Have a city staycation: indulge in a dirty weekend in Soho

These days, going on an actual holiday requires a second mortgage, a third job or a fourth credit card. Luckily, you can find nearly every kind of great getaway right here in London. Let us take you on a trip without leaving the city. 

Venice has sights, Rome has sun, but Soho has sleaze all wrapped up – in a brown paper bag. And there was a more important reason to pick the West End for an amorous mini-break: smugness. Surely making naughty while everyone around was hard at work would make my partner and I a tight, antisocial love unit – like Bonnie and Clyde without the guns?

Being a caring, romantic fellow, I wanted to get my end away as soon as possible. But my pesky buzzkill editor insisted that my adventure had to last a full 24 hours. Not even Sting could go that long, so we hit the streets before getting horizontal.

First stop: the Society Club – a quirky café-cum-bookshop with clean lines and a filthy supply of vintage erotica. Live erotica is also available in Soho, of course, but we decided to keep things tongue-in-cheek rather than tongue-in- somewhere-that-gives-you-abacterial-infection.

Instead, my plan was to get ready to rumble by getting kitted up: lingerie emporium Coco de Mer was the first port of call. Did it turn my feminist other half into an Italian chat show host? Of course not. Boldly – some would say desperately – I promised to dress sexy for her instead.

Dressing overtly sexy is much, much harder for men. The only erotic gentlemen’s outfitters we could find was Old Compton Street’s Clone Zone – a kind of gay John Lewis. After trying every conceivable brief, pouch, thong, jock and sculpted low-rise underwired wonderpant, the consensus was to stick to the dayglo mankini I was already wearing.

Anyway, who needs sexy clothes when you have chocolate? The pots of truffle spread we found at Choccywoccydoodah on Foubert’s Place (£7) were far more seductive than any wonderpant. As night fell, dinner choices proved hard. We could have had total seclusion at the always-empty Aberdeen Steak Houses (still the number-one choice for colleagues having affairs). In the end, the small yet delicious plates at Italian trattoria Bocca di Lupo won – mainly because passion and indigestion are not happy bedfellows.

Ah yes, finally, the bed… Dean Street Townhouse (appropriately located at 69 Dean Street) is a romantic haven. A stay comes with a suitcase-bursting amount of free Cowshed toiletries, meaning you’ll smell like a million dollars even if you only have about £30 left on your overdraft. Best of all, our room came with not only a wet room but a bathtub right next to the bed. History doesn’t record what happened next… Oliver Keens

A Dirty 24 Hours in Soho: The Cost

Dinner for two at Bocca di Lupo £50.
Stay at Dean Street Townhouse £270.
Not having to wash chocolate truffle spread out of bedsheets Priceless.

Want more sleaze? Go to Las Vegas in London instead.

Tags: bocca di lupo, Cabaret Roulette, choccywoccydoodah, Clone Zone, coco de mer, dean street, dean street townhouse, Dirty Weekend, foubert's place, italian, madame jojos, old compton street, oliver keens, society club, Sofitel, soho, St. James', Trattoria