Byline: NATALIE CLARK
AMID the smoky gloom of the Infinity Club, a sleazy pantomime is being played out on stage. Against a background of crimson walls and shabby red sofas, two young women perform a fake-erotic lesbian routine to jarring rock music.
Both women, who are now nearly naked and fondling each other, are British.
Tiffany Flower RingBecky Assemakis and Rachael Firby are 20.
Meanwhile, in a bar nearby, another 20-year-old is working late. Maria, a beautiful, red-haired, Greek national sits alone. Unlike the other revellers knocking back spirits in the bar, she is sipping water. In her handbag, nestled neatly against her lipstick and purse, is a handgun.
While Becky and Rachael do their best to arouse the men in the audience, Maria's purpose is quite the opposite. Her aim is to try to cool the overheated erotic climate for which Faliraki has become notorious.
Maria is an undercover policewoman, on the lookout for the sort of explicit scenes currently being staged at the Infinity Club to be enacted for real in the bar by drunken tourists. She and her police colleagues have embarked on a crack down which they hope will rid Faliraki of its reputation as Europe's capital of quick sex, debauchery and drunkenness.
The shameful antics of young Britons in Faliraki's were first exposed by the Mail last month.
This week, in the wake of the police clampdown, we went back to see if anything is changing.
Unbeknown to the tourists, undercover police officers are now cruising the 50-odd bars with such suggestive names as Sinners and Climax every night.
Helping them is a network of spies scattered across the resort: hotel managers; chambermaids; bar owners.
They are looking out for couples having sex in public; for drug-taking; for fighting between rowdy sunburnt youths; for young men who strip off their clothes and charge naked along Club Street and Bar Street.
The people of Rhodes have had enough - and they are fighting back.
They fear that the island's rich culture and heritage is in danger of being all but forgotten. But they are up against behaviour which shows no sign of abating despite a spate of sex attacks on British girls.
In fact, according to recent figures, British bookings to Rhodes are up by 30 per cent since its recent notoriety.
In short, the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the world and its most famous symbol for more than 2,000 years since its destruction by an earthquake in 226BC, is in danger of being usurped by, of all things, the Faliraki Slapper.
This is the name by which Becky Assemakis is universally known in Faliraki, acquired after millions of viewers watched her boasting of three-in-abed sex sessions with a blonde called Rachael Williams on the ITV series Club Reps earlier this year.
And, sadly, the middleclass shop girl turned stripper epitomises the prevailing attitude among the British girls holidaying at the resort.
British girls who no LED Street Light LU02-56W doubt, like Becky, come from nice, respectable families but who also appear to leave their inhibitions and any sense of morals at Faliraki airport.
Becky is actually proud of her notoriety and sees no reason for apologising for it.
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