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With a single dessert and just two glasses of wine our bill was kept in check - but the effort of doing so was not much fun
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Pimp your night
By Joe Roberts, London Lite 26.10.07
Costume play: at Pimp And Fluffy the only limit is your own imagination
Hosiery in the house: at this Vauxhall night the style rules are naughty but fun
Look here too
Clubland is big on dressing-up right now. From Boombox's Hoxton fashionistas to School Disco, clubbers are eagerly trying on new identities and abandoning inhibitions.
Now here's a new night with something extra: Pimp And Fluffy, a quarterly club evening at Hidden in Vauxhall. This is Carry On Clubbing for the Noughties, "ooh matron!" and all.
Tonight my sister and I are attending their first party. Earlier we buy tickets for £10 on the website; a list of suggested outfits ranges from nurses to the Navy and burlesque to Bond. Taking my cue from the club's name, I get myself up as a trainee pimp. For extra bling I dig out a Mercedes badge, "acquired" one dark night years ago.
Arriving at midnight, we're greeted by club promoter Hannah, dressed as a racetrack girl. She hands us each a pink pimp dollar. We can earn more by buying tequila shots, jumping on the dance podium or signing up to the mailing list.
Collect six and we get cheap entry for the next event on 22 December.
Hidden is spacious but not lose-your-friends huge. In the central room are sofas, the smallest of its dancefloors and a large bar. On either side are two large dancefloors, one with a second bar and a raised stage for the less inhibited dancers.
At the bar, a beer and whisky and coke come in at £4 each. As my sister goes to the loos to change into her schoolgirl outfit, I survey the crowd.
A guy in chain mail stands by me. Behind him a female Army cadet dances with a Twenties flapper; an angel in wings and a huge afro rollerskates past a man in a corset.
We rest on a sofa, and a man in a lab-coat sits down opposite. "I don't think he's wearing underwear," says my sister. It'd be rude to lean over and check, but the masked, naked guy dancing in a corner sure isn't.
The Pimp Room opens at 1am, with a DJ in an enormous Huggy Bear-style fur coat spinning his selection of James Brown, Parliament and classic Seventies funk.
On the room's centrepiece, a huge bed, a girl in stockings does the splits. There's a lot of bare flesh on display, but nothing sleazy about the good-looking and self-assured crowd.
Among the young and beautiful are an equal number of middle-aged clubbers. One woman in suspenders even introduces us to her parents.
Catching up with Hannah, we learn she runs fetish night Club Subversion, and organises the annual Rubber Ball. But Pimp And Fluffy caters for those who just like to dress slightly dangerously. "A lot of people want to dress up," she says. "You become someone else for the evening. It's escapism at its best."
We head to the Fluffy Room to hear house legend Alex P. The crowd dancing to his electrohouse are infectiously bouncy, and we're carried away in the fun.
The mix of house, breakbeat and funk satisfies everyone. Dancing clubbers are whooping, grinding against the pillars or climbing on the seats in their music frenzy.
A long journey means we have to leave with a heavy heart at 3am, but we promise to be back. Maybe next time I'll even have graduated from pimp academy.
The next Pimp And Fluffy evening is 22 December; Hidden, 100 Tinworth Street, SE11. pimpandfluffy.com
