Club Beer Garden. An attempt to rekindle past glories, to ignite that spark once again, to recapture the zest, glamour and emotional resonance of Clubs Beer passim, to reinvigorate an institution beginning to look its age. Yes, it was our first birthday, and although there wasn't jelly and streamers, we did, on arrival at the Hobgoblin (nee George Canning), have bangers and mash. This is what birthday parties are all about, I thought, chowing down on my vege sausage while reaching over with my left hand to start the platter moving under the needle and issue forth
to the assorted diners, drinkers and daydreamers out there in the beer garden the unmistakable strains of Born In The USA. Played by an orchestra.

You see, we had a mobile disco set up in the pub's beer garden, a fine idea conceptualised and executed by our host, the estimable Martyn. Martyn is the first person we've "worked" with who has fully embraced the Club Beer concept. In fact, Martyn may well be the only person we've ever met who's more Club Beer than us. He understands our mission and keenly appreciates its social resonance. He digs the concept. But he has that one crucial advantage: Martyn runs a pub. Handy.

PLAYING IT BY BEER
So our harebrained scheme to celebrate our first year of nonsense by playing records in a beer garden all afternoon, then moving indoors before the rain started falling, and inviting all our mates to partake of strong ale at the same time, a plan hatched less than two weeks before the desired date, came to pass. Martyn had the vision, And he had the pub. All we needed to do was bring our records and play them, and tell people and get them to come.

At this point it should perhaps be stressed that this has always been what Club Beer was about, but it never happens like that. There's always some problem to be solved first, a broken speaker it falls to us to mend, or us having a fretful night worrying that we won't have enough money to pay the venue, or some TWAT forgets a lead and we end up debating - quite seriously - whether to throw ourselves off a boat. So the fact that, on Sunday, we turned up at the Hobgoblin and played some records, and that some people came down and had a good time, and so did we, was some sort of miracle. This was the Club Beer of our dreams. It was the greatest Club Beer ever. It wasn't the busiest, it wasn't the most demented, it wasn't the most drunken - it was, as Tina would have undoubtedly concurred, simply the best.

We had joy, then, and we certainly had fun; and we would have had our season in the sun, although the clouds obscured it for much of the afternoon. But we kept the rain at bay, playing records like Here Comes The Summer, Mr Blue Sky and Here Comes The Sun much as one might goad a wounded bull. Yer rain didn't know whether it was coming or going, so we made good our escape just after the Charity Shield had finished, decamping to the Hobgoblin's spacious - nay, luxurious - Conservatory for the evening just as the clouds finally disgorged their soaking baggage onto the garden. Rinsin', in a very real sense.

This inspired a mass rush to our shelter, where the confused and the sane alike were treated to a selection of CB mash-up mayhem. It never quite reached critical mass in there. Maybe we peaked too soon, a triple-whammy of Crazy Horses, Where Are You Baby? and Sheriff Fatman failing to stop Zoe from leaving, and maybe there just weren't enough bodies swaying to Peter Hofman's unbelievably shite version of Sailing to bring back memories of our ill-starred boat trip (thank fuck). Even the inaugural CB airing of AC/DC's It's A Long Way To The Top (If You
Wanna Rock And Roll) wasn't enough to get Andrew on his feet. (That would have been too much: when Andrew finally dances at Club Beer, Ian and I will probably explode.)

PINT OF NO RETURN
But by the time Martyn opened the doors through to the other bar, and pissed Brixtonians tumbled in to jig about wildly to Copacabana, That's Living Alright, You're The One That I Want and Fame, it felt like we had finally found our spiritual home. We briefly attempted, but suddenly abandoned, a contest between the two of us as to who was the best DJ where we awarded each other a point for each person dancing, taking it in turns to play records. But arguments broke out after Ian told me that just because I was seeing double didn't mean there were twice as many people cutting a rug to my top tunes. Pedant. Whatever, the dancefloor went several shades of bonkers, an over-ambitious couple attempting some sort of back-flip jive move and only narrowly avoiding serious head injuries. And, in a fitting finale, Martyn and his good lady Sharon shared the last waltz to Charlie Rich (memo to people who want "their tune" played at Club Beer: it helps if a) you bring the record, b) you ply us with ale, and c) it's your pub).

And at the end of the night we felt exhilarated, overjoyed, vindicated, and extremely pissed. For not only was it the best Club Beer, but by a good four hours it was the longest, which is time for an extra seven pints. Each. But as people cheered and applauded us away from the building, stopping only to help us stand up, garland us with flowers or drop at our feet, sobbing uncontrollably in sorrow at our departure, we knew that it had been one of the most amazing events in showbiz history. Unless I drank so much that I'm still hallucinating, that is.

Click here for the pics

And here for Chapter Ten