I was invited to a swanky party in town last night. The London News Review is launching in print next month and everyone who bought a copy of the pre-launch issue also got an invite to last night's knees-up. How exciting could that be? Perhaps more exciting than the pre-launch issue of the magazine anyway. They've promised that issue 1 will be better.
The party was held at what used to be the Limelight club, a renovated church down Shaftesbury Avenue. Last time I was there Daphne and Celeste were performing, so this had to be an improvement. The Limelight has recently been reborn as yet another bar in the Walkabout chain, all Australian-themed (as if there isn't enough Australia on the telly and in blogworld at the moment). The LNR team had taken over the bar on an otherwise dead Monday and were hoping to pack the place out with 500 movers, shakers and general technorati. Success.
I went along in the hope of meeting some interesting people. The organisers even promised that some MPs would be present (and maybe those four slightly odd-looking suited blokes were, but I'm not sure). On the way in we were offered the choice of ten coloured ribbons to wear, so I opted for the orange one ("weblogs can be fun, ask me how"). This would have been a very successful idea were it not for the fact that the club was lit by a bright red light, shining down from the dome above, so I could have been wearing yellow (Liberal Democrat), white (disappointed by Hutton) or red (dog-killer) for all anybody knew. Nobody asked, anyway.
I hoped that there might be at least someone there that I knew, and there was. There was Dave Gorman. That's the famous one of the 54. He seemed to be enjoying the evening, even if the general public weren't leaving him (and his elfin girlfriend) alone very much of the time. The general public were also very busy talking to each other. My latent Aspergers kicked in and I stood back and watched the other 499 people having quite a good time. Ah well, at least there were free nibbles. On my way back to the tube afterwards I passed the smiling crowds coming out of the The Streets gig at the Astoria. Hmm, maybe I should have gone there instead - geezers need excitement.
