Bobby Fitzpatrick, West Hampstead

Cheesier than Laughing Cow cubes and pineapple pieces on cocktail sticks served at Abigail’s Party, the new gaff from the guys at Coin Laundry is stuck in the same Formica and shag pile bad taste time-warp as Mike Leigh’s iconic play, the mid-70s. In a lurid lounge and downstairs living room furnished in the sort of curated kitsch Corrie’s Jack and Vera Duckworth coveted, or In a tacky full-scale kitchenette ripped out of a ghastly Grimsby granny flat circa Little Jimmy Osmond, rip into rum-laced rinses. Bobby’s first love is Alison Mahoney (a spicy Havana 3-y-o lime and ginger tease) and on a Tequila tip, we’re torn between tropical fruity Michelle Ma Belle or Caribbean carnival crush, Sexy Ting. Club together for gin and pisco puncheons to share, shooters and hoochy slushies from a tacky bar straight out of a Willesden working mens club from back when real men wore Brut and Bri-Nylon briefs. Snack on prawn cocktail, deep-fried garlic mushrooms, chicken nuggets or potato skins loaded with bacon and sour creams. More filling still, there’s pizza topped with lamb doner and garlic sauce,  chicken tikka, or ‘the full English’; Red Leicester cheeseburger, and rum baba or banana pie with a side of Barry White and The Bee Gees.

273 West End Lane NW6 1QS 7433 1989 www.bobbyf.co.uk

Turntable, Holborn

Studio!!! 

Sazeracs and old soul sounds: Turntable should be up my street. BITD when I used to DJ, nipping off to New York on Friday and returning to London on the Sunday night red-eye from JFK with a suitcase full of pre-release 12-inch discs was a monthly routine. I'm thinking of taking to the decks again: like the Valentine Brothers say, Money's Too Tight To Mention (he says, before HMRC gets any ideas ) and at various hip launches where the client has coughed up serious dough and booked a rare groover - as opposed to some celebrity's brat offspring/ precocious 'model', paid £10K just to press 'play' on an iPad  - I frequently find myself thinking "'Useless'" (Kym Mazelle) and how my record collection is stuffed with way better "Stuff Like That" (Quincy Jones ft Chaka)  So, I'm keen to visit this new vinyl-only DJ bar whose playlist is collated by Jazzi Q of Soul II Soul, big in the 90s. The sort of tracks I'm hearing - Phyllis Hyman, Linda Clifford, Gwen Guthrie, Cheryl Lynn, Shalamar, and a sprinkling of Motown - are guaranteed floor-fillers so It's A Shame (as The Detroit Spinners sang it)  that I don't want to "do a little dance, Get Down Tonight". Clearly, I've picked the wrong evening; it's not exactly heaving like Paradise Garage in its prime or about to wrest the disco crown from Studio 54. Maybe there's a secret door to a VIP lounge where Liza, Jerry, Bianca, Andy, Calvin, Halston, Grace, Divine and the gang are partying like it's 1979? Named after classic soul cuts of that decade, Turntable's street level bar's £8 cocktails  - Jungle Boogie (rum, Mandarine Napoléon and kumquat) and Ain’t No Sunshine (Aperol, grapefruit, rosé wine and blood orange)... but no Evelyn 'Champagne' King cocktail - are fair enough but the austere, claustrophobic, downstairs dance bar is way too (Barry) white; stark and boxy, unlike the late great growler's loin-locking smoochers, it's neither sexy nor Chic -  more joyless Norwich nightclub circa Joy Division tonight. Will I come back and order South Asian street food staples - Malay chicken, hot and sour fish, or lentil and aubergine curry -  to eat to the beat? Tempus fugit! I'm off home to mix Manhattans, Boogie Oogie Oogie round my sitting room, and hatch my big comeback plan.

