Man About Town: Clubs cater for all tastes – even bean baths

A dwarf dressed as a dog walks around greeting the guests

Luke Blackall
Saturday 22 March 2014 10:17 GMT
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A colossally fat clown, naked from the waist up, was struggling to remove his tights on stage. Behind him, an athletic man wearing nothing but a jockstrap was spraying bottles of beer, so the liquid deflected off his naked bottom and into the crowd.

This was the fourth birthday party of Cirque Le Soir, one of London’s most popular nightclubs. Apparently the clown’s strip show was nothing: The Infamous Boom Boom, as he is known, is also fond of finishing his act by bathing in beans.

The sort of entertainment that would keep many away attracts both high-paying punters and papped-popstars (Rihanna and Drake were there a couple of weeks ago). And has helped the club become, as you might imagine, quite a fixture on the scene. This year they brought in movie set designers to help convert the club to look like a suburban American house party.

In a room kitted out like a lounge, guests played old video games consoles, red cups full of cocktails were handed out in a kitchen area, and it’s the only adult nightclub that I’m aware of where you can jump into a bunk-bed with a ball pit at the bottom. Similarly, where else would you see a dwarf dressed as a dog walking around greeting guests?

Spending an hour or so exploring the place, I headed back into the main room to see that the whale and the dolphin who were on stage had been replaced by dancers with nipple tassles and bearded cheerleaders. In the night circus around Soho, it’s nice to know that every taste is still catered for.

My other eye-opening experience this week was meeting Harry Yeff, also known as Reeps One. You might think that a beatboxer (one who uses his mouth as an instrument to make dance and hip hop music) might conform to certain pop stereotypes.

But far from it. Yeff is as articulate as he is talented, not only in his extraordinary vocal abilities, but also as an artist. If you’re in the capital and obese naked clowns isn’t your thing, check out Reeps One’s Attention Deficit Order exhibition at the LondoNewcastle gallery in Shoreditch for the next week – plus he’s doing a live painting event today.

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