Tom Davenport

Undercover at the ADC….continued…….

Nothing, not even my past skirmishes into ‘Fez’ dance chambers or the Pick Club, could have prepared me for the scene that greeted me when I entered the ADC Bar. The entire room, from wall to heaving wall, was jam-packed with squealing, gawping, blinking, pouting, drunken Thespians. I had never imagined that so many egos could fit into a space that small. Scores of gargantuan ‘characters’ were one crammed against one another, jostling for space and attention, filling the room with the incapacitating stench of the social performance.

Standing on tiptoes to see over the mass of multi-chromatic but homogeneously disorderly hair, proved difficult. But there was an alternative. Crouching on my knees, I could see from the doorway right to the wall on the far side. A pathetic forest of frost haggard, skin-tight jean-clad stalks, spindly and underwhelming, was all that stood in my way. It was much calmer down here. But there was not much material for my weekly column in The Tab – I would have to stand up again. Having crawled into the middle of the orgy of social masturbation, I stood up erect, suddenly and boldly. I was surrounded. In the thick of it. Welcome to undercover journalism at its most extreme. I thought to myself.

‘Oh babysugarcheekyhun,’ squawked one girl at me, complete with ruff and a luminous purple studded belt. The studs of this accessory were so long and were being thrust around in such a violent and unpredictable manner that I was forced to lurch one way then the next to avoid being skewered. Was she trying to kill me? Apparently she was dancing. Having made a swift exit from the epicentre of this medieval ritual, I stumbled into a flamboyant young actor who introduced himself to me immediately as ‘Legend.’ I was almost immune to eccentricity by this point and so took it to be perfectly normal. Thinking me to be one of his own (my disguise was working) Legend introduced me without hesitation to some of his companions. They went by such conformist names as Fox McCloud and Chrysanthemum-Claire Samsung and Steven.

Before long, I made it to the bar. But I was thwarted immediately in my efforts to order any sort of beverage that was consumed outside of the confines of north east Ecuador or the Russian Steppes. I gave up and remembered the stoical advice that The Tab Editor, Sir Joshua Harman had given me before my escapade into the unknown. And so, without further ado, I shouted,  ‘HI DARLING’ a few times, swore at nobody in particular, turned and introduced myself to the thespian on my right before looking over her shoulder with all the unconvincing excitement I could muster and bawled, ‘Beetroot, baby, how are you.’ Squeezing myself through the minefield of egos, I then legged it out of the door and back to civilization.