Cecil's, London Bridge

The only problem with vintage clobber, is when one is of a certain vintage oneself. Dragging up as one of the Village People when you wore the entire construction worker kit and caboodle to disco down to YNCA at Studio 54 must be a depressing reminder of how quickly tempus fugit...I can but imagine. If you're sufficiently senior to have dressed, first time around,  in duds à la Downton Abbey or The Great Gatsby - the recommended attire for spiffing Saturday night shindigs at new cocktail lounge/ thé dansant Cecil's - good on ya for still being out on the razz' at your age, you sly centenarian (and-then-some) swinger!  Cecil's inhabits a crepuscular candlelit basement in an old dockside building where teas, fresh off clippers from the Orient, were once stored; hence, the World of Suzie Wong, cheaply but effectively implied, in its stagey makeover. As I wait at the bar for opium tears to materialise - a tart gin sour - I half expect a taxi dancer (a 1930's euphemism for a tart, the calling of girl-gone-wrong, Suzie Wong) to pop up and proposition me. But at around a tenner a pop for yuzu shu fizz, slings, Collinses, and ideas such as the Paris of the East,  Cecil's is no cheap clip joint - whatever hooch served in enamel mugs might sugest. Midweek, there's live jazz and soul and stand-up comedy and the space is fun. So rally the gang, old chap, and head down to Cecil's warehouse party events such as Chop Chop Club - 'a journey through international disco and other genres from 1930's Shanghai to the future and back' -  decked out in your best Cecil Gee; another label considered 'vintage' now that the famous clothier has disappeared from our high streets. 

8 Holyrood Street SE1 2EL 7403 8293 http://www.cecilslondon.com

Steam and Rye, The City

Facebook recently introduced another typically daft gizmo. Like so many others, it's presumably aimed at disaffected youth festering in Nowhere Nebraska, stroking their father's rifle collection as they plan their bloody revenge on those classmates that dared mock their Justin Bieber be-stickered lunch box. Based on past posts, Facebook's feature fancies it can select your personal top 10 moments of the year. In 2014, as well as buying a new loo seat, one of mine was attending a preview of The Great Gatsby in nausea-inducing 3D, apparently. Is my life really that dull? Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby was a frenetic, over-styled marshmallow - shallow, vapid and unrewarding. I mention this, not because I've fancy a gig as a film critic - although I'll happily give you a pithy précis of Behind The Candelabra if you like - rather that Luhrmann's lurid Gatsby evidently inspires Nick House's new City restaurant and bar behemoth, Steam and Rye. As at his other venues Mahiki and Bodo’s Schloss, this perma-House party, set in the former Bank of New York's august marbled halls, is crammed chock-full of gimmicks - a 20's gangsters and molls theme park for cocktail-crazy kidult bankers and their 20-something staff: Basildon blondes, Billericay bean counters and Southend secretaries that fancy themselves Essex's answer to Daisy Buchanan. Steam and Rye has been designed in conjunction with a model/ presenter/ serial red carpet-hogger whose clothing range, Kelly Brook at New Look, is sure to appeal to those that imagine ersatz glam the height of big city sophistication. As I'm unlikely VIP lounge material (I'm not dating a West Ham player and I'd refuse to give a K***ing Kardashian my contact details, even supposing it wanted them), I head downstairs to one of various spaces accessible to paying punters. Here, a passable rendition of an antiquated Eastern Pacific Railway dining carriage doubles as a cocktail lounge - New York's Grand Central Station another design influence I'm told. All aboard a cheesy choo-choo to Yonkers for a bonkers range of hooch served by flappers in shimmy shifts. Ignoring classic calls vieux carré and prescription julep (£12.50), tonight's throng is sold on tricks such as sticks of rock in soda fountain alco-pops, moonshine served in oil can mugs...or in faux footwear in the case of dead man’s boot (tequila, lemon and marshmallow). A Monica Lewinsky cocktail is a creamy rum and amaretto affair - fit for a president, no doubt. Be careful he doesn't splash it on your dress, love: people will talk. ‘Maize balls,' meanwhile, may well make Made In Chelsea fans miss the last train back to Basildon. Steaming at 2 am? I don't hang around to find out. I've got better, if not bigger, speakeasies in mind. 

147 Leadenhall Street, EC3V 4QT 37018793 www.steamandrye.com  

Great Gatsby outfit (pictured) available via www.joke.co.uk

The Green Room, Stepney

The agreeably shambolic Mahogany Bar at Wilton's Theatre is a popular spot for jobbing thesps, the occasional star (Miss Minnelli is a fan), E1 trendsters and rubbernecking tourists who have picked out this landmark architectural gem from their guide books as a must-see. Quite right too: fabulously atmospheric and now a World Heritage site, Wilton's is the planet’s oldest surviving working music hall. Muso anoraks will know it from videos such as Annie Lennox's No More I Love Yous, Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Relax http://tinyurl.com/2a6rnw and more recently, Mumford and Sons' Little Lion Man. Originally Georgian, rebuilt in mid-Victorian times, a survivor of the Blitz, it's little changed from the days when vaudevillian Champagne Charlie was a regular turn on its stage. When you finally elbow your way to the bar, you'll find Meantime and Black Isle on tap, wine from £17 - £30 and, if the locusts haven't stripped the place bare, aperitivi -  served gratis, unlike at various London imposters - from 6  to 8pm. So popular did its upstairs Green Room - normally reserved for artistes -  prove with punters when it was opened to them during the theatre's recent staging of The Great Gatsby, it's now a cocktail bar, open to the public from Wednesday to Saturday each evening until 11 pm. Relive The Good Old Days with tipples from £7. In a strong cast that includes ginger and scotch martini, The Great McGonogall, and bittersweet chocolate sip, Montezuma, prune-infused Armagnac swashbuckler, D’Artagnan, manages to steal the limelight. 

Wilton’s Music Hall, 1 Graces Alley E1 7702 2789 http://tinyurl.com/cvpjpxv