Batchwood is the best worst club in Britain

My 18th birthday night out just so happened to be on A-levels results day. My 19th was the first time my friends from uni met my friends from home. My 20th? I’d be lying if I said I could remember it. Three years, three very different nights, but they’re all linked by one perfect constant: I spent them all in Batchwood.

How to describe Batchwood to a non-believer? It’s the sort of thing that you either get or don’t. To really get Batchwood, you have to have realised how unashamedly shit it really is, and you have to love it for that very fact.

Because understanding Batchwood isn’t about loving it – anyone can come for the first time and be blown away by the grandeur of the whole thing as they ride up Batchwood Drive: a stretch of pine-lined tarmac which looks like something out of a second-rate Disney princess film. It’s true, nothing compares to the anticipation you feel as your taxi rolls through the darkness of the golf course towards the lights of the manor itself up ahead.

It’s like The Great Gatsby come to life: a huge ivy-covered mansion which screams class, luxury and opulence. As you fall out of your taxi or off the Batchwood Bus and into the queue, you feel like you’re part of something – like this remote country pile in the arse end of nowhere is a secret reserved only for you and your ten drunk friends.

But anyone who knows Batchwood knows the inside is a different ballpark entirely – any preconceptions of classiness have disappeared by the time you’ve had your receipt spiked and been ushered past the cloakroom and onto the main dancefloor. Cringe club bangers blare from the speakers, aggressive-looking men dance in circles where the podiums used to be and girls with dodgy-looking extensions push past you to get some more Jägerbombs in from the bar in the R&B room. And you know what? It feels like home.

Is there really anything better than stumbling across the sticky D-floor with four different coloured VKs between your fingers? And is there any greater delight than reaching the top of the grand staircase and staring over the writhing sweaty masses necking off to Skepta like an emperor surveying his kingdom? Well there is one thing – banging a rightie at the top of those stairs and finding yourself in the disco room.

The disco room is peculiar, in that it’s a small tacky room which plays shit music yet is somehow the most fun part of the whole club. Take That? Yes please. B*Witched? Absolutely. Even when the DJ puts on Let It Go from Frozen you’ll still lap it up, and won’t for one minute question why you’ve travelled several miles to a huge country manor to dance on a dancefloor the same size as your mum’s living room.

You’ll dance and you’ll dance till you can’t dance any more, and then someone will make an OTT cigarette gesture and you’ll suddenly find yourself in the best smoking area in Hertfordshire. Batchwood ignores the naysayers who believe smoking areas shouldn’t be astroturfed,shouldn’t have a literal burger kitchen in the middle and shouldn’t be more busy and more fun than the actual club. The Batchwood smoking area, like most things there, is glorious precisely because it shouldn’t be.

No-one’s ever said it was their favourite club: in fact, most people will roll their eyes and shake their head when they inevitably decide it’s where they’re going to end up on a Friday night. Yet they still go, and you know what? They still fucking love it, despite all its flaws.

That’s the thing: Batchwood doesn’t have to be good to make it so, so great.

See our full rundown of the worst hometown clubs in the UK here.