How celebs solve China crisis

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There is only one way to guarantee immediate entry to Chinawhite on a Wednesday night and it involves quite a bit of elaborate pre-planned synchronicity, serious cheek and hi-rolling chutzpah.

First you need a people carrier (stretch limos are so bridge and tunnel, darling) preferably black, preferably Mercedes and preferably with tinted windows. The vehicle must be filled with handsome men, hard-bodied honeys and the odd Calum Best (George's boy) or party-going actresses like Davinia Taylor.

Using a method patented by the millionaire businessman and serial modeliser Robert Hanson, you must instruct your driver to approach the heaving rabble of dolled-up hopefuls who are clustering around the entrance in Air Street (or 'Airhead Street' as one Big Issue salesman was heard calling it after witnessing the dippy fuss caused by Jordan's arrival one night) turning right off Piccadilly.

On no account must you leave the car until it is exactly perpendicular to the velvet rope outside the club, even if this means a wait of 20 minutes as you inch through the seven-deep human traffic. Then, with a nod from June Montana, the firm but fair clipboard maitresse on the door, your driver exits his cockpit. The velvet rope is unhooked at exactly the same moment as the car door slides open (this, you see, is where the people carrier comes into its own). The high-sided car and the closeness of the crowd act as a shield against the paparazzi, while you skip effortlessly from the Merc's plush, carpeted interior straight into the club without ever setting foot on civilian concrete. You have arrived.

Now if all this sounds a tad complicated, you have probably never witnessed Chinawhite's entertaining lobby of well-heeled chaos at close quarters. Even as the famed Wednesday-night ritual (run by ¸ber-PR girls Sarah Woodhead and Jeanette Calliva) approaches its fourth anniversary, the hours spent on the wrong side of the rope between 11pm and 1am are still absolute mayhem. But if you don't happen to mind 45 or so minutes of undignified shoving, Chinawhite will not disappoint you. The place is a riot - fun, mischievous and potent cat-nip to any visiting celebrities.

The key to Chinawhite's incredible longevity --four years at the height of fashion - appears to be its brazen embrace of the Euro. The club has become part of a bacchanalian circuit that also includes Les Caves du Roy in St Tropez, Pacha in Ibiza, and Billionaire in Sardinia, and its amusing cocktail of B-list Brits, Hollywood stars, young Royals and leery Eurotrash keeps the club popping.

Julien Macdonald, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney, Madonna, William Orbit, Hugh Grant, David Schwimmer, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Milla Jovovich, Kate Moss, Natalie Imbruglia, Jay Kay, Liza Minnelli, Joaquin Phoenix, Flavio Briatore, Prince William, Freddie Windsor, Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger, Princess Caroline of Monaco and Prince Ernst of Hanover have all attended at some time. Every single one has ended up losing it a little and dancing like a dervish.

Last year Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner celebrated his 75th birthday here and in May, a jubilant Freddie Ljungberg was so desperate to get down to Chinawhite from Manchester, where Arsenal had just sealed the Premiership title with a win over United, that he chartered a plane and turned up at the club still wearing his football kit.

Once, a blazered Prince Andrew was knocked back from the VIP area by a host for looking too square, and rapper Ja Rule barged DJ Dom T (who goes out with an Atomic Kitten) off the turntable and hijacked the sound system for an hour. On another occasion, the Manchester United goalkeeper, Fabien Barthez, who had been dumped by Linda Evangelista, found solace in the arms of a busty blonde at the club. He managed to get Linda back, but his antics saw him fined £40,000 by his manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, after he was spotted leaving the club at 3.30am on a work night.

So what's it like inside? Chinawhite is like an oversubscribed opium den, a dance-on-the-banquettes Babylon, a heady combination of chinoiserie and bewildering geographical chicanery. At the back is the Wu Wu Room, a small and horizontal speak-easy painted bloodred, dominated by a large bed and strewn with silk cushions and soft Sumatran rugs. At the other end of the club is a warren of notoriously impenetrable VIP rooms including the Mao Room, a glossy, black temple to Mao Tse Tung hidden at the back of the main room, and the Octagon Room, in which 14 privileged occupants are presided over by a stone Buddha head. Rather confusingly, the VIP rooms are largely ignored by the VIPs who, desirous of being noticed by the punters on the dancefloor, tend to gravitate toward the scatter-cushioned booths at the perimeter of the main room.

At one side it is gold-digging babes and drooling Arabs, at the other it's the music producer Nellee Hooper, Lady Victoria Hervey, footballer David James and make-up artist Jemma Kidd. The music is loud, lascivious, unashamedly celebratory and designed for hip thrusting, bumping and grinding. Indeed, many regulars believe the lyrics to a current floor filler, Nelly's 'Hot in Herre', which includes the line 'It's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes', was actually inspired by a particularly boisterous Chinawhite Wednesday.

Chinawhite, 6 Air Street, W1 (020 7343 0040)

Proprietors: Rory Keegan, a former theatre impresario; Patrice Gouty, who once ran Trader Vics; and John Stephen, who used to run Mortons.

Signature drink: the 'Chinawhite', a strong vodka and lychee-based cocktail.

Membership: £650 a year. But no one who is anyone is actually a member. All you need is a nod from June on the door to secure entry. But that is only likely if you are a regular or a celebrity.

 

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