We Spoke to the Manchester Club Promoter Who's Been Called Out for Sexist Tweets

Oh, Manchester. Rainy, grey, sad and sorry Manchester, the home of Jilly's Rockworld and a ferris wheel next to a Primark. Now, every so often, something pricks the gauzy media-bubble us trendy Londoners live in, and a story wanders down to our town from the provinces like Dick Whittington with a BA in media studies. Just today, a news item's wormed its way down the M6 and landed in our lap.

In a story picked up on by the Manchester Evening News, club promoter Jonny Ransome, a man employed by city centre club the Birdcage, appears to have tried to recruit new staff in a rather salacious way. Now, usually venues might sellotape a few STAFF WANTED ENQUIRE WITHIN A4 print-outs to their doors, or go all quaint and call the local paper and drop hot 25 worder for the pre-sport-section back pages, just after the crosswords, but in the case of the Birdcage, Ransome's just steamrolled onto social media with all the subtlety of, well, a steamroller. Now, Jonny didn't just want any old applicants. He wanted a certain kind of person working at the Birdcage. This is what he wanted:

So, let's run through this quickly: club promoter decides he needs female workers to work at his club. Promoter drops tweet about it. Promoter asks for girls who believe themselves to be "8/10" above. He throws in a few 'funny' emojis to show what a light hearted tweet it is and we all have a good laugh and some 8/10s get jobs at Birdcage.

Lucy Powell, the Labour MP for Manchester Central wasn't amused by Ransome's actions. Describing it as "immature" she noted that it "also feeds into a culture of reducing women to a judgement based on their appearance. This attitude doesn't create the sort of nightlife we want to see in Manchester—it's offensive and pretty seedy."

We reached out to Ransome for comment earlier today, and asked him if he thought that his job advert was going to cause the kerfuffle it has when he tweeted it into the ether. "I expected the tweet to be taken in the manor it was meant, light heartedly, and not in any way to be taken as objectifying or demeaning women which isn't what the job is about as our current hostesses would tell you," he said, over Facebook messenger, before adding, "they love working within our company and I'm confident they'd recommend it to [other] girls."

As we've never been to the club in question, we asked Ransome to give us a little background knowledge. The night at Birdcage that Ransome oversees, Flirt Friday, is, he told us mainly caters to the 18-25 demographic, with "students and locals welcome," adding that it is a "a dress to impress club night where each week we see 1,000s of attendees through Birdcage's doors."

Regarding the role being advertised, that of a hostess position within the club, Ransome seemed to claim that his method of advertising was representative of what would be required of any hopeful candidates. "A Flirt Fridays at Birdcage hostess' job," he said, "is to have photos taken and socialise with the customers, it's a great part-time job for girls who have a fun social side and enjoy being paid to have a night out!" Which, you know, might be true, but it doesn't justify regressive nature of the language used in his advert. He also said that, "Every girl I've ever had work for me has loved the experience and never felt uncomfortable about her role." Which, obviously, is something we cannot verify or corroborate, and thus can't really comment on. One nil to Jonny Ransome.

When it came to Powell's argument that, "It's very disappointing to hear people talk about women like this in 2016," he was slightly more forthright, saying that, "In the eyes of myself and many others she's [Lucy Powell] prudish at best and the moral high ground or ethical standpoint she is trying to take over a tweet which is so far removed from the real issue of feminism or the objectification of women is laughable." He went on to say that, "This MP is someone who was pro Syrian invasion and I don't warrant her request for an apology with any consideration." Now, it's not for us to say, but some might consider equating getting flack for a sexist tweet with the bombing of a Middle Eastern country a tad extreme but, again, that's not for us say.

Ransome's main point was that Powell's comments "made no sense." He said, somewhat confusingly, "I'm confident that the same MP would probably have the recruiter for the model who wears the latest designer blouse she bought vilified for recruiting attractive girls for a job which requires photos taken to represent the brand and incidentally persuaded her to buy that very blouse," which is a sentence I've read a hundred times now and am no closer to understanding.

We're not sure if any 8/10s out there have applied for the job yet. We're not sure if they ever will.