London's Worst Nightclub

You know a nightclub is bad when, at the end of the night and the lights finally go up, you find that the sofa that you were sitting on does not, infact, have a cover with an intricate pattern on it, but is actually decorated with a spattering of various bodily fluids. You can catch an STI just by licking your fingers.

Welcome to the worst nightclub in London: the eighth circle of Hell that Dante just couldn’t be poetic about (I shall try with prose). It was here that I spent one evening a week, managing the crummy parties that the company I was working for put on. If my boss wasn’t groping me then he was man-handling the waitresses dressed in the obligatory asset-enhancing uniforms: corsets and ‘sick’ skirts. The way that men behave in the club is very reminiscent of the kiss-chase games that one used to play in the playground at the age of eight. Give the guy a sparkler in the neck of a bottle of Grey Goose and you have a gurgling toddler on your hands.

The club is the haunt of Z-list celebrities, squeezed into the venue by their desperate publicist Max Clifford. These are the reality TV ‘stars’ that you see drunkenly piling into taxis; the DJs with the celebrated breasts rather than the celebrated music; the girl who had sex with Ryan Giggs; the girl who sucked Ashley Cole’s dick. They are sent into the VIP area – literally a couple of sofas surrounded by a rope – and plied with cheap vodka, while the hoi polloi ogle at them. The message is loud and clear: congratulations on degrading yourself. Who knew that a person’s social status could be elevated by swallowing a married man’s cum. A few years ago Madonna arrived one evening, took a look around the place, and made the well-informed decision to promptly retreat.

The odour of fake tan permeates the atmosphere: it settles on your skin, your clothes, your hair. Even translucent vampires would leave looking like they’d been tango’d. It drenches the guests so that they glow in the UV light. Suddenly a new kind of race is created: behold the rise of the fluorescent orange people. This particular species is defined by hairspray-stiffened hair extensions, caked on makeup and spider legs for eyelashes. Grinding on these wannabe-Barbies are London’s gangsters, low-life criminals and naive newly-appointed business whiz-kids: all on a diet of cocaine and weed being dealt out back.

The bored women that you see hanging by the bar are escorts. They are paid to be there, to seduce men into buying them ridiculously expensive drinks, thus generating profit for the club. They will sit on the laps of footballers, who are also paid to be there. Apparently we are all somebody’s whore. The bartenders are told to remove their wedding rings, and they will have their wicked way in the basement with underage girls who got in with fake Ids; then they return to their work, wiping their defiled hands on their trousers before serving you a drink in a smear-stained glass.

Spend an hour at this club, and you’ll want to leave town forever; preferably withdrawing to a cottage in rural Wiltshire where mating sheep are the most rambunctious thing that you’ll have to encounter. But alas, even after quitting my job, the name of this hellhole graces every weekly magazine and tabloid. It’s like I never left.

Ladies and gentlemen: enjoy your night.