Our esteemed editor’s article last TC performed a valuable service in praising the merits of Brown’s, a pub which holds a special, warm, slightly moist place in my heart. But it only scratched the surface, both in terms of venues and philosophy: this sequel attempts to expand further on the topic which, after all, is one of almost unlimited interest.

Firstly, venues. While I can’t argue that Brown’s is to London strip-pubs what the San Siro is to football, there are other places which offer similar entertainment and are not quite so well known. For my first example, take the Lord Nelson. Situated down a side road just north of Old Street, from the outside it looks absolutely normal; the first time we visited it, my friends insisted I go in alone and check whether we had the right place! We did, and it has now become a regular stop on the circuit, thanks mostly to the relaxed and laid-back atmosphere. While Brown’s is very new and modern, with a lot of chrome and glass, in the Lord Nelson the pub grub is limited to dodgy-looking rolls and positively lethal pork pies, the toilets resemble a swamp, and the bar staff are surly and uncommunicative. In other words, it’s a traditional British pub, and as such, can only be loved. The most novel feature is a “wall of business cards”, which shows that the place is a favourite of people from companies as diverse as Harrods’, the Bank of England and Italian ‘Vogue’.

The stage is low, perhaps knee height, with mirrored backdrops and a few chairs for favoured punters. On the plus side, there are none of the topless-only “dance” routines, every act delivers the full bacon sandwich. On the other hand, they are spaced further apart, which can make it slightly tedious, but this depends on the company you keep, just as in any pub! At least some of the girls also appear at Brown’s, and generally they’re entirely acceptable, with one or two stunners randomly present (Anastasia will ensure that Pulp’s ‘Common People’ never sounds quite the same again).  It’s usually a lot less crowded  than the Big  B. On occasion the audience has been single figures, and that was before we left. You tend to find one girl on early evening, with two alternating from about 8:30.  For some reason or other, this place appears to be mostly staffed by Brazilian girls. Not that I’m complaining, as they are utterly wonderful, but the question does arise; if these are the ones that are deemed worthy of exporti, what are the ones they keep in Brazil like?

Continuing our descent down the quality scale, we come to the Flying Scotsman, which is conveniently located two minutes walk from King’s Cross — though maybe the best way to describe its location to TC readers is to reveal that it’s virtually opposite the legendary Scala!

This place is the McDonald’s of stripping: fast, cheap, and with the quality you’d expect at the price (I mean, have you tried those 49p hamburgers? Does anyone know what they taste of? It certainly isn’t ham — or indeed any animal native to this planet). Perfect for a half-an-hour visit while waiting for your train home, but not the sort of place you’d want to spend an entire evening. It would in any case be damn expensive — not because this is a clip joint, but just down to the sheer pace of the action. At the Nelson, it’s maybe one girl in 15-20 minutes. In the Flying Scotsman, you’ll see four or more in that time, which of course means the same number of pint jugs circulating, though 50p is acceptable here when it would get you a Hard Stare at Brown’s (and not a hard anything else). You leave, feeling like a horse that’s just been lowered into the Amazon.

These little piranhas obviously rate a little lower on the lust scale: you won’t find many supermodels in this venue, but if you like the slightly sleazy type — tattoos and piercing are common — you’ll have no complaints. With its sawdust on the floor, and generally questionable location, it’s not for the faint-hearted (while I may have criticised the Nelson for its toilets, the ones in the Scotsman simply defy description — I’m sure they inspired ‘Trainspotting’), but the clientele is varied enough: dodgy blokes with mobile phones and half of South Africa’s annual gold output round their neck, mix with suited commuters. Amazing what a common interest will do, though for the former group of customers, it’s more likely a financial interest in the girls than an aesthetic one!

And then there’s the Nag’s Head, at Aldgate East — coincidentally, near KVJ Fairdeal, probably the cheapest place in Britain to buy video tapes. Not technically as sordid as the Flying Scotsman, it could probably stand accused of “moral turpitude”, since the audience there consists almost solely of  people pretending to read newspapers. Between acts, with none of the buzz of conversation you find in a normal pub — or even in the ones reviewed previously — the atmosphere is that of a public library. Gentlemen sit at rows of tables, studiously ignoring each other, pretending to be there for a quiet pint, nothing to do with the imminent spreadeagled pussy, good heavens, no. The stage is hardly six foot square, and the girls deserve better, as they have included some of the best seen. However, the morgue-like atmosphere means this is only really interesting as an example of how sad things can get. It does have a place in my heart, as it was the first I ever found, but after discovering Brown’s, you, like I, will probably be less keen to return. Not even a ‘News of the World’ expose could save this place….

