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Fuelling passion saves at pump
Lyndal Cairns
15Aug07
MOTOR RUNNING: Jacinta from The Pink Palace is inviting clients to "pump and save" with a brothel fuel discount. Picture: KYLIE ELSE (N07ME303)
A SOUTH Melbourne brothel is offering petrol discounts for clients who want to ``pump and save''.
More men are making a detour to The Pink Palace after a mobile billboard hit the city streets advertising 30c a litre off fuel when they book in for a service.
Palace manager Robyn Smith said it was her sex workers that came up with the bright idea.
``I got together with the girls to talk about what we could do to help the petrol crisis and we thought it would be something nice for the clients,'' she said.
Clients bring in their fuel receipts and the brothel gives them the equivalent of 30c a litre off their bill.
The promotion has swollen the brothel's clientele in two months, Mrs Smith said.
``There was one guy who was trying to convince his wife it was a good way to save money on petrol,'' she said.
The billboard shows a woman's face with the invitation to ``pump and save'' and it tours the inner city at night.
It circled the MCG before a football game on the August 4 weekend.
``It's designed to give people a bit of a laugh,'' Mrs Smith said.
``But it's not obvious at all. If kids (at the football) saw the billboard, they wouldn't know what it was about.''
She said the blatant billboards and daytime radio advertisements for erectile dysfunction treatments were more offensive.
AFL media manager Patrick Keane said the league could not control the billboards circuit of the MCG any more than it could control static billboards for other brothels further down Hoddle St.
Australia's Advertising Standards Bureau has received no complaints about the billboard and can only investigate its content, not its placement.
The Leader contacted petrol retailers BP and Caltex headquarters but both refused to comment on the brothel's petrol discount program.
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