Rough Trade

In extraordinary scenes yesterday, hundreds of rent-boys abandoned their usual Soho haunts to march down Whitehall in protest at the growing numbers of foreign male prostitutes working in London. Waving placards emblazoned with slogans such as ‘British Bottoms are Best’ and ‘Don’t Make Rough Trade a Rough Trade’, the mob made their way to Parliament Square in an attempt to protest outside the seat of UK government. “It’s an outrage, I tell you, a bloody outrage,” twenty-two year old Johnny Todgeley told TV reporters, as police moved to break up the demonstration. “What kind of example are the government setting when even their own MPs choose to pay for Brazilian rent-boys instead of the homegrown product, eh? I thought the Tories were meant to be patriotic, what ever happened to buying British?” The protests were sparked by newspaper revelations that Tory MP Mark Menzies had been forced to resign as a ministerial aide after allegedly paying a Brazilian rent boy for sex and drugs. “What have these South American pretty boys got that we haven’t?” demanded Todgeley. “They might look a bit exotic, but believe me, none of them are as well qualified as us indigenous rent-boys – they’re just in it for the money, they’ve no real passion for the job!”

Todgeley and his colleagues are worried that they are at risk of being squeezed out of the lucrative London rent-boy circuit, patronised by top politicians, wealthy businessmen and foreign oligarchs. “It’s bad enough that we have to compete with male prostitutes from the EU who can work here legally,” he pointed out in press interviews after the protest had been dispersed. “Thankfully, the most recent EU rent-boys, from the likes of Poland and Romania, are just too rough and downmarket for the top echelons of the London scene – they’re lucky if they can drum up business in bus station toilets in Leeds, to be frank. But these Brazilians and other South Americans aren’t even legal to work here, yet we’ve got members of the government paying for their services!” The young sex worker went on to make the bizarre claim that the government itself was involved in a conspiracy to import South American rent-boys illegally. “Let’s not forget that Menzies was a parliamentary aid to the International Development Minister, Alan Duncan,” he declared. “Which made him perfectly placed to organise this rent-boy import ring. It’s clear that the government was conspiring to flood the UK market with illegal male prostitutes, thereby bringing down prices! Don’t forget that these illegals aren’t subject to Health and Safety legislation like us British rent-boys, so their clients can get them to do all sorts of weird and dangerous stuff – they could even get away with murdering them!”

The protesting male prostitutes have found some surprising supporters in their fight against illegal immigrant rent-boys. “I know that in general we aren’t in favour of this sort of thing– we’re not homophobic, but we much prefer to be facing the engine so to speak, we do think that if chaps are going to put their privates in the sort of places I wouldn’t put my umbrella, they might at least have the decency to do it with a British bottom,” UKIP leader Nigel Farage told The Sleaze from the lounge bar of a central London pub. “It’s typical of the double standards of our existing political elites that they preach ‘buying British’ whilst allowing foreign interests to undermine another traditional British industry! This isn’t one of those gay pubs is it, by the way? Not that I’d mind, of course, but its the press and the spin they’d put on it, you understand.” However, other politicians have claimed that not only are the protests an overreaction, but they are also based upon incomplete information. “That newspaper story about Mark Menzies wasn’t entirely accurate,” opined Tory backbencher Harold Hinckler, who had himself been forced to resign a junior ministerial post in the 1990s after lurid tabloid revelations about his ‘spanking parties’ with rent-boys in his Westminster office. “For one thing, I’m pretty sure that the young chap in question was Venezuelan, not Brazilian and he was a male escort rather than a rent-boy. There’s a world of difference, you know. Male escorts are classy and upmarket, whereas rent-boys are just grubby and seedy.”

Hinckler also believes that restrictions on non-UK rent-boys will do little to improve the popularity of the indigenous product. “They’re deluded if they think that the likes of Tory MPs will start availing themselves of their services simply because they are unable to get their hands on some hot Brazilian buttocks,” he mused. “The fact is that, unless you are looking for a bit of ‘rough trade’ for a thrill, the average British rent-boy is just too working class for our tastes. They reek of the sink estate, to be frank. The only British bottoms we’d consider molesting are those of public schoolboys. Not while they are still at public school, obviously. We’re not nonces, for God’s sake! But the fact is that we prefer the refinement of our own kind. Sadly, public school educated rent-boys are in short supply. So, those nicely turned out Brazilian boys are the next best thing!” Todgerley isn’t surprised by such revelations. “It’s just typical of Cameron’s Britain,” he told the Evening Standard. “As ever, privilege pays dividends.”

Todgerely has also accused the Tories of further hypocrisy over the issue of gay marriage. “For a party that includes so many MPs who like a bit of hoot guy-on-guy action, I find it bizarre that they also have so many backbenchers who were vehemently opposed to the legalisation of same sex marriages,” he points out. “According to them, it was the sole reason they lost all those seats in the last council elections!” Hinckler doesn’t believe the two positions are necessarily mutually exclusive. “We’re not interested in any kind of long-term relationship with these foreign male escorts – we just want to fool around, use their bodies for mind-blowing sex then cast them aside once that first bloom of youth starts fading,” he explained. “As long as same sex marriage wasn’t a possibility, they couldn’t get any ideas about getting UK citizenship or alimony rights to our money. That’s why we think legalising gay marriage is an abomination!”