"4 grand? How on earth are we going to raise that sort of money."
"Dunno, we could host a night at the union? Do some sort of raffle? Maybe another calendar?"
"Last time we did a union night we made about £1500, tops. It was a fiver in, I got a mate to DJ, cheap drinks, and it was FULL. There's no way you can make 4k in a night."
She had a point. I was the team captain and therefore on the cheerleading club committee. We wanted to go to the national championships, which were at the end of term. It was 3 days in London and including travel, accommodation, new kit, and paying our coach to come, it was expensive. Seriously expensive.
Sally, the overall club captain, was keen for us to go, but we couldn't bankrupt the club for only 8 of us to attend. And none of us could afford to pay £500 each either, except maybe Helen who had rich parents. For the rest of us £500 was food and beer money for basically a whole term.
"How about we charge £25 entry. That would make it profitable. Even if we only get 200 people, we'd smash 4 grand."
"And how the hell are you going to convince people to pay £25 for a student union night? Most of them are a fiver, maybe a tenner at the most if you've actually heard of the DJ or band."
Poppy piped up, "You know, there's a bar in Ibiza which has a wet t-shirt contest. Winner gets €500. It was free entry for girls to watch but they charge the lads 20 euros. They pay because it's absolutely wild, the girls get proper competitive." Poppy was the publicity officer and by all accounts she was a bit of a slag. I was sure she would have taken part.
"People still won't pay 25 quid to see a wet t-shirt contest," Sally said flatly.
"Ok, so how about a strip contest?" I suggested.
"Well that would certainly bring in the punters. But £25 each? And how are you going to find anyone willing to risk getting naked in front of a crowd of 200+ people?"
"Ok, so the team for the nationals - there's 8 of us right? If were going to go, we gotta fund this thing, so there's your 8 players. Only 1 in 8 chance of losing, I reckon they'd agree. Maybe we could have a cash prize for the winner, you know, to sweeten the deal?"
This was crazy. My mind was racing. I was on the team. It could be ME who ended up naked. And yet somehow, here I was trying to convince Sally that this was a good plan.
In the end, Sally agreed to everything except having a prize for the winner. We fine-tuned the plans over the next week or so. It was my job as team captain to get everyone's agreement.
Surprisingly, given the stakes involved: full nudity in front of 200+ fellow students, they all agreed without too much argument. I mean, I basically said it's this or no national championships...which was true.
The night would be as follows: we would have a DJ, welcome drinks, etc and a 'cheerleading showcase' - basically just a cut down version of our routine on stage. So far, so vanilla. But then the real games would commence.
First up there would be a limbo game, where we would all compete and the loser would get a bucket of water over their head. We would all be wearing white t-shirts, and bras would be forbidden. The loser would be getting soaked.
The second game we called strip can alley. Each of us would have a little pyramid of 6 tins on a small table. A player from the audience would be chosen to throw 3 bean bags at them. We would wear a shirt, skirt, bra and panties.
We'd each have to strip according to how many tins our player managed to knock over: 2 tins = shirt off; 4 tins = skirt off too; 6 tins = bra off; so we were risking being fully topless.
Our panties were not on the line, but if by some chance the throwers were major league baseball pitchers, we could ALL end up topless.
We would be allowed to cover, but at the end of the game, it was agreed that we would all do star jumps together: the number of jumps being determined by the total number of fallen tins, so a maximum of 6 x 8= 48 star jumps. I doubted we'd have to do even half that many given the amount of alcohol the throwers would have consumed, or so I hoped.
The finale was to be a game of strength. We had discussed it at length and while we quickly decided it couldn't involve audience participation, we debated for ages over whether it should be a game of pure luck or involve an element of skill.
In the end, Sally proposed a slightly contrived strength game, with the following rules:
- Each player has a 6lb / 3kg medicine ball
- The ball must be held straight out at arm level for as long as possible.
- The last player standing in each round wins immunity and doesn't have to take part in subsequent rounds.
- Every two rounds, the remaining players each player must remove an item of clothing is lost (shirt, skirt, bra).
- The loser of the final round must strip fully naked and do a predetermined 3 minute cheer routine.
I had to admit, as strip games in front of audience go, this was pretty good. It would be a bit slow, but it would build suspense. There were opportunities for tactical play, and from an audience standpoint, 2 of us would be showing our tits, and one of us would be prancing round fully nude until they had zero secrets left.
Holding a ball up eliminated the ability to cover, but the penalty for the ultimate loser would ensure it remained competitive to the last round.
Over the next few weeks, the committee stepped into gear, booking the union, advertising the event on social media, and generally spreading the word about campus. For obvious reasons our publicity didn't mention nudity - it just had something vague about a cheerleading showcase, cheap drinks and 'cheeky' games.
Everyone baulked at the price. We had agreed that the only way to convince people was by word of mouth and being upfront. We could hardly put "CHEERLEADERS GET NAKED" on the posters.
Every conversation was like "are you kidding - 25 quid!?" followed by one of us saying "yeah yeah, I know, I know...but when we say 'cheeky' we mean nude...like full nude, not a stitch of clothing. No covering, no pasties, nada, naked." Ok so I paraphrase. But word quickly spread that this night was not to be missed.
It's amazing how quickly a 'skint' student will find 25 quid for a ticket when nudity is promised - especially if the nudity involves some 18-21 year old cheerleaders who, let's face it and I don't mean to brag, but they've probably been wanking over at least one of us behind closed doors for most of their time at university anyway.