AG百家乐在线官网

A businessman who attended the Presidents Club charity dinner speaks to Sky News about his experience:

This was the second time I'd been.

The room is full of men in black tie and these girl hostesses stand there and serve you drinks and chat to the guys. That's the formula.

There's a compere, speeches and entertainment and an auction. Dinner is served, the men chat with one another and the girls ask them if they want a drink.

At my table, there was absolutely nothing untoward or inappropriate with these young girls. There might have been a little bit of conversation with them, what do you do, where you are from, general chit chat - but I certainly didn't witness or experience anything that you'd consider inappropriate at all.

There is an atmosphere in the room, there's no question about that, there's lots of pretty girls glamorously dressed and I suspect the formula is a little bit of an old cliché, men like to show off sometimes, don't they?

And men probably like to show off more in front of pretty girls who want to extract more money out of them and that goes to fantastic causes, which unfortunately are the victims in all of this.

Some of the tables are quite large... I would guess about 25 people. Some of the tables are big, oval tables.

There's probably one hostess for four men.

I suppose it just adds some glamour, I never intellectualised why they were standing around looking pretty, but there was no harm done in that.

I suppose the theory is that it will help loosen the wallet and help raise more money for charity.

The one thing I did witness, when the auction is going on, the girls stand there, and sort of supervising their table making sure the auctioneer knows who is making a bid and the girl at the table would be encouraging the men at the table to bid more money.

Each table's got a girl with a paddle with the table number so if there's a bidder then that young lady will liaise with the auctioneer. The table next to me were bidding, she was saying 'come on', egging them on to bid higher.

So, you might say there’s more chances of them bidding higher if she's a pretty girl than not.

I would be staggered if the girls didn't realise what kind of night it was, it was no different to a bog standard waiting job, than a girl serving drinks in a night club.

It certainly never went through my mind that there were going to be girls at the dinner that would attract me. Probably like me, a lot of men go to these things because they're invited by business acquaintances and colleagues.

They feel a bit of peer pressure to go along.

They want to support the charity and go for a night out - don't think there's anything more sinister than that.

I can't speak for all the men and I'm sure there are men who really like that but the vast majority are good guys.

These men have children - they have daughters - probably similar age to a lot of those girls and they're going to behave appropriately, and that's how the people around me behaved, like normal, sensible, middle-aged men.

I dare say that in a room of 360-odd people there's a few who've had a few too many that can step out of line, but no different than you would get at any rugby club event, football event, men's working club event, boxing... stacks of events you could think of.

Or indeed, any pub or nightclub in the land. When men start behaving like idiots. It goes on.

But to condemn an entire organisation that's fundamentally there to raise an awful lot of money for some very good causes, as a result of that, is kind of a bit of a shame.

Last week's was the same as the one I previously went to. I didn't notice any discernible difference. I don't go to the after-party, the bar after. I leave, I've never been in there.

There was no difference to the last time I went, it was exactly the same format.

It starts around 8pm, dinner's around 8.30m, then it finished at about 12.30am.

Personally, I think this is getting so far out of control, things are getting so twisted. It's quite troubling actually. I've had conversations over the past few days, as this has hit the press, and we're a bit incredulous really.

All the people I know who go to it are absolutely perfectly decent people.

Charitable people. Successful. And they wouldn't get involved in this kind of behaviour and it's a shame.

Maybe it will rise from the ashes. Maybe somebody else will set something up, I don't know, something charitable. They'll give it away in different forms, that's possible, but I don't know.

It’s been exceptionally successful in fundraising. As far as fundraising is concerned it's probably up there with some of the most successful fundraising dinners.

Whether that's the mix of people, the formula that they have from a fundraising perspective. I suspect it's proven to be very successful. Maybe other dinners in other formats may exist but whether they'll be quite so successful I don't know.

I was certainly shocked at the scale and way it's been portrayed, it's been sort of painted as some kind of Roman orgy, that's how it seems to have been painted - and that's miles away from being the truth.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few guys who behaved in a handsy... or inappropriate innuendos to girls... that wouldn't shock me in the same way it wouldn't shock me to hear some similar comments at a football match or rugby club.

You’ve been to some of these kind of blokey events, and when blokes get together they can be silly sometimes.

It absolutely wasn't the overarching mood of the event, absolutely not.

By saying because these men had money they thought they could behave like this is twisting the reality of this.

These guys, the fact they had money is irrelevant to all of this. I bring this back to an analogy, men in a working club in Stockport or wherever it might be I'm sure the behaviour and laddish kind of behaviour that goes on there is not dissimilar.

There is a culture like that, it's true. I don't think you can say there isn't. You go on airplanes, you see stag parties and the way they behave. I'm not condoning that behaviour but it does go on in our culture. You also get women on hen parties.

What are we saying? Are we saying single sex lunches or dinners are now off-limits, you can't have one?

Is one of the friends of my wife going to call her and say they're calling off a ladies charity lunch, ‘I don’t think I should go’?

Is somebody going to pick up on that - are they going to say it's sexist because men aren't allowed to go? Are we going to say this is a society, you can't do these things? It seems a bit bizarre to me, I must say.