7 - 9 Norwich Street EC4A 1EJ 7112 9179  http://www.turntable.london

Disco, Soho Part 2

Whenever I hear its unmistakable opening bars, Van McCoy's 70's classic The Hustle still thrills me to the core.  The Whispers; The Chi-Lites; George McRae; Teddy Pendergrass; The Hues Corporation: such was the diet of a 4-to-the-floor fan kid in his bedroom, dreaming of strutting far-off Manhattan's seemingly unattainable light-up dance floors. It was a fantasy that would presently come true, however. Clocking the bold slogan I'd had printed in white on a black t-shirt,  Steve Rubell, co-owner of the world's most notorious night club... EVER, spots this precocious wee Scot, not yet legally old enough to drink,  chancing his luck at the Big Apple’s most hard to crash door.  picking me out from among the clamouring hordes of hopefuls in their thousands at his venue’s besieged portals, he beckons me to come forward "FUCK STUDIO 54?" - for such was the message of my gamble in  reverse psychology - "You got some nerve, kid!’ Fearing the worst, the cocky kid is quaking inside, all yellow Jello in 501 jeans. After what seemed like at least a decade…..he smiles and pulls back the velvet rope that separates mere mortals from disco heaven. "Welcome to Studio 54. Enjoy!" says God, handing me a 54-embossed lifetime VIP membership for my chutzpah; this, to the utter incredulity of my hard-bitten Manhattan leather queen roomie who had warned such impudence would see us both permanently banished to Brooklyn or some other bridge and tunnel hell. Fast forward to 2013. If - as Charlie  Gilkes just has  - you are going to open a London club that aims to recreate NYC's glory days (i.e circa Shalamar), expect me to be your pickiest critic. Accomplished international Hustler; DJ; Fire Island tea dance fixture:  DISCO is in my DNA. Well, perhaps not quite all things. What was consumed in 54's inner sanctum, vintage Dom P aside, never really interested me.  Fly Robin Fly by Silver Convention, not a silver spoon at my nose, was all I needed to get high. But as I head towards the party Charlie (ironic name for a nightclub owner, no?) is throwing for DISCO Soho's launch, I am coming over all queer - and not in a YMCA way. You See The Trouble With Me (as big old Bazza White sang it) is the hash brown I ate at a party I attended earlier was exactly what it said on the tin and its key ingredient’s woozy warpy ways  are kicking in. And not in a good way. As fake hair-flicky drag queens camp it up and DISCO's waiters in gold shorts and muscle vests take to the floor for their well-choreographed routine to The Fatback Band's Bus Stop,  I'm becoming increasingly claustrophobic, panicked by flashbacks. Fraying around the edges, I am beginning to Freak, and not in a Chic way. How come? Because DISCO, entered via a mocked-up door to a Pan-Am 747, feels Mighty Real (RIP Sylvester). Not up there with 54 of course, but it could be a dive in downtown Hoboken circa Boogie Ooogie Oogie. What's really upsetting me though, is a mural in the style of Keith Haring - imagery that I will forever associate with New York in those dark days when the perma-party turned to carnage. Suddenly, they are all back in the room. Warren; Steve; Angel; Karl; Calvin; Lloyd: gym buff blokes in their prime turned overnight into sarcoma-riddled, zombie-eyed cadavers as the Big A felled 50% of my disco buds. Add to this, a worrying-looking go-go dancer that, in my current altered state, I take to be a short-arse London society queen with her head stuck inside a glitter ball. "Wow! Is that really Fran Cutler?" I say. "Not with that body" quips catty person unknown. Or have I hallucinated that too? Sweaty, clammy, breathless,  I flee Gilkes's undoubtedly fine and fun vision of 1979 before I can critique DISCO's disco drinks - tequila sunrise, Harvey Wallbanger, blue lagoon. Based on his other venue's cocktails (Bunga Bunga, Maggie's Bart's), I imagine they are all perfectly acceptable. “ Take deep breaths and repeat ten times "I Will Survive" I say to myself as Gilke's PR leads me up towards fresh air and spirits me off to the relative sanity of his other new gaff, Mr. Fogg's (see next review). Music was always my party drug of choice. The same can’t be said of so many Studio54  regulars that have long since joined Steve Rubell, partying on at the greatest disco the skies have ever seen, no doubt.  

DISCO, 13 Kingly Court W1 7299 1222 http://disco-london.com

King of Ladies Man, Battersea

( What's the spin?)

As with first-timers at this new bar's similarly mad-monickered big sis' in the City, The Mayor of Scaredy Cat Town, part of the fun is fathoming how to get into the damn place. At KoLM, you'll need to apply to the lady in charge of its retro American laundromat. Washeteria? Rinses? See what they did there? But, doh! Blowing the reveal, some soap bubble-head has left the joint's fold-back door back wall wide open, allowing me to walk straight into the room directly off the street outside. Fortunately this Dot Cotton-wool-brained oversight doesn't spoil my appreciation of the gaff's hilariously kitsch interior. If Are You Being Served's Mr Humphreys had been called on to dress a set for a soft porn flick starring an Elvis impersonator, it would surely have looked like this -all pink flamingo wallpaper, Swanky Modes styling (ask your Mum!), well-thumbed copies of old Playboy mags and other cheesy Guilty Pleasures-style decor. Acres of gold lurex bring another reference to mind - that other notorious (little) Ladies Man, Jimmy Savile - but  I wouldn't want to put you off your cocktail, cock. On which note, disco drinks listed in a serial shagger around town's little leather-bound black book are what to order . Revisit camp throwback, blue lagoon, and tequila sunrise - that "doesn't it look really pretty, Sue?" Abigail's Party-piece your Auntie Phyllis used to serve at her Tupperware evenings to encourage her victims to shell out on the nest of rainbow coloured injection moulded picnic containers and the crystal effect party Susan they didn't know they needed. Otherwise, you might fancy a snowball or sand in your pants, a cracking drink made with Taboo and Xante pear, lemon and prosecco. Hell, I bet the Hawaiian-shirted barman's jeans are fromTake Six, and he's doused in Denim or Hai Karate for the sake of period authenticity. Bung big Barry White's I'm Gonna Love You Just A Little More, Baby on the eight track, and in Battersea, it's 1974 all over again.

5 Battersea Rise, SW11  https://www.facebook.com/TheKingOfLadiesMan