Stay Beautiful is (or should be) an essential club night for culture sluts in London. Run by Manics biographer and music journalist Simon Price and held once a month at the Purple Turtle, the club brings together the best of Camden’s alternative scene without the touristy bullshit. Essentially it’s an excuse to dress up in your most outrageous clothes and get drunk. Last night was the club’s seventh anniversary and the contributors to this blog joined in the festivities.

Live music was provided by excellent electro-pop trio Matinee Club (centre), with Simon Price (bottom) manning the decks for the rest of the evening. Expect sleazy glam, high voltage electro, glitter rock, fucked up disco and pop trash- generally, anything which has a thunderous beat and dirty guitars is likely to get played. The art of a good DJ is to make you dance to stuff you wouldn’t normally dance to and there were plenty of unexpected choices. Gary Glitter, anyone?

But most of the fun is being in an environment which makes you feel positively understated and underdressed by comparison to everyone else. The club is a haven for transvestites, Goths, glam queens, dandies, androgynies, and all manner of extroverts- a parade of humanity’s wonderful variety. The few who had happened upon the club by chance looked most bewildered. Highly recommended, but not for the narrow-minded.