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Right at the other end of the spectrum is Metropolis, at the opposite end of Hackney Road to Brown’s. This place seems to have been custom built as an exotic dancing venue. with a circular, central stage upon which there are two vertical poles for feats of gymnastic excellence. There’s a little roped-off area where the dancers relax between sets, and video monitors scattered around which show soft-porn at these times. They switch to showing the dancers themselves when they’re performing, which is very convenient, as the odds favour a basketball player standing in front of you.

Or maybe it just seems that way, the ‘seeing’ is perhaps the worst in all of these places, thanks to the low stage, the flashing disco lights, and the gushes of dry ice sprayed in at intervals, all of which combine to make a pair of sniper’s night-sight goggles almost an essential. Personally, I find there to be something far sleazier about staring down at a girl with no clothes on, rather than gazing up at her. There’s perhaps a psychological reason for this, some kind of pedestal effect, but it is part of the reason why I don’t rate Metropolis as highly as many of my colleagues; it’s just a bit too artificial, glossy and superficial. However, I certainly can’t argue that the girls are of uniformly good quality.

Enough of the travelogue — a few thoughts on the logistics of these places. They all seem to operate almost entirely by word of mouth. Metropolis is the only one I’ve seen advertised anywhere, in ‘What’s On in London’, and many don’t even seem to be in the phone book, a discretion which may be related to licensing laws. Brown’s now has a little gilded sign claiming to be London’s #1 strip pub, a title which I can’t dispute, the Flying Scotsman has a hand lettered sheet in a window saying “Exotic Dancers 1-11pm”, and the Griffon (a rather disappointing Brown’s offshoot near Chancery Lane) has a notice warning people about the strippers, asking them not to enter if they’ll be offended. Chance would be a fine thing, but it’s a nice example of negative advertising, as if Tennant’s Super Strength had the slogan “Don’t drink this unless you want to get pissed”. The Lord Nelson is even more subdued, and positioned down a side-street, isn’t the sort of place you’d stumble across accidentally. Still, it seems to survive.

The girls appear to operate on circuits: you may see the same babe in the Lord Nelson and Browns, or the Nag’s Head and the Flying Scotsman, but there seems to be limited overlap. Maybe there’s promotion and relegation instead, with the best from Circuit B getting promoted to Circuit A. The turnover can be quite high, any outing is likely to spot at least one newcomer, though you will find yourself recognising, ah, faces if you return on any basis. And babes such as Jennifer are difficult to forget — not that you’d want to, anyway. My personal bête noire is Rebecca, whom at one point I was fated to see on  every strip-pub­crawl I attended. She’s not bad, but after seeing her do the same moves thirty, forty or fifty times, I get the feeling I know her better than her gynaecologist.

Another intriguing factor is the occasional presence of women in the audience, albeit inevitably accompanied by men. I personally find it a slightly disturbing exercise, possibly because while the woman on stage is acting as the focus for a great deal of lust, there is inevitably some seepage. Witness the tube journey home, when thoughts drift onto what that pretty girl opposite would look like up on stage. It also restricts the candid expression of opinion somewhat, but perhaps most importantly, the presence of “normal” woman hinders the suspension of disbelief, by reminding you that (sadly?), it’s still a world where not every girl is a sex-kitten. Reality is something best kept as far away as possible from strip-clubs.

• Flying Scotsman – Caledonian Road (King’s Cross)
• Lord Nelson – 17 Mora Street, City Road (Old Street)
• Metropolis – 234 Cambridge Heath Rd. (Beth. Green)
• Nag’s Head – 17/19 Whitechapel Road (Aldgate East)

It’s been a while since a movie has run into such a wave of consistently poor reviews as ‘Showgirls’. These things tend to be self-­perpetuating. One bad critique leads to another, and after half a dozen turn up, it’d take someone very brave — or very stupid -­- to put their head above the parapet and write something like:

‘Showgirls’ isn’t actually that bad.

There, I’ve said it. Governments have not collapsed. The Earth still rotates around the sun. And Paul Verhoeven has probably just fallen off his wife in surprise.

