Chinawhite's Chilled and Cheap (sometimes...)

Last week, on Halloween, I made my debut on to the London club scene by spending the evening at celebrity night spot Chinawhite. Now, I've heard loads of stories about this place from the ridiculous amount of celebrity gossip that I tend to consume along with my daily supplies of oxygen. I know the door almost as well as I know my own front door from the countless photos of mini-skirted, drunken celebs spilling out that fill Heat magazine and the like. So I was pretty damn excited about spending a night there, having been added to the guest list for their 'Black Magik' party through a model-type with the offer of free drinks and a ghoulish show from various performance artists.


More than anything I wanted to see what this place was like, this haunt of Prince Harry on a rebellious night, and I wasn't disappointed. Once the doorman was satisfied we were on the guestlist we were let through the rope and down the steps where a couple of girls were standing with trays of lethal absinthe-filled cocktails, free to warm up the partygoers. And oh, how they warmed us up! By the time a magician arrived at the table we'd snuck on to (reserved for someone else) we were feeling pretty cocooned in our new wondrous world of free drinks and personal friendly service, so we stared in awe as each of the six tricks he performed for us wowed us again and again. He was truly amazing...

Shortly afterwards the people who actually had booked and paid for the table we were sat at arrived and a friendly hostess asked us politely to move, we complied and wandered towards the VIP bar to watch the show. (The bar's purely for the waitresses to come and collect drinks from for the stars in the VIP lounge... this was frustrating when us commoners became drunk enough to convince each other to buy a ridiculously priced cocktail...) A little while into the show a middle aged guy approached us and asked us to come and sit with a band he managed. Now, as I was saying, only the people with serious cash can book the tables so we were grateful for a place to sit and thanked him. We sat down opposite this groomed group of older guys and tried to place their faces... eventually we did. It was INXS, fresh from their big American Pop-Idol-style TV show 'Rock Star: INXS' in which they found a new front man for the band.

So we sat with these guys for a while, slightly starstruck... they were all very nice and completely un-rock and roll... don't think I'm going to ruin any reputations by saying that...

The show that was put on in the club was fantastic, with a contortionist, various magicians, a woman who hung pumpkins from her breasts (ugh) and much more. The evening gets blurrier after that, I remember drinking, a lot of dancing and a hangover the next morning... all in all it was a fantastic night. Don't think I can afford to ever go back if I have to pay for drinks, but still, Chinawhite was a lot more homely and friendly than I could have expected. If I win the lottery or am blasted into the celebrity stratosphere any time soon I'd certainly go back. The next morning I was idly surfing the net in a break at work and found this photo of Martine McCutcheon leaving Chinawhite on the same night we went... thinking again about the 'celebrity' thing, I think I prefer my drunken photos private, I certainly know how she felt...