A high street in Northenden, Manchester. Busy with shoppers and people on their way to work. Lots of shops, restaurants and cafes and amongst them a 'shop' that appears to be abandoned and closed up.

It's not the first time I've visited a 'massage parlour'.
The last one had a blinking blue sign in a star shape and this one continued the theme with a star logo sign on the black shuttered window. Sandy's Superstars. Maybe the star signifies something?

I pushed the door open and walked nervously down the tiny corridor. At the end was a buzzer with speakerphone and a camera watching me. I pressed it and was told to push the door and come in. Once inside the place resembled a dentist's waiting room.
A dentist's waiting room with only male customers.

All along one wall there were photographs of scantily clad girls and a youngish woman sat behind a desk looking like receptionists all over the world. "Girls are on the right. Have you booked?" she asked me and the reporter from The Telegraph accompanying me. It's as this point that we fess up to working for a national newspaper and are shown the way out. Two large gentlemen sitting next to the receptionist utter expletives and pull their collars up to hide their faces just in case we have a hidden camera. We leave as instructed and reflect on the seedy side of life in the suburbs.