“This is her!” Eleftheria’s friend shouts into my ear over the music, as a body bag is dragged through the crowd, up the central runway of the venue. Cranked towards the roof via a strap hanging only by her hair, the body then bursts into life, and unleashes her sweet revenge in a spinning blur of self-assured, scarcely-clothed fury, defiantly free from the man who dragged her there.

This is 2am on a weeknight in Soho, and - somewhat unconventionally - my 83-year-old mother has invited me as her +1 to a nightclub. We’re at The Box, the infamous, secretive and defiantly exclusive cabaret club that occupies the former Raymond Revuebar, and has been busy revamping the area’s sleezy old past into its own more inspired, body-positive, unapologetically risqué new image for 15 years.

I imagine most people who’ve been out clubbing with a parent are still in their teens and twenties, having been brought up on festival and day rave dancefloors by their 90s-nostalgic, midlife crisis mums ‘n dads. It’s perhaps less common for an octogenarian parent to be inviting a 50-something greyver like me on a proper night out, let alone to a club where an absurdly well-endowed gentleman is now painting a canvas with his most prominent asset in place of a brush.

But here we are. And it’s masses of fun. My mother has taught acting, presentation and voice work all her working life, and continues to coach six days a week, appealing to everyone from city execs to aspiring and existing Hollywood stars. She particularly hit it off recently working with Eleftheria, which is how we’ve been invited here tonight, turning heads as a curious duo in the midst of wider curiousness.

Although I’ve dedicated much of my own working life to being immersed in nightlife culture, the swanky West End bottle service clubs, with sharp-suited guys dropping £10k+ on a table to dance around illuminated magnums of Grey Goose, and the paps gathered to snap Prince Harry or Kate Moss stumbling out, have not been my natural nocturnal habitat.

They do, however, epitomise what lies at the very core of the night just as much as a sweaty Dalston basement or a sleepless weekend sortie to Berlin. And that’s the chance to escape the daily grind, to reinvent yourself in whatever image you choose, to slip into a sensual, hedonistic universe if only for a few hours, and move rhythmically amongst strangers with whom you are bound intimately for moments of shared euphoria - or even just a conspiratorial little smile.

Whereas, on the occasions I did navigate the midweek VIP scene as a younger man, we were just about tolerated sipping our single bottles of beer, if we even got in, tonight my teetotal mother is ushered inside like high-rollin’ royalty. The hosts and security are so fantastically on point, having been briefed by Eleftheria of our attendance - I can safely say that going clubbing with my mum is a joyful, unexpected new angle on London nightlife, after decades spend having so many different experiences in after hours adventures.

I love the hanging ambiguity of who/how/why we’re even in here tonight. Are we a kinky intergenerational older couple obsessed with burlesque? Why are we on the dancefloor, amongst the nipple tassels and latex pants of the club kids, and not lording it up in a booth? If anyone even guesses that we’re mother and son, how do they square our late night familial entertainment choices?

Yet, for all the boundary-pushing unconventionality on display, this place has been like a family to Eleftheria, so she had no hesitation inviting us.

“I’ve always been a dancer,” she tells me. “I first arrived in London from Greece to study my Masters degree in injury prevention, and got a job working as a lifeguard in the gym in Marshall Street, just around the corner from here.

“One of the performers – a transgender woman from New York – was coming in regularly to lift weights, and she invited me to a show. That first time, I saw a girl doing aerial straps, and said to myself right then that I would dedicate my life to this.”

Not just another cabaret show, and far more theatrical than the standard high end nightclub - that night was a revelation that set the course of her life.

“I’m coming from Greece, from a small village with cows and chickens, where the only job you can imagine having as a dancer is in a bar or club, but never in this kind of creative show environment.”

So, she started circus training in earnest. It took a couple of years of hard graft before they invited her to perform at the club, and for many years now she’s been “privileged to be asked to work here regularly”.

The key, she tells me, is being able to get on well with a whole host of very big personalities, all crammed into a small 3×3m dressing room in a historic old theatre. Intergenerational acceptance is a big thing backstage, too.

“There are performers in their 60s alongside others in their 20s back there,” she says. “You have to respect each other equally, and be a certain type of character to hold yourself together with all these people and still come out and do your job well. There have been some excellent performers on stage, but because they couldn’t get on backstage, we never saw them again.”

Eleftheria’s circus skills have since taken her all over the globe. It’s not an easy existence, living out of a suitcase and having to forgo relationships and putting down roots, which is probably why she loves being part of this quirky family so much.

The creative direction and concepts of all the shows at The Box are tightly controlled, and yet give a trusted artist like her huge freedom to bring ideas to life on stage. “I’ve worked all over the world and there are not many stages anywhere that give you what I have here. You really can do anything you’ve ever dreamed of.”

Her next big venture is appearing at a limited 6-show London run of Sinematic, where every act is inspired by an iconic movie moment, and which exploded in popularity on its debut in LA, when Quentin Tarantino visited and gave the show his thumbs-up.

It’s on at the Emerald Theatre, which has taken over the former Proud Cabaret spot on the Embankment, and will be showing on Friday nights only, starting from this evening, 22nd May - 26th Jun.

Meanwhile, our night is coming to a 3am climax as a glistening woman disrobes on stage to smash eggs against her bare flesh, eventually coating herself in a layer of shimmering black oil and writhes about in the viscous, albumin-infused slick.

My mum sits, rapt, alongside her young friend Eleftheria, now right at the front. It’s yet another striking performance. Unexpected, purposefully strange, and fully empowering. You can feel the incredible power of having that kind of creative, artistic and sexual freedom up in the spotlight - the unchained joy of another nightlife moment. The death of Soho may have been greatly exaggerated.

