Turns Out You Can Get Lifetime Bans from Weirder Places than Bars

When you think about it, the phrase ‘banned for life’ is a pretty dramatic, isn’t it? It’s the kind of thing you don’t ever imagine anyone actually saying outside of EastEnders; the sort of punishment you can only really deliver as a purple-faced pub landlord with a broad regional accent, just before the ad break, to the father of your secret son who has been having an affair with your sister. ‘Banned for life’ only happens to the long-lost cousin who recently ‘moved back from Benidorm’ – not to actual real-life people who haven’t, it transpires, been secretly doing prison time for the attempted murder of your estranged mother.

In the real world, a lifetime ban is a ridiculous punishment. For one thing, how would you even go about enforcing one? Having their picture up on the wall for the next 60 years like a Wild West wanted poster? Repeating their names every night as you’re falling asleep like Arya Stark so you never forget their heinous crime? Running their driving license through the FaceApp age filter to make sure you’ll recognise them when they try to sneak back inside in 2069? Don’t be silly.

But lifetime bands do actually happen, and not just because someone got too drunk and acted like a twat. People get smacked with lifetime bans for all sorts of reasons, so I decided to speak to those who have to find out why.

When I was 11, my entire family got banned from the Louis Vuitton store on the Champs-Élysées when we were on holiday in Paris, for unwittingly helping a guy to attempt fraud. We’d been inside the store having a look round and as we were leaving this man approached us. He was really upset and told us this story that he’d only been allowed to buy one purse because he was Asian and they were racists. He gave us his Amex and asked us to go back in and buy two more purses the same as the one he’d bought but in different colours. Anyway, it turned out that he was a known fraudster and had been copying the purses, so when we tried to buy them we immediately got frogmarched out of the shop and told not to ever go back or they’d prosecute! Ash, 25.

My sister got a lifetime ban from all Primarks for trying to steal over £600 of clothes. As you can imagine, it wasn’t a very subtle attempt. When she saw the CCTV footage my mum said it was the most obvious attempted robbery in history, like she didn’t even try and hide what she was doing. I always like to imagine it like that Friends episode where Joey wears all of Chandler’s clothes. I still have so many questions. Like… what does £600 worth of Primark clothes even look like? Surely it’s basically their entire stock? And how would they even enforce a lifetime Primark ban? Do they have her face pinned up in every shop? I just want some answers. Steph, 27.

Every May, Edinburgh College of Art has a big fancy dress ball called the Revel and I used to go when I was a student. The theme was ‘hair’ so I glued lots of wigs to a dress and rolled up with my pals, a few pills each in our pockets. I took two straight away and the night was an absolute blur. I lost sight in both my eyes, lost all my friends and was basically a hot mess covered in wigs.

At one point I thought I was in the smoking area so I lit up a cig and within five seconds three bouncers converged on me from different areas and told me to put it out. When I realised I was actually on the dancefloor, I tried to claim that the cig belonged to my sister’s friend who happened to be walking past. The bouncers dragged me outside, locked me out of the uni gates and told me I wasn’t allowed back ever. I managed to get back in by going round the corner, climbing over the wall and rolling under a fence like a fucking hero, but I guess I’m still technically banned from Edinburgh College of Art? I didn’t even go there though so it’s fine. Claudia, 25.

The first time (of many) that I ever got banned from somewhere was when I was eight, from Birmingham Repertory Theatre during this free kids show. Earlier in the day I’d been given loads of balloons, and during the performance in classic bored eight-year-old style I was entertaining myself by tying them all together to see if I could make them long enough to touch the ceiling. Obviously I accidentally let go of them and they sailed to the ceiling of the theatre and got stuck in all the lights, which as you can imagine was hugely distracting for the entire audience. I was marched out by an angry usher who basically screamed at me theatrically and told me to never darken the door of Birmingham Repertory Theatre ever again. I was traumatised. Meg, 28.

I had just moved to Chicago. Fresh in town, I went to a gay bar in the hopes I would meet some other lesbians – but as it turned out, the whole place was jam-packed with gay men. As is often the case in this scenario, the guys behind the bar just completely ignored me when I was trying to order a drink, instead serving the male customers they likely fancied more. After about 45 minutes of me and my friend standing there like lemons, I started to get really pissed off. I was quite trashed as we'd been to a bar beforehand, so after some egging on from my friend I got behind the bar and starting taking bottles of beer from the fridge. I was immediately dragged out by security, who said that if me and my friend ever showed up again, they would call the cops. I'm not sure the cops would show up if we broke the ban in all honesty, but I'm not about to test that theory. That gay bar wasn't for me anyway. Marie, 26.

It was the last night of a family holiday in Italy and me and my brother decided to go out after dinner. We went to this bar we found that did really amazing negronis and got chatting to these two English guys who were app developers, so we decided it would be funny to pretend to be young tech billionaires who were looking to invest and they bought us loads of drinks.

After that we ended up in some hotel bar and when we tried to buy drinks they didn’t charge us. We didn’t realise all this was because we’d accidentally crashed some big tech event until somebody started doing this speech in French. Eventually the bar staff twigged and told us to leave but we couldn’t find the exit, which led to us getting properly kicked out because they thought we were trying to sneak back in. Anyway, we were so drunk that we couldn’t find our way back to the hotel, and when we finally did I spent the rest of the night throwing up. Worth it. Ivo, 25.

I was barred from my local as a young lass in the 80s when me and my best mate Nancy popped in for a drink before a night out. We were immediately the centre of attention for being dressed in Courtney Love-style 1950s babydoll prom dresses, leather jackets and fishnets. When we sat down I noticed an image of a topless model hung on the wall above us, and after a while the testosterone-heavy atmosphere and this image started to get on my nerves. I stood up on the chair and turned the picture to the wall and immediately all hell broke loose. The reaction of the locals was so over-the-top, Nancy cried with laughter and the two lads we were with were told to “control their women” which made us laugh even more.

The manager barred us for life after that. Rather than slink off shamefaced, I told him that “We have to go anyway, I'm having rather heavy period and I don't want to start bleeding all over the seats.” Then we left, never to return. I was technically underage anyway. Vanessa, 54.

@RosieHew / @georgeyarnton