Scots kittens get the cream as swingers come north

Published on Saturday 21 March 2009 18:34

THEY will be purring with decadent delight in the supposedly douce streets of Scotland's capital.

Killing Kittens, a notorious London-based swingers network, is planning to launch north of the border later this year, bringing its brand of 150-a-night orgies for the "sexual elite" to Scotland for the first time.

The club, which is run by a friend of Prince William's girlfriend Kate Middleton, is searching for upmarket premises in Edinburgh's New Town where the rich, beautiful and uninhibited can get together to enjoy a night of group sex.

Killing Kittens claims it rejects one in three applicants because its strict rules require that members are 18-45, conventionally good-looking and in an AB demographic.

Single men are not allowed into parties on their own and the women – known as Kittens – make all the rules.

The club's founder, Emma Sayle, said the franchise was being set up in response to demand from up to 1,000 swingers from Scotland and the north of England who regularly travel to London for her parties.

The club, which has an 80% female membership, most of whom are privately educated, describes itself as a movement for the pursuit of female pleasure and claims it provides a "safe sexual environment for women to explore their fantasies and sexual desires".

It was set up to provide swinging parties without the usual "seediness" traditionally associated with the scene, and guests arrive in masks.

On arrival, guests – who are banned from wearing jeans or trainers or using drugs – are greeted with a champagne and cocktails and encouraged to get to know each other in the "mingling" room.

At what point they head to the "play" rooms, and what happens there, is up to the guests, provided it is legal and consensual. Condoms are provided.

Previous parties have been held over the past three years in a number of glamorous locations including a New York penthouse, a yacht in St Tropez and townhouses in the West End of London.

Now, in a move likely to alarm some of the city's more conservative residents, Sayle is seeking a suitably upmarket location for her Edinburgh launch and recruiting an events manager on 1,000 a night to run the parties smoothly.

She said: "We really want to do it and the aim is to get it launched in September.

"We need someone or a couple based there who will host the parties in the same way as we host them in London.

"We need bar staff, door people and a management team and we need the equivalent in Scotland.

"We need an event manager, and given the nature of what it is they need to be quite open-minded.

"We have quite a few Scottish members. Edinburgh is a bit more in tune with London. The Edinburgh people are a bit more cosmopolitan.

"We started in London by renting smart apartments for 50-60 people, and that's all we are looking for initially, to rent them for the weekend.

"But we need somewhere quite central."

The exact address of a party is always kept secret until the last minute, to avoid unwelcome attention, and Sayle said she has not yet clashed with any neighbours.

But she admitted not everyone is likely to welcome her business venture.

"The nature of what it is, it's not going to go down well anywhere," she said.

"But there's enough of a market and it's growing. While there's that demand, you just do it. No one's getting hurt and everyone is having a lot of fun."

A spokesman for Hedonism UK, an umbrella group for swinging parties, said the practice was becoming more mainstream, with older and younger couples experimenting with swinging, but so far there had been few parties north of the border.

He said: "Edinburgh and Glasgow are the only places in Scotland where you would be able to run swing parties, but you have to be very careful.

"There are a lot of swingers in Scotland but a lot of them travel south of the border."

The parties themselves are not illegal so long as they take place behind closed doors. However, if guests disrupt the neighbours' peace and quiet, the hosts may find themselves subject to an antisocial behaviour order.

Margo Macdonald, independent MSP for the Lothians, said locals would be unhappy at the move.

She said: "I would welcome this as much as I welcome the hen nights and vomiting parties that come to Edinburgh.

"People who live near the strip bars near the Grassmarket have had to put up with antisocial and inconsiderate behaviour for years. The city could easily get a reputation for that sort of thing and I would be strongly against that."

Dr Catriona Morton, a Lothian GP who specialises in sexual health issues, warned that prospective partygoers should be aware of the risks of picking up sexually transmitted diseases.

She said: "There will be an additional level of sexual health risk in this club because people could be having a number of sexual partners.

"We would advise that people know about their risks and have testing if they feel they want it done.

"Chlamydia often has no symptoms. It may be that any club involved in sexual activity would want to emphasise good sexual health messages."