Let’s get this straight from the start. I hate clubs. They’re horrible places. Expensive to get in, expensive to drink at, and full of tarted up tossers poncing about going "look at me, dontcha wanna shag me". I’m instantly put off clubs because most of them insist on a "dress code". The idea, I think, is that if you’ve got posh gear on you’re less likely to be a wanker and smash the place up.

If you want to pull a chick or get laid or feeling lonely matchmaking at some dating site is far more fruitful and dignified

They also play shite music. Loudly. There was a club in Bath that played decent choons on a Thursday night - Pixies, Stranglers, Ramones, Neds, Nirvana, that kind of caper. But then the loathesome and utterly lamentable Seventies Revival kicked off and suddenly they started playing Abba, Sister fucking Sledge and Gloria bastard Gaynor. I guess this was when I turned into a professional grumpy git. Whatever.

But I digress, again.

Bog Island. A club built in a former underground toilet. A place I frequented often in the early 90s, along with The Nearly-Blogging-Again Blogger Formerly Known As Gaisgeach, and several others.

We’d pretty much inevitably end up down Bog Island after a night on the razz. Bog Island didn’t have much of a dress code, so I loved the place. Yeah! I could wear jeans! A big tub of hair gel wasn’t obligatory! The Newcy Brown was cold! And it wasn’t that expensive!

Most remarkable of all was the DJ. He wasn’t exactly excellent. He’d mix one track into the next, but invariably the reaction on the dancefloor was one of confusion - rhythmically-swinging arms, legs, and bodies would suddenly break out into this shuffling zombified tapdance as MC Mixeee proved yet again that the only wheels he should be spinning were those found in a pottery. I hear there’s quite a market for novelty vases.

A typical evening in Bog Island would involve us queueing up in twos or threes and ignoring each other on the steps in the hope that the bouncers wouldn’t realise they were about to be invaded by a football-team-sized-crowd. Luckily the bouncers were to bouncing as the DJ was to slick mixing. So we’d all meet up at the bar and some poor sod would have to buy twelve drinks. I always needed a slash as soon as I got in, for some reason.

Beers bought, we’d stand around and shout at each other until somebody got lucky. The basic tactic was to stand in the way of any woman that tried to walk past. If you were lucky you’d get your timing right and bash into her, and then you’d have to say sorry. If you were really lucky she’d smile, and then mebbe you could try your luck with "fancy a drink then, luv?". That was usually when your luck ran out. More often than not though she’d just scowl at you and you’d get roared at by your mates. Unless you were Stevie T. He got roared at regardless. Our favourite pastime was to yell "show us your pecks!" just as he got talking to whoever he’d just elbowed on her way to (or from) the bog. Then, for good measure, we’d bellow out a tuneless ditty which became known as the Peckdance, and she’d wander off looking at Stevie T like he’d grown an extra head. Then we’d roar at him again.

After a bit of roaring and Peckdancing the DJ would give up trying to be clever and stick "Sit Down" on, which was our cue. On we’d barge onto the dancefloor, roaring "Ohsiddown!!! Ohsiddown!!! Sidddownnextomeeeeeee!!!" and crash into each other until everyone else had given up and actually sat down. Then we’d get, in no particular order "Can You Dig It", "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Size Of A Cow", "There’s No Other Way" and "Sherriff Fatman". [Ed: How do you spell "sherriff"? Looks wrong to me]

My favourite method of "dancing" to all this was (and, it has to be said, probably still is*) to stand with my feet rigidly planted to the floor and just sort-of loll about flapping my arms and rolling my head.

The DJ would then come back from his break and spoil it by trying to mix the end of Indie Half-hour into some trendy bollocks like MC Hammer. That was my cue to head back to the bar.

By this time I’d be sweating like a pig and unable to speak coherently, and, flushed with the heady success of another dazzling performance on the dancefloor, I’d start trying to speak English to some poor woman. She’d run away pretty quickly. I’d see Stevie T snogging someone in the corner and get jealous, and then I’d remember Pizza Man.

Pizza Man was this mad old Irish fella who’d hang around the top of the steps around kicking-out time. He had one of those thermal bags, and inside it, lovingly wrapped in clingfilm, were lukewarm slices of slimy sweaty pizza. A quid a shot. I’d buy a couple, and stagger on up the hill to Bear Flat trying not to let them dribble all down my jacket. I’d stick something maudlin like REM on the CD player and pass out, only to be woken up twenty minutes later by the rest of the crowd. On would go Hellraiser again. Somebody would discover beer or a bottle of something horrendous (slivovitz, schnapps, meths) and we’d all go "god that’s gross" at the telly before passing out.

Happy days!