How is ‘pick-up’ culture still a thing?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

*** Update: Adnan Ahmed's conviction was quashed on appeal after three judges ruled the verdict was a miscarriage of justice *** BBC reporter Myles Bonnar spent two days on the streets of London with "pick-up" coaches, being “trained” in how to chat up women and get them into bed. “Pick-up” culture goes at least as far back as 2005 when American author and journalist Neil Strauss released a book called The Game. Myles, who made a film for the BBC’s Panorama programme, tells us what he learnt on a seduction bootcamp. The coaches told him they are doing nothing wrong. And author Rachel O’Neill explains how the seduction industry has gone mainstream. Presenter: Matthew Price Producers: Philly Beaumont and Seren Jones Mixed by Nicolas Raufast Editor: John Shields

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:06.6	Hello, I'm Matthew Price.
0:08.2	This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.
0:11.1	Every day we ask one big question about one big story.
0:14.0	Today how is pickup culture still a thing?
0:27.0	Hi Miles. Hello.
0:34.0	Hello.
0:35.0	Hey how you doing?
0:36.0	First thing this morning, me and Serin and Philly called up Miles Bonner.
0:41.0	Mathia presenter and Philly have just walked in.
0:44.0	They're just about to pop up and join...
0:45.0	He's a BBC journalist in Glasgow,
0:48.0	who's just gone undercover,
0:50.0	he shaved his beard off so they didn't recognize him to expose pickup culture.
0:56.0	I'm on Oxford Street, which is one of the prime spots for pickup artists,
1:00.0	and you can tell just by looking around at how busy the police is, why they pick it?
1:04.4	I talked to my daughter last night. She said, yeah, she's had about five people talk to her like that on Oxford Street,
1:11.0	saying things like, are you Russian and why and then
1:13.5	trying to get her number so I presume it's the same kind of thing. Well that's a common
1:17.4	up now. What are you Russian? Yeah. Why? Why Russian? I don't know it's I suppose it's they would use that I suppose they would think that was a good opener because it gets someone to start justifying you know where they're actually from so off on the back foot they're already in a
1:33.8	conversation they can't really they can't really just say no or anything to that
1:38.9	they have to actually explain their accent and things like that so that that would be an opener that a lot of
	...

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