French cabaret show Crazy Horse brings its brand of nudity to Hong Kong

of Crazy Horse on the Avenue George V, just by the red stairs that lead down to the red theatre, there's a black-and-white photo of its founder, Alain Bernardin. This is the man who, in 1950s Paris, opened up a club where the waiters dressed as cowboys, the band played country and western, and punters were encouraged to try out square dancing.

Bernardin was so fond of all things North American, he placed a Canadian Mountie on a horse at the entrance, and decided to call his new saloon after a Native American chief. Luckily for future marketing purposes, the name he chose wasn't Sitting Bull.

By the summer of 1953, his business was about to bite the dust. But Bernardin happened to see a film about American burlesque, and that gave him an idea. Out went the cowboys, the country and western music, and the quaint dancing. In came nakedness, champagne, and girls with nipples exactly 21cm apart and tummy buttons 13cm above their pubic bones.

The only remnant of the club's earlier incarnation was the Mountie (the horse trotted off to more sane pastures), and you can still see one stationed outside the cabaret every night.

Such is the Mountie's iconic status, the producers of , which arrives in town in September, are hoping to install one in the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (APA). But it's fair to say that most people don't go to Crazy Horse to see a man in a uniform. They go to see a line of women in uniform: the opening number of every Crazy Horse show for almost 25 years has been .

The women wear - pun alert - bearskins, and re-enact a version of the Changing of the Guard that would certainly be unrecognisable to Buckingham Palace; it involves military buttons marching down naked chests, and tails covering naked behinds. There's much stomping to and fro, wheeling about, and jiggling of perfect flesh while orders are barked offstage.