"I discovered a new kind of entertainment which was thriving in Florida and Texas, which was known as adult entertainment clubs," he remembers.
"Clubs where beautiful girls went round on stages, poles and tables at the invitation of guys for what was, in those days, ten dollars to take their clothes off."
He quickly converted his New York nightspot to incorporate topless dancers and it quickly became his most profitable club.
It was not enough to save the US side of his operation, however, and he returned to London determined to make striptease work. Almost immediately, however, he ran into trouble with the authorities.
"The police couldn't envisage how 350, sometimes 500, males could sit nicely together with untold numbers of beautiful girls circling them on stages and tables and not have a problem," he sighs.
"In their experience girls taking their clothes off in front of men who had alcohol meant chaos, Until I'd seen it in Florida I wouldn't have believed it would work either."
But he persisted and after persuading the police and magistrates that he would employ strict rules -- no-one touches the dancers or gets to leave with them -- he finally won permission to take his club topless in 1996.
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