Like every 20-year-old in the 1990s, my schedule was as predictable as it was immutable — I went to a different club every night of the week. Sundays were not so much sacrosanct as a thrillingly vacant possibility which meant if there was a sudden secret pop-up somewhere, off I ran. The fact I had a regular job (I worked on the dealing floor of a Japanese investment bank in the City with a daily 7.30am sharp start time) rarely encroached on my vastly more rewarding nightly activities. Oddly, I never thought of myself as a clubber. None of us did — it was simply part of the collective tapestry that dictated our lives. The idea that anyone would sit at home watching hours of TV feels so hilariously puzzling it wasn’t even a consideration. That was what losers did.
To understand the lifestyle I’ve just described, you need to see it in the context of what London was like in the 1990s: a magnetic cauldron of energy and experimentation, of label-free individualism and freedom, a place imbued with the thrill of never knowing where or with whom you might end up.
