Cambridge Characters: The Bouncer

In an ongoing quest to discover the full human face of Cambridge, ROSIE HORE snuggles up to two of your favourite heavies.

Alcohol bouncer bouncers Cambridge Cambridge characters cambridge clubbing Clubbing Drinking lola los student life student living urinating vomiting

The Cambridge bouncer is an elusive character: an anonymous figure of authority rising from the hazy memories of your nights out. We headed out to Fez and Lola Lo to meet the best Cambridge has to offer…

Our first bouncer, Kojo, is a Cambridge regular. He’s worked at Cindies, Fez, Life and Lola Lo, which he quite correctly identifies as “everywhere” there is to go out in Cambridge. Right now this head doorman is rocking Lolas, in charge of a team of up to 8 bouncers and that completely incomprehensible queuing system.

 

The best bouncer in the Pacific…

It might seem as if being a Cambridge doorman is a pretty thankless task. We were expecting tales of drama, drunkenness and debauchery from the Thursday night party crowd, but, as ever, we failed somewhat to live up to the Daily Mail’s expectations. Kojo says he hardly ever gets trouble from students, most of them preferring to strike up lengthy drunken chats than kick off.

We do bloody love stealing things though. But for those of you who made do with a coconut or a fresher on opening night, poor effort. One Lola-Lo-ver thought to make off with a full-sized Tiki Hut. He then positioned this new piece of prime real-estate in front of the Van of Life and settled in for the night. Unfortunately, the stellar tactic of trying to hide in a stolen Tiki Hut did not escape the eagle-eye of our man Kojo. The thief then attempted to convince the crowd that the Tiki Hut belonged to him, presumably a kind of portable shag pad which he always took to the Van with him to keep his chips out of the rain.We were impressed. Kojo was not.

Apparently a hard-ass name is obligatory for bouncers, because our next interviewee was Leroy, head doorman at Fez, who concluded that Cambridge was less fighty than Peterborough, but with more clever people. We thought he was probably right.

The best thing about his job? Again, it was getting “banter from customers” and having “a laugh with people”, although by the end of the night this usually turns into life-stories and proclamations of love. To be honest, the situation was not much different by the end of our interview – Leroy has the face of an angel. A very stern angel from Peterborough.

 

Our man Leroy on the left. Not sure who the bloke in the tie is, but he wanted his photo taken too…

Again, we were really looking for some cheeky “fighting, stripping off, vomiting and urinating” but Leroy didn’t find much to be shocked at in our antics. Us Cambridge students may “party a little bit too much”, but he reckons things have calmed down since he was 18. Kids these days, eh? You just can’t get the scandal… Then again, Leroy did go to the Regal, Lola-Lo, Revs AND Life in one night, so we think he might be a bit out of our league.

Unlike our ladies’ man Leroy, Kojo didn’t hesitate in deciding that drunk girls were a bigger handful than drunk boys. Not only do girls tend to wear next to nothing whilst Kojo’s in his thermals, they also “never accept the fact that they’re drunk”. Sound familiar? But although the girls may skimp on clothing, Kojo has only had to accost men running nekkid through the club, to bundle them out of the fire exit, and then, amazingly, go and find their clothes. That’s a gentleman for you. Leroy also denied ever ‘chucking someone out’ – he would rather ‘eject’ or ‘remove’ the troublemakers.

These are the men who have seen it all. Although apparently, that isn’t all that much. Despite our best intentions, Kojo and Leroy didn’t seem to think us up to much laddiness. But whoever stole the LolaLo bicycle (an actual bike btw, not a Hawaiian-themed shlag), give it back yeah?

Kojo may look nice, but we’re sure he could get mad…