The problem is, a lot of reviewers seem to have totally missed the film’s point. To illustrate this, let’s take one specific review, from ’Time Out’, in which the appropriately-named Wally Hammond goes off at the deep end, starting on the wrong foot by describing it as a “sexploitation movie“. Nope. Exploitation, yes, but it can hardly be about bonking, when there is precisely one sex scene in the whole 135 minutes. Nipples abound, for sure, but it’s all incredibly casual nudity, clearly not even trying to be erotic. Now, I can understand people being peeved about this, given advertising which promised an awful lot more than the film delivered, but ‘Showgirls’ simply didn’t deserve to be an NC-17 film, banned in Ireland, and cut in Britain, I think the French got it about right: uncut, and with a ’12’ rating.

For this is unquestionably a moral tale, illustrated by the fate of the heroine’s friend Molly, who spends the whole movie gagging to meet a rock star. When she does, she is gang-raped by him and his entourage. That’s a miniature version of Nomi’s rise and fall: sometimes, when you get what you want, the price is just too high. It’s all about power, not sex.

Wally’s next complaint is that the film is “completely free of sympathetic characters“. I guess he hasn’t been paying attention to Verhoeven’s career, or he’d have realised that the director of ‘Basic Instinct’, ‘Flesh + Blood’ and ‘The Fourth Man’ doesn’t exactly tend towards standard, rubber-stamped heroics beloved in Hollywood. Even in ‘Robocop’ and ‘Total Recall’, he warped things significantly from the norm. If you want a sugar-coated, fluffy-pink view of America, do not watch a Paul Verhoeven film. Hammond indeed appears not to have watched this one, judging by his inability to tell the difference between “hot-pants” and “jeans”. That kind of dumb error does lend credence to any suggestion that some reviewers wrote their pieces before, or even instead of, seeing the movie!

Sure, ‘Showgirls’ is tacky and sleazy — with some of the most startlingly vapid dialogue I’ve ever heard. But it’s about Las Vegas, f’heaven’s sake, possibly the leading place in our Solar System as far as tack, sleaze and vapidity goes. Whaddya you expect, Noel Coward? That even discounts the irony obviously present behind comments like “if you want to last longer than a week, you give me a blowjob”, which went well over the heads of many writers. Bearing this in mind, there was hardly a false note in the movie. Every incident on its own was eminently plausible, all ‘Showgirls’ does is condense them in time & space, standard TV soap technique.

Wally bemoans: “the ample opportunities for camp excess are stringently avoided“. But if he’d take the whole movie as an exercise in serious, rather than camp, excess — after all, Verhoeven is probably the least “camp” director in Hollywood — he would probably have had a far better time. Note that I mean serious, and not serious. Taken on that level, it’s two hours of solidly melodramatic entertainment, like a Busby Berkeley musical with tits. With MGM one of the co-producers, Verhoeven is undoubtedly aware of the historical precedents.

Certainly,  Eszterhas’s script is not worth the alleged $3m+ fee, being little more than a tarted up Harold Robbins novel. And while we’re complaining, it’s at least half an hour and two minor characters too long, the Princ…er, Mr.Symbol songs grate horribly, and I don’t know where the $40m budget went. But the director plays with the audience more than it seems at first sight; even in something as carnal as the lap-dance sequence, there are interesting questions raised about precisely who’s screwing who. I do think history will be kind to it, and it will be better remembered than, say,  Oscar-nominated movies about talking livestock. Already, it’s done a lot better on video than at the cinema, which isn’t too surprising since it’s hardly a date movie, is it?

Here’s one final quote, from ‘What’s On in London’:

“An impressive, wide-ranging cast in what is, at twisted heart, a decadent morality…not one of the characters commands our sympathy or affection …Betrayal, double-dealing, alarms and skirmishes follow each other in florid succession against suitably impressive – yet crumbling backgrounds.”

Oh, this didn’t relate to ‘Showgirls’, but to ‘Flesh and Blood’, Verhoeven’s 1985 period piece. Despite being set several hundred years and the odd continent apart, the two movies seem to have generated similar critical reaction, and met with equal financial failure, ‘Flesh and Blood’ being described as “Too politically incorrect and morally dark for the American market“. And there are distinct parallels with ‘Keetje Tippel’, another decade further back, in which Paul Verhoeven previously told the story of a young girl trying to make her fortune in the city (see TC16/17). Although in that movie, the heroine never looks back once she sets out on her career path, it is definitely a pointer towards ‘Showgirls’.

