I’m a nightclub bouncer – here’s every flimsy excuse I’ve seen for a fake ID

From prison papers to train tickets, when it comes to sneaking into clubs, door supervisor George Bass has seen every trick in the book. With whizzy digital IDs set to stall such skulduggery, he says he’ll miss the mischief – even if it makes his life easier

As a security guard and bouncer, I have seen more fake IDs than you can shake a stick at, so the news that digital ID cards are coming filled me with a curious sense of loss. I’ve been in the job for nearly two decades, and I’ve seen every trick in the book.

In the ‘90s, it was easy: all you had to do was wait until your IT lesson, then get on the one computer with a flatbed scanner and put your passport onto the glass. Then you copied and pasted a zero from the issue number over the digit at the end of your date of birth, adding years to your real age.

When you got to the pub, you showed the bar staff the printout. If they asked you where your actual passport was, you said, “It’s at work,” while trying to sound casual and not break eye contact.

The club at the site where I’m based these days requires photo ID, and I’m already nostalgic that the so-called “Brit cards, the digital ID that every adult in the country will be expected to carry, might soon be the only acceptable form of it. It means I’ll no longer get to see cringeworthy forged driving licenses, or a bloke trying to argue that he must be of drinking age because “This train ticket does not say ‘child’.”

Checking IDs has the side-effect of showing how creative people can be when it comes to blagging entry. It’s a skill that’s rubbed off on me when it comes to blagging them back out again: something I don’t have to do as often as you might think. Most people understand that, if the lights are up and the hoovers are going but they’re still trying to order Jägers from the DJ, they should probably call it a night.

‘I may never have to deal with another customer who won’t let me get too near to their wallet, as they believe I’m going to hack into their credit card. Or watch someone pull out their prison release papers to prove that they’re over 18’ (Getty/iStock)

The less reasonable ones are trickier. If a customer looks like they might not react well to being politely shown the exit, you have to be tactful. Telling a bloke who’s swirling around that there’s a redhead outside asking for his number is like casting an instant sobriety spell. It can clear the dance floor even quicker than ‘The Birdie Song’.

Obviously, everyone needs to be kept safe. As a kid, jumping around to Orbital on a hillside somewhere I can’t remember, and watching the crowd sway like a wave machine, I suddenly wondered who was keeping an eye out. What if a bad batch of pharmaceuticals went around? What if blue lights appeared on the horizon? What if someone who was dancing on their own fainted? The same questions have kept me in my security job ever since.

I may never have to deal with another customer who won’t let me get too near to their wallet, as they believe I’m going to hack into their credit card. Or watch someone pull out their prison release papers to prove that they’re over 18.

Maybe the creativity at the club door will still exist – but in a digital form, and sadly dreamt up by a non-human. “AI,” said my daughter when I told her about Brit cards, confident she can get whatever virtual verification she needs if she types the right prompt into the search box.

If digital IDs achieve their goal of making people-smuggler gangs disappear, great. I just hope they don’t take the more benevolent rule-breakers with them.