Outside, in its quintessential neon-lit alleyway, Walker’s Court, (being last to leave the club, as ever) we all chat about the night, the performers and the brilliantly warm welcome that’s been offered to us by everyone involved.

A tall, well-chiselled man saunters up, beaming, and shakes my mum’s hand. “I’m the penis guy!” he exclaims by way of introduction. He goes on to explain how he travels the world with his schlong-centred act, playing The Box’s sister venue in New York, his home of Canada and top clubs all over.

“Yeah, my mom must be so proud,” he laughs. Then adds “actually, she really is."

Confounding the dullards, pearl-clutchers and prudes, the delights of the night clearly have no upper age limit - a theory we’ve well and truly had fun proving here, as we stumble off into the back of cabs, without any paparazzi in sight.

Last year, our competition to win access to all the SXSW London music showcases was wildly popular with you lot - so we thought we’d do it all over again for 2026 😃

Taking place every night from Tues 2nd - Fri 5th Jun, the SXSW London 2026 music festival takes over multiple venues and stages across Shoreditch, to showcase of over 150 emerging artists, future headliners, and international collectives.

Starting from just £25 for a one night wristband, tiered up to conference level passes for those making music their career, there’s something that everyone can enjoy. If you love discovering new music, the £79 music week wristband includes access performances including Earl Sweatshirt, Fraser T Smith and Sega Bodega on the Tuesday, Circa Waves, Infinity Song, Rachel Chinouriri on the Wed, Amaria BB, Odumodublvck, Tiwa Savage on Thurs and Shame on the Friday, plus masses more.

And Camdenist has got 2 pairs of those music week wristbands up for grabs this week.

Click here to enter the competition. Good luck!

We’ll draw 2 x winners for a pair of wristbands at random on Mon 25th May and notify them by email. Over 18s only. Prize is non-transferable, has no cash alternative, and does not include travel or accommodation.

Last week’s lament that we may never see the long-anticipated Camden Highline, Is The Sky-High Dream Over?, provoked much varied feedback (see poll responses below).

Urban creative-led design royalty, Wayne Hemingway, also got in touch with thoughts on a project his studio has worked on from the outset. “This has really got my goat,” he says.

“As one of the world's greatest cities, London needs to continue to fund meaningful, sustainable, and exciting ideas like this. Having relied on the generosity of crowdfunding and public funders to kickstart and develop proposals for the project, we (HemingwayDesign) believe that the billionaire owned multinational businesses at either end of the proposed Camden Highline - LabTech, Google and Meta - should be stepping up and helping to make this project a reality. After all, the money required to make this great placemaking project happen is dwarfed by the money they are spending on their projects. It’s time for these companies to step up, embrace common sense, and invest in their surrounding communities. Come on, let’s see some action!”

With interesting timing, I was at Google on Friday to hear Thomas Heatherwick talking about how, as designer of the company’s soon-to-open 'landscraper' on King’s Boulevard, he felt a duty to the public to make the ground floor exterior an interesting/beautiful experience. After all, it takes 4.5 minutes to walk it’s full length(!), and most locals will never get a chance to see the rooftop gardens and water features that bear at least a passing resemblance to… the Highline plans (pictured above).

Whether his studio has succeeded in that goal, to make such a hulking great building work at human scale will soon be revealed, when the ground floor units finally open, another story we’ll be following closely.

Meanwhile, Joanna Terry got in touch to point out how strangely scathing some of the response to the Highline plans being shelved have been. Surely an enthusiastic plan to bring forward a new public park should be appreciated for at least attempting to realise an ambitious dream?

“This is a gem of an article when some other press has been unnecessarily harsh,” she wrote. “My husband is Richard Terry [Chair of Highline Trustees] and I read your Kentishtowner article in Toronto ten years ago. Since then we have shared your dream and worked SO hard to make it happen - with only good intentions.”

It was also pointed out to me this week that I had wrongly stated the first section alone would cost £50m, when in fact that’s the estimated price tag of the full three sections of the project. The first bit was actually estimated to cost £15m.

So, should/will the big local stakeholders set in to switch up the stalled Highline narrative? And what do those who don’t believe in the project have to say? Read on…

MUSIC: 🎻 The internationally acclaimed London Concertante bring their ground-breaking new show to KOKO tonight Fri 22nd May, playing era-defining rock hits arranged for strings, harp, bass clarinet, vibes and percussion in Radiohead Reimagined, all set to candlelight in the main auditorium.

STAGE: 🎭 The Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre season is off to a flying start with a new adventure for Sherlock Holmes from writer Joel Horwood, which sees our locally-based sleuth hurtling through the streets of London and down the River Thames via 221b Baker’s St. Runs to 6th Jun.

NIGHTLIFE: 🎥 It’s the final stretch for late night performance, cinema, live music and dancefloor experiment Lost, which has to move from it’s first home in the former Odeon Covent Garden, so why not check it out tonight, Fri 22nd May. All is not, er, lost as they promise to return in a new space, soon.

ART: 🚐 Radical ideas space Kairos is vacating its Tottenham Court Rd home to move to a new space, with the final show being a live auction of selected works from current show Everything Must Go this Sat 23rd May, and a grand finale party with cocktails, supper, Roulette, live music from the Daywalkers, DJ sets from Iko Cherié and Afroasis and a late licence until 1am on Sat 30th May.

STAGE: 🤡 It’s the kickoff of the 10th annual London Clown Festival with the traditional high energy Opening Cabaret showcasing many of the festival’s key acts in a special preview up at Jackson’s Lane on Sat 30th May before a fortnight of shows at Soho Theatre.

FOOD: 🐔 Catch the last day of the 50% off your bill soft-relaunch at Latin-infused chicken spot El Pollote in Carnaby St today, Fri 22nd May as they get back into their stride after a bit of a glow-up.