Jonny Chadwick is being sent on the weirdest and worst clubbing experiences possible at the behest of THUMP. After going to the Maggie Thatcher-themed club night in west London, Maggie’s Club, we sent him to what is officially, apparently, The Worst Night Club In Europe. The poor bastard.
Durham is a city characterised by modesty. Respectable rather than remarkable, it is most comfortable in the slipstream of more illustrious locations. Its primary claim to notability, Durham University, is Oxbridge-lite; full of Home Counties rowers with all the privilege and entitlement of academia’s big two, just not the intelligence. The cathedral, whilst a world heritage site and regarded by many as the finest remaining piece of Norman architecture, holds no records for age or size and, a solitary Futureheads acapella performance aside, is hardly competing with St. Giles-in-the-Fields for the place of worship with most crossover appeal.
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The most dramatic aspect of Durham is the awkward juxtaposition of the local people with the students. More than any other city I’ve seen, the university population exists entirely inside its own insular bubble. From the collegiate accommodation to the formal dinners, the interaction with Durham natives is kept to a minimum. This creates a divided city, with one half enduring the stagnant economy and dearth of opportunities left by decades of government neglect, while the other is determined to exist in an unconnected parallel domain of large disposable incomes and chugging contests.
It’s noticeable how safe the city feels, but the combination of security and lack of investment means banality is a prominent side-effect. The local youths might cut their alcoholic teeth on the Durham’s Yates bar 2-4-1 cocktails deal, but by the time they can drink legally they are flocking to Newcastle for their Jäegerbombs and bathroom selfies. Meanwhile, this picturesque county town is left to fester in its own pleasant, dull dignity.
Considering all this, it is apt that FHM’s feature on Europe’s worst nightclubs should place one of the city’s nightlife hotspots, Klute, at No. 2 on the list. As with the University and the cathedral, it was a perfect continuation of Durham’s record of “honourable mentions”; often deemed worthy of note, but never quite taking the ultimate prize, like Jamie Carragher’s England career or Laura Marling at the Mercury’s.
However, when the club in Belgrade that originally topped the list burned down, leaving Klute as no. 1 by default, Durham found itself in unchartered waters. Suddenly, it had a reputation to live up to. An unprecedented notoriety to maintain. At least, this was how the club’s owners interpreted it. Rather than shedding the title by booking a Night Slugs takeover, they decided infamy was better than obscurity, and played up to their newfound title.
The story goes that the FHM writer charged with reviewing Klute never actually entered the club. Disgruntled by the size of the queue, he left before gaining entry, slapping a big number 2 on it in protest against the staff making him wait to label them terrible at their job. Seeing the business opportunity, and perhaps pre-empting the evolution of Britain’s students from hairy hippies into #neknominating Neanderthals, they amped up the cheesy music, stopped cleaning the floors, and dropped the drink prices to make sure the clientele were both as obnoxious as possible, and completely incapable of realising just how excruciating it is to hear Pitbull mixed into Scooter.
Of course, it’s a pretty simple rule that making something terrible attracts students. Every weeknight, thousands of undergraduates gather in their respective unions to drink £2 pints and shout themselves hoarse with a rough approximation of Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’. Anyone can get their cut of the student loan budget by combining cheap alcohol with the day’s chart toppers, and a selection of novelty songs that cater to the current university population’s desperation to identify as 90s kids.
Klute’s management are clearly pros in this game. Two double gin and tonics cost a fiver, meaning it’s easy to get drunk enough to enjoy Ke$ha songs. The crowd seem to genuinely love it as well. DJ-led a cappella chorus sing-alongs are interspersed with #nohomo fraternal hugs and girls twerking on their best friends. At a glance, it’s just a typical unpleasant student night, making the whole ‘worst club in Europe’ title somewhat mystifying.
Yet Klute has a couple of extras that carry it from startlingly mundane to Worst Club Ever territory. Firstly, the stench is toxic. Upon entering, clubbers are treated to a cloud of what is, broken down into its constituent parts, spilt vodka, puddles of cumulative perspiration, and lingering globules of hair gel from 2001. This sounds terrible, but it’s impossible to put into words just how unpleasant this is first-hand. It genuinely does take Klute from boring night out to endurance test.
The second reason is the pure insufferable personalities of Durham students. Every university has its fair share of lads, bores and all-round terrible humans, but no student body nails a combination of the three quite like Durham. Obviously for every rugby brute swigging Fosters there is probably a fairly pleasant introvert watching Jonathan Meades programmes or listening to Oneohtrix Point Never records, but the lads are the most prominent ambassadors for every university, and Durham’s are up there as the most embarrassing.
With the top button unfastened on their pink Ralph Lauren shirts and slicked back hair, they’ve mastered the “Tory front-bencher on the beach” aesthetic. Combined with their domineering dance floor moves, and simultaneously overly forward and uncomfortably awkward chirpse technique, Durham lads make for uncomfortable club company. This is all the more infuriating when you realise just how much they’re enjoying themselves, tossing their precisely coifed heads back to bask in the euphoria of One Republic being cross-faded into Chesney Hawkes.
On the surface, Klute doesn’t seem to merit its title. It’s pretty much the same as any one of hundreds of student nights put on every week nationwide. Knowing that this is a club going out of its way to be rubbish, you would expect something more outrageous. But it’s in the small details and the context where Klute really earns its stripes. Most clubs smell, but none quite manage to induce nausea quite like the combination of sweat, alcohol and stale cosmetics here. Furthermore the atmosphere at a typical student night ranges from aggressively sexualised and excessively intoxicated, to awkwardly inhibited, but Klute and its clientele somehow manage to embody this entire spectrum.
Blame New Labour, the internet or dirt cheap alcohol, but there are few less fulfilling nights out than a student disco. In their own eyes, students are hedonists, drinking without control and living the high life on government money. To an outsider, it’s just weird seeing adults who still think getting drunk is a crazy activity, and that sing-along choruses constitute decadent living. Klute, while not the horror fest its reputation would suggest, does manage to capture the underwhelming nature of student ballin’ better than any other club. In being the best example of the worst kind of club night, this sweatbox of unpleasant humans, terrible music and unbearable odours probably deserves its place at the top of the podium.
You can follow Jonny Chadwick on Twitter here: @JonnyChadwick93