One note for optimism is that he bounced back after ‘Flesh and Blood’ with ‘Robocop’. It’ll be interesting to see what he makes of ‘Starship Troopers’, the Heinlein adaptation which is his next project. It’d certainly be a shame if one of the few true maverick directors in Hollywood was driven out because of misconceived and ill-considered reviews.

Smuggler Morteza Farakesh was convicted of possessing $2m worth of morphine during a layover at Kennedy Airport. According to the prosecutor Farakesh was on his way to California and could have picked a less Customs-intense airport but chose to make his connection there in order to take advantage of an Alitalia super-saver fare. [New York Daily News, 26-5-95]

At a September hearing for Charles Hocq, accused of battery in Springfield, Illinois, Judge Roger Holmes asked Hocq the standard questions to determine how much his bail should be (e.g., do you have any family in the community?). Hocq said he didn’t understand the question. Holmes then asked the direct question: “If I made the bail amount lower, would you flee the area and not come back for trial?“ According to the Springfield Journal, Hocq replied, “I would.” Holmes then doubled the proposed bail, to $250,000. [Springfield Journal, 22-9-95]

Johnny Lee Nichols, 25, was arrested in Rogers, Arkansas, and accused of knocking on doors of several homes around 3 a.m. and asking if anyone was interested in exchanging drugs or sex for some dynamite he had in his car. [Northwest Arkansas Times-AP, 10-8-95]

Police in Ft. Worth, Texas arrested a man just after he robbed a Nations Bank branch. Cops were waiting because a bank customer had walked next door to police headquarters to summon them after becoming suspicious that a man was waiting in a bank line wearing a ski mask. [St. Petersburg Times, 14-12-95]

Juan Morales, 18, and Juan Mendoza, 18, were arrested as they robbed a Coastal Mart convenience store in Weslaco, Texas. Police had been tipped off to the crime because the cashier on duty the day before reported that the two men had threatened to “come back and rob you” the next day. [Valley Morning Star, 30-11-95]

Pittsburgh – MacArthur Wheeler, 46, received 24 years in prison, a conviction made possible by clear photography from the bank’s surveillance video. Wheeler and his partner did not wear masks, and in fact were not concerned about the camera at all, because they had rubbed lemon juice over their faces beforehand believing this would blur their images. [USA Today, 8-1-96]

Dallas, Texas – an 18-year-old dockworker at Roadway Express was arrested at a local Western Union and charged with forgery after improperly trying to cash a check made out to his employer. The man produced a photo ID that gave his name as Mr. “Roadway V. Express.”  After questioning him, the Western Union manager said, “Okay, Mr. Express, I’ll be right back [with the money],” but went into another room and called police. [Houston Chronicle, 31-3-96]

Little Rock, Arkansas – Donterio Beasley, 19, called a police station to say that he was stranded and needed a ride downtown, but the dispatcher told him that was against policy. A few minutes later, Beasley called back to report a suspicious person loitering around a phone booth and gave a description of himself, believing that police would come, give him a ride downtown for questioning, then release him. He was charged with making a false alarm. [Dallas Morning News-AP, 7-8-95]

Fist of Steel: “This world is too full of shit to be weak.”

There’s a key difference between American fight flicks and their Oriental cousins: the Western versions lead with martial artists trying to act, while most Hong Kong action stars are first and foremost actors, with fighting skills secondary. The latter approach makes more sense: what you see in a kung-fu film bears the same relationship to tournament fighting, that a porn flick does to real sex. The ability to beat someone up in ten seconds, while impressive, is irrelevant when stunt doubles and sharp editing can make anyone a decent fighter — it’s much harder to shoot round a crap actor. Thus, almost by definition, any Hollywood martial arts movie is a Bad Film: discerning buffs sit up and take notice when the major star of a film has “American middleweight kickboxing champion” tacked onto his credit, as this basically translates to “we apologise for his total lack of acting ability”. Unfortunately, such deficiencies rarely suffice to make the films incredibly bad: few build on the non-acting (or amazingly, even notice it), and plod along lines that were hackneyed when Bruce Lee was still a lad.

