Koko still rules ok?

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Packed: The club attracts a trendy crowd

Breathtaking: Aerialist Empress Stah hangs out in Camden's KoKo, while revellers pack the dancefloor below for a truly atmospheric party

Top hat and tails: Digging into KoKo's dressing-up box of tricks

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As a North London girl, I've always favoured nights out on my side of the river.

I still remember bopping to Blur and Oasis at the Camden Palace, an old theatre and a hugely popular venue with the early Nineties indie crowd.

In 2004, the turn-of-the-century Grade II-listed building was closed for a major refurbishment and six months later reopened as KoKo - keeping much of its original elegance in a reinvention that proved to be a runaway success.

Since then it has hosted the likes of Madonna, Prince, Coldplay and Editors, and holds big nights such as the always-packed monthly Guilty Pleasures.

It's still one of my favourite clubs so when I heard that decadence and burlesque were to be the order of the evening, with the Smirnoff Electric Cabaret rolling into NW1, I couldn't miss it.

Having made its debut at Koko last year, the Smirnoff Electric Cabaret went on to entertain the festival crowds of Edinburgh and the ravers of Ibiza. Now they were back with a night promising music, magic, cocktails and cabaret.

My three girlfriends and I arrived at 9.30pm (entry £10 including a cocktail) to be greeted by sequin-clad showgirls, their heads adorned with feathers, their make-up as dazzling as their smiles. They might just have stepped off stage at the Moulin Rouge.

We made a beeline for the complimentary dressing-up box by the cloakroom, decking ourselves out in boas, top hats and red mesh gloves.

You enter Koko on the middle floor, where the old circle seating used to be, allowing you to look down from the large balcony onto the dancefloor below.

The place was a sea of red feathers and the huge glitterball centrepiece - reportedly Europe's largest - sprinkled red starlight on the revellers, who were warming up to Eighties electro-pop.

There was the usual, trendy Koko crowd, some of whom had clearly come straight from work, but others had really got into the mood of the evening - one girl was dressed to impress as a ringmaster, complete with fishnets and black patent stilettos.

Wandering around the four floors on our way to the bar, we stopped and chatted to plenty of strangers - the dressing-up outfits certainly seemed to have melted everyone's inhibitions.

Up in Vladimir's Bar, we got down to the serious business of cocktails (all at £4.90). Lizzie and I sipped our Moscow Mules, while my friend Firgas had the Czar's Bellini: black vodka, white peach purée and sparkling prosecco poured over ice. But we declared our favourite to be the classic Seabreeze, so easy to drink we found ourselves knocking back quite a few.

Drinks in hand, we made our way back downstairs where a crowd was being entertained by sleight-ofhand from the vampish, satin- corseted Magic Circle magician Laura London. Then we watched aerialist Empress Stah dangle precariously beneath the chandelier from what seemed to be only a very thick ribbon. What with her and the stilt-walkers (which freak me out at the best of times), it's lucky there was plenty more vodka on offer to help steady our nerves.

We settled into some serious people watching and were joined by an outrageous drag queen who had more than a few bitchy comments to make about his fellow revellers. The vodka and the music got the better of us, though, and we hit the huge, packed dancefloor.

As the DJ spun a crowd-pleasing mix of electro, house and classics, we bounced around in an atmosphere of happy abandon we hadn't felt in a club in years. We vogued with our boas to Madonna, flipped our hair about to the Human League and sang and pranced with showgirls, goths, burlesque dancers and suits alike.

I lost my friends for a while, giving me the chance to wander around absorbing the atmosphere. Avoiding the face-painting area, I bumped into a mime artist whose mimickery of drunk people at the bar was hilarious.

Back with my friends, we air-guitared to US rockers OK:GO, who were performing an exclusive live set in keeping with the night's ethos, then Radio 1 DJ Kissy Sell Out got everyone back on the dancefloor until the small hours. We rolled out at 1am, plucking red feathers off each other, but we'll be back soon. Tonight KoKo will be full of guitar-loving indie kids, for the regular Friday night Club NME - just like the old days.

• For KoKo events see www.koko.uk.com. Smirnoff is sponsoring London's Bush Hall. Look out for more original nights in 2008 including the Chaz Burlesque Cabaret on the 4th and 5th April. See www.smirnoff.com or www.bushhallmusic.co.uk

 

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