Dapper finally appeared and while numbers had quadrupled to about 20 people, he clearly didn’t see the bright side to the situation and was visibly disheartened. He showed me a screenshot of his email inbox showing 1,132 new emails all from fans asking for an invite to his party.

I asked one of the guys I’d seen at the bar earlier asking what he thought of Dapper Laughs following his recent controversies, including being banned from Cardiff university for his promotion of “Lad culture”. One of them said he had been treated “unfairly by the press in the last 12 months”.

This is probably not an unfair assessment of Daniel O’Reilly, who had received death threats as well as abuse directed at his family. But it seems the damage is done and Dapper Laughs’ res-erection is experiencing a little ED.

gr8

He spent the evening going from small pockets of fans and his own friends, making himself look busy but never making a grand entrance. He took a Snapchat with a fan and propositioned a dancer but said he wouldn’t pay as his girlfriend was “already costing me enough”.

Hopefully this wasn’t a taste of some of the material on the DVD. A friend of his did pipe up and say “well, this just means more free boobs for us”. Maybe it was a trick of light but I’m sure I saw a tear rolling down Dapper’s cheek while shouting “oi oi” into the emptiness. I don’t think his heart was in it.

A strip club would seem like an appropriate venue for Dapper Laughs’ sense of humour where the commodification for sex, whether it be for dancing or comedy, is the norm. The scene was very depressing: less “resurrection”, more “crucifixion”.