‘Fist of Steel’ looks like it was made by a gang of mates over a weekend in the Arizona desert. While undeniably awful, for the above reason, it has definite charm: like that time at school you managed to produce something in Art — by exterior standards, it still wasn’t very good, but you were proud of it, and could appreciate that, for once, Something Had Clicked.

So it is with FoS. The whole is more than the sum of the parts — unless one of the parts is “beer”. This is the kind of movie necessarily preceded by a trip to the off-licence, as steady alcohol input infinitely enhances its pleasures. Diet Pepsi will not do: sober, you won’t achieve oneness with the director, able to second guess what’s about to happen. Now, our beer-fuelled idea of “cool” is so warped that, even in cult films, the director will usually wimp out. But FoS had an unerring knack of getting it right, to growing applause from the living room. audience.

The sole reason for acquiring this film was that it starred fave HK action-actress Cynthia Khan. Ten minutes in, I regretted my hasty purchase, despite a fondness for movies set after the apocalypse (or at least, after the stock-footage-of-60’s-nuclear-tests). For stealing Lyssa (Khan), hero Amp (Dale ‘Apollo’ Cook) is staked out by gladatorial rival Mainframe (Gregg Douglass), and Lyssa herself, to my shock, was offed. A sinking feeling, tied with the discovery that the front cover depicted a piss-poor Cynthia lookalike, told me I’d been sold a cameo, filmed while Cynthia was delayed at LA airport on her way back to Hong Kong. The prospect of 85 more minutes of Dale ‘Apollo’ Cook’s non-acting was terrifying, especially as he looked like Harrison Ford on a bad hair day, circa ‘Regarding Henry’.

Fortunately, things started to perk up after he breaks free, to be rescued by a desert-living tribe of pacifists including the unfortunately name “Wind” (Cynthia Khan again — hooray!). Living by the tenets of “The Book” — it’s never actually named, but no prizes for guessing which religious text talks about “loving thy neighbour” – they grudgingly fix Amp up, then insist he leaves. When he does, Wind follows, dressed in a natty canary-yellow lounge suit, doing her best ‘lost puppy’ impression. After a day of this he decides, unsurprisingly, to return her to her clan, only to find that, in the tradition of pacifists in martial arts movies, they’ve been slaughtered. Mainframe’s men, discovering Amp is still alive, have taken revenge on the tribe who helped him.

Here Wind enters “you killed my family and you must pay” mode, and literally throws away The Book, though she could have hung onto the Old Testament, which I seem to recall being pretty keen on “an eye for an eye”, etc. Her pacifist philosophy is totally destroyed when she’s nearly mugged by a beggar. Only Amp’s intervention saves her, but it also marked the turning point of the film, from an Incredibly Bad angle. Amp gives the expected lecture on “these people will kill you for one drop of water…toughen up!”, and our reaction was ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if Cynthia kicked the helplessly sprawled beggar?” To our delight & joy, she did. Four times. We sat up and took note: the director was clearly one to respect when it came to fascistic, gratuitous violence.

Amp is back at the bottom as a fighter, in the Beazer Homes League so to speak, reduced to battling for water and gas. [While unlikely to lose Jackie Chan sleep, the fights are plentiful and not bad, especially as most take place on sand-dunes, scarcely solid footing. However, the usage of two sound effects in strict rotation eventually becomes slightly wearing] After a bit, Wind fancies a shot, despite the canary-yellow lounge suit. “It’s gotta go”, we muttered, and lo, during training (CK incidentally looking much better in the flexibility department than DC), the jumpsuit was replaced by a far more aesthetically pleasing black leather number. This responsiveness to audience demand was getting worrying close to interactive cinema.

Her abilities are soon put to good use, when they are attacked by a masked tribe. Who are they? Damned if I know, not until the end credits does it transpire they were apparently a bunch of lepers — yes, lepers. Doing martial arts. No “Flying Fist” jokes, please. Amp kills their leader, which confuses them so much they, er, let Amp and Wind go.

Meanwhile, we bump into Scutter (James Gaines), a figure from Amp’s past, with the scary responsibility of moving the plot on. He reveals this began when Mainframe started gladiatorial death combats: Amp would never kill his opponents and was more popular with the crowd, so Mainframe used Lyssa (remember her? So very long ago now…) as a pretext to get rid of Amp.

