A Cheap Night Out in London

It is a Wednesday evening, and I am at the end of my web-based quest to find a venue in which to live out the distant dream of ‘a cheap night out - in London’ (the dash to give extra resonance to the final two damning words.) London, where the streets are paved with gold. Could this be? Could I really have the cunning to find a source of cheap booze and funky, funky beats? ‘Now Fully Air-Conditioned!’ proclaims the website to Moonlighting Nightclub. And then I strike gold - tonight they shall be hosting a weekly event that goes by the name of ‘Cheapskates’.

Credit: Bethanie Cunnick

Convinced by the promise of 80p drinks my entourage swings into action. Stab-proof vests are donned, Lambrini swigged (how sweet a nectar!), and we set off just as the drizzle begins to fall upon our faces in a sticky film.

A pub stop is called for as to enter the club sober would be a crime unthinkable. The Angel, on St Giles High Street, is an elegantly shabby Victorian pub, complete with electric chandeliers and a suitably narrow and rickety staircase. It is a Samuel Smith’s pub, so the beer is relatively cheap.

When the party seem to just be starting to enjoy themselves, I remind them of the itinerary and urge them to finish up their pints. Moonlighting is easily overlooked. It is a single doorway on Greek Street (the nearest tube station is Tottenham Court Road) with a blue fluorescent light above advertising its name. ‘A dive!’ I think, ‘a sordid dive!’

A dive it is. A baying crowd throng the bar which is the centrepiece to a low-ceilinged box that gives the impression of being more spacious than it is by being entirely mirrored and striped with white lights that blink alternately. The floor is a well-trodden tiger print. In the half light, one can almost make out the silhouettes of ghostly dancers sashaying where their poles used to stand.

A bystander offers me some advice at the bar: “Buy six at a time, love.” I order three vodka oranges and three vodka cokes (for variety) which come in glasses the size of a large thimble, and seeing as each drink costs 80p the sum total is £4.80. I look into the eyes of the barman and see the disgust and hopelessness that must come with having seen Man at his most base.

To the dance floor! We squeeze and find a space created by the flailing arms of a sequinned girl in the throes of the YMCA dance. The music is a mixture of pure cheese and self-conscious indie/electro bleeping. As the six vodka shots begin to seep into my bloodstream, the place starts to make sense. Instead of faces grossly distorted in various stages of inebriation I see a golden and carefree crowd intent on dancing their worries away. I bop to the Jackson Five, walk into mirrors, and yell merrily at my friendly counterparts in the queue to acquire more vodka thimbles. Four songs on we decide that it would be best to quit while we’re ahead, and go to seek comfort in chips.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

- Emma Davson