22.04.2009 - 2:06 p.m.

I'm getting on a bit, being as i am, somewhere exactly in my mid thirties, and for about the last ten years or so i've been visiting clubs for the purposes of getting fucked up to good music, my genesis into clubbing was assisted by my good friend and chemical brother, and i was inserted into the correct end of the the clubbing spectrum which has set my expectations of a club experience pretty much spot on.

A while back we decided to go see Sander van Doorn at the hallowed Ministry of Sound, i'd always vowed never to step foot in this over-hyped merchandising machine on the grounds that i'm not selling out my personal standards, i had no knowledge of what it was like and had only the sketchyist third hand information as to its contents thereof. The only reason we went was because Mr van Doorn had completely rocked the fuck out at a festival last year and a man of this calibre is worth seeing no matter where he plays.

I had many expectations of MoS and all of them were negative and oh dear oh dear oh dear, i was correct.

The first thing noticed was how small the whole place is, for a [sic] Super Club it's really small. The next thing and the biggest gripe is the number of fucking poser tossers flouncing about, i had expected this and it was the primary reason why i've never been before, i don't go clubbing to pose (in fact i don't pose, too self conscious), but fuck me sideways, i was completely unprepared for the level of twattishness we encountered.

The inhabitants fell into clearly defined sectors:
- lads in pastel coloured shirts drinking pints and following / leching after / harrassing :
- girls in underwear
- girls in clubwear
- confused looking foreigners (mostly asian)
- normal clubbers

The first three types were in the majority by a long way. A small game was devised, to spot the towniest of the townies, i think the guy who won was wearing a white shirt, bootlace tie and a black waistcoat, (with a pint) the archytype of the townie. The girls, who generally travelled in groups were inevitably followed by larger groups of townies, hurling chat-up lines at them constantly, the whole atmosphere was a bit sick. At some point i found out that there's a 'lounge' where the bulk of the posing and preening takes place, this thankfully kept most of the twats out of the main room.

I think the general highlight for nearly everyone was the hen-night group wearing matching basques, pants, fishnets and devil horns, although the girls seemed incredibly shallow (it could just have been the way they behaved, at no point did i feel the need to engage them in conversation) they of course attracted the largest following of townie wankers. Surprisingly i don't recall seeing any girls in cowboy boots and a stetson which i though was de rigeur apparel for women visiting MoS, but if they were there they'd have been in the 'lounge' which i never set foot in.

For a reason we still can't work out we stayed after Sander finished his set, the correct action would have been to leave and go to a real club for the remainder of the morning, i think they tricked us with music that started of promising and then died back to MoS standard light trancey progressiveness which is all very well for listening to in a library but not to entice a dance floor into a beat based frenzy at 3am.

We left and returned to the rented apartment a friend had hired where we ate more narcotics and talked shite until we really really had to check out, then followed a taxi tour of london taking in all the sights between elephant and castle and euston calling at victoria and waterloo, which was nice. We all of us vowed never to return.

To top off the insult, J's boy is at the impressionable age where style and branding are the most important things in the world, and has a swathe of MoS branded merchandise, the piece of resistance for him was a MoS stereo with ipod station etc. This item was duly handed over c/o santa claus, and i have never set eyes on a more shoddily thrown together piece of shite hi-fi in all my life, the most notable feature is the nasty sounding signal noise which permeates it and issues forth from the speakers, you can actually hear every action of the ipod software/hardware in action as it comes out of the speakers as hisses, pops and crackling, let the buyer beware.

So if you're a tourist visiting london for the sights etc and you really must go there to complete a touristy checklist then go, if you're not a hardened clubber then you may even enjoy yourself. If you like narcotics and have standards about clubs and especially music played therein then visit any of the 'proper' clubs where the music is hard and the people friendly and the drinkers form but a tiny minority, a list is available on request.

mwah darlings, mwah