De Beauvoir Tavern, Haggerston

The Fox and The Haggerston on the other side of Kingsland Road are jumping, but there are few takers for cocktails at DBT when I drag my weary derriere over Dalston way, bitching about how K and C might as well be Kansas now that all the action - ce soir nothwithstanding - is out East. Still, living cheek by Dead Sea mud-massaged jowl with Made In Chelsea's waxed back sack and crack bores (according to one on-the-make minx I know who goes there, perish the thought) has its compensations. Style-wise, I don't feel inadequate. Next to E8's hipster hordes, I look about as on-the-moollah as SW3's answer to Cristiano Ronaldo, over-moisturised nob knob, Ollie Locke the manchild who managed to be upstaged by magnolia emulsion on last season's celeb Big Bro'. De Beauvoir Tavern is the latest watering hole from the peeps behind Cargo and The Redchurch. A long corridor of train buffet carriage proportions, it's a bit of a squeeze by the bar; best to bag a booth to the rear.  The cocktail list is short - although not as short as the wine list if the scant contents of a fridge are it. Treacle and clover club appear alongside house ideas fisticuffs (a Jameson Irish whiskey, Laphroaig and Old Krupnik honey liqueur toddy), and nightcap (a JW Black and cherry brandy Manhattan). Grub boils down to fancy filled rolls -  chicken with hoisin and oyster sauce, vegetarian Wellington with goats cheese and shrooms, and dry-aged red poll beef - fair at a fiver a pop. The cod-Victorian decor is saying Sergeant Pepper's - and lonely heart I stay. There again it is barely the hour at which most locals crawl out of their scratchers on a Sunday. But with a 30-minute taxi ride now more expensive than a return flight to Rome, I'm on an economy drive. With the ordeal of the Overground/ Underground schlep West to face, 8pm is late enough to be out East on a school night.

321 Kingsland Road E8 4DL 7739 3440 http://tinyurl.com/kgr5ycb

London House, Battersea

I dug the dive bar at Ramsbo's Union Street Cafe. Will Gordon grab me again with his latest gaff, London House? Problemo: I'm not big on Battersea, on account of having been banished there - weeping, wailing, pilled-up to the pituitary gland on anti-depressants - when I couldn't afford the rent in Chelsea. That was back when the King's Road (hard as this is to believe to anyone under 30) was an eye-poppingly cool street style catwalk not yet overrun by Ollie, Golly, Binky, Stinky, Caggy, Slaggy and other scripted reality show Muppetry. Nowadays, once-grim Battersea is touted as South Chelsea, its cut glass accents as sharp as the blades toted by trouble on the notorious Winstanley Estate during my enforced exile. SW11's flush residents will be manna to Ramsay on a notoriously difficult site that has seen off others, most recently blink-and-you-missed-it Bennett's Oyster Bar and Brasserie. Problemo numero 2: I'm not big on drinking in rooms that look like the set for a remake of 80s OAP sitcom Waiting For God.The lounge - tasteful as it is in Prussian blue, cumin and ox-blood upholstery, warmed by a flame effect fire - is an ante room divorced from the out-of-shot bar's theatre. Make that a great-auntie room, given the age of some of the leather bags loitering after lunch when I drop in. Still, drinks such as Garden of Eden (Elmer T. Lee bourbon, apple and lavender shrub, Kummel and celery soda) and Flying Scotsman (Clynelish Distillers Edition malt, honey, bitters and lapsang souchon smoke) make the safari south worthwhile. Polished, enthusiastic service and realistic pricing - £8 for gin fizz - should also help assure its success. Me? I'm soon itching to get back to my reality, even if, priced out of prime Chelsea, the Spencer Matthew classes are encroaching on my manor now. Totes traj!

7 - 9  Battersea Square SW11 3RA 7592 8545 http://www.gordonramsay.com/london-house/

Upper West, Chelsea

Some claim it is to be the party of the year. It should have been the party of last year, but the grand opening of this gaff has been rescheduled twice. Tonight, it's actually happening. With Made In Chelsea's Cheska as chief cheerleader - tweeting rapturously about her friend Alexander Nall-Cain's 'new amazing club' on the King's Road - we're on the red carpet at Upper West. I'm excited. This venue - like Alexander's pater, Lord Brocket, has previous form. As The Aretusa, it was the epicentre of Swinging London. John and Yoko made their first coupled-up public appearance here,  and a former Vogue cover girl/ King's Road dolly bird of my acquaintance claims it was the 1960s equivalent of Studio 54. On which note, Upper West fancies it is set to bring a dose of New York 'über-style'  to London. As an ex-NewYorker, an underage regular at Studio 54, Upper West sounds right up my strada. Oh! Dear! Judging by the decor, the decade that springs to mind is the 90s... as furnished by The Reject Shop and lit by Texas Homecare (remember those two early high street casulaties?)  As for New York style: what bit of that great metropolis has escaped me? Canarsie? The 54; it's not. There again, Alex's partner Jad Lahoud 'spent two years at Amika..one of the capital's coolest venues.' As I've always rated that Kensington fleshpot marginally less attractive than HMP Pentonville, our idea of 'über-style' is never going to accord. As for the promised 'amazing roof garden'... 'We're waiting for warmer weather' claims Alexander. This, I take to be public school boy code for 'it ain't bleedin finished, squire, innit?' No matter. The Chelsea sticks in their uniform night drag - think Essex girl Amy Childs, only paler, and much less intelligent despite the private education - squeal like baby seals excited to have washed up together on this new pleasure beach. Their male counterparts - who look like younger versions of Michaels Heseltine, Gove or Prince ..... of Kent - do that strange backslappy bromance thing Eton and Windsor boys (as in went to Eton/ belong to the House of Windsor) do whenever they meet. We drink Champagne which, on closer inspection, turns out to be Arestel Cava...currently £3.99 at a certain supermarket - nearest branch, Clapham Junction. For all this lot know, Lidl is a downmarket ski resort in Austria. We're served fried macaroni cheeseballs and mini-hot dogs gone cold. Should have gone to Iceland. That's a shop not a Nordic isle where daddy got his fat banker fingers badly burnt, by the way. The night's 'stars' - Ollie, Cheska and the rest of their ridiculous reality show's cast show up, just as I'm legging it. I may live in the Royal Borough, but I'm sooo not Made In Chelsea, clearly. A Twitpic (above), posted by host Alex, neatly sums up my view on the whole poshy-doshy scene that is a rite of passage for the young SW3 set. Spool forward to  reel 2: the typical female Upper Westie (let's call her Lucinda), now 55, fat and fukt, will be stranded out West in the converted Marlborough manse she hung on to in the divorce settlement with Rupert after the slimy toad was caught rogering Roger, his coke-crazy banker gym buddy/ best man at their 2014 Chelsea registry office wedding. Gaga on Gordon's gin at an hour when others are contemplating getting up, Lucinda's crumpet face will crumple as it turns to Lolly the labrador, her only true friend, asking through her tears, how it ever came to this.
107 King's Road SW3 http://upperwestlondon.com