Amp gets drunk and randy: “Let’s screw!” he says to Wind, whose response is swift and unchristian. “Guess a blow-job’s out of the question?” counters Amp, which may or may not be a subtle homage to ‘Repo Man’. Speaking of blow jobs — or rather, blow, kick and punch jobs — Amp is also progressing through a competition. It does help that he wields nunchakus, while the poor victim in one bout has an obviously rubber axe. Unsurprisingly with such an edge, he wins, but the tournament promoter, rather than pay out, betrays him to Mainframe’s sidekick Wires (Don Nielsen), whose men have hubcaps on their chests for reasons never satisfactorily explained.

The film now hurtles to its inevitable conclusion with all the subtlety of a runaway juggernaut. Nothing can stop it, no crisis of conscience (“Ever since I met you, my life has changed”. ‘We can just forget about it and leave”), change of heart by Wind regarding the sex thing, or Scutter’s murder by Mainframe. We reach the end-product of the past 80 minutes: climatic battle between Amp, Wind, Mainframe and Wire. I won’t spoil things by revealing who wins — though there’s little inherent in FoS to ‘spoil’. But it springs one last surprise in the end titles, where it’s suddenly revealed to be operating under a pseudonym, and was really called ‘Eternal Fist’. Well, I’ll be damned. But somehow, this just sums up the entire delightfully dumb experience…

Ah, that time of year once more, after the summer holiday pig-out, yet before the pig-out which is Christmas. You look at yourself in the mirror and think, “Better go on a diet”. Easier said than done. Diets are hell, and anyway, your body knows best what’s good for it — even if that involves an entire cheesecake, straight from the freezer. Go with your body. But for those who need some kind of regulation, we proudly present the TC diet. You may not actually lose any weight on it, but it’ll certainly be a damn sight easier to follow than anything involving large quantities of yoghurt. The absence of guilt thus enjoyed will also be far more beneficial to your health than trying to reach some weight loss target supplied by a hyper-active TV presenter….

Breakfast 08:00

• 1 grapefruit
• 1 slice whole wheat toast
• 8 oz skimmed milk

Lunch 12:30

• 1 tin vanilla flavour SlimFast
• 1 McVities chocolate digestive

Mid-afternoon Snack 12:35

• rest of packet of digestives
• 2 bags crisps
• 3 Mars bars (or equivalent)
• Bacon and sausage torpedo

Supper 18:00

• 2 pork pies
• 1 pepperoni pizza (family size)
• 4 cans beer
• 6 packets Doritos

Late Evening Snack 22:30

• Large doner kebab and chips

Rules for use:

1. If no-one sees you eat it, it has no calories.
2. Drinking diet Coke with it negates the calories.
3. When you eat with someone else, the calories don’t count if they eat more than you do.
4. Food eaten for medical purposes should be ignored. Examples include: hot chocolate, brandy, buttered toast and Alabama Chocolate Fudge Cheesecake.
5. If you eat with a person fatter than you, you lose calories. The exact process still mystifies science, but follows the Newtonian principle that large bodies attract smaller ones toward them. This leads to a gravitational pull upon the smaller body’s calories.
6. Small pieces contain less calories. Hence, instead of eating a chocolate bar whole, eat it in little pieces and you take in fewer calories. The process of breaking causes ‘calorific leakage’.
7. Film-related foods have no calories because they are part of the entire entertainment package and not one’s own personal fuel.
8. Foods with the same colour have the same calories e.g. mushrooms and white chocolate.
9. Bear in mind the common misprint on many packets — where it says ‘serves two’ , it actually should read ‘serve two’. This applies especially to ‘Weight Watcher” meals where any normal person needs at least three for a decent helping. Remember, only count one set of calories!
10. Remember, if it tastes good, it probably does you good.

IMPORTANT

Anyone who is embarking on any slimming diet especially if pregnant, nursing, has a health problem, or wants to lose more than 40 pounds or more than 20% of their starting body weight should consult a doctor before starting this or any weight-loss programme. SlimFast should not be used as your sole source of nutrition; eat one balanced meal a day. As with any high-fibre diet it is important to drink at least 6-8 glasses of water, black tea, coffee or low calorie drinks each day. This diet can help slimming or weight control only as part of a calorie-controlled scheme. Store in a cool, dry place.