‘Tried the cocktails yet? Best in London!’ shouts a blonde sylph, dirty-dancing on a high bar stool to a full-on DJ soundtrack. I hope to, courtesy of a chiselled English bartender, Ralph-Lauren-model-material for sure. He’s studiously stirring a Miller’s martini when, ‘Thwack!’; egged on by a similarly wild and suspiciously bright-eyed Pete Doherty tribute in a naff pork pie hat, Blondie’s OTT gyrations send her crashing against the makeshift bar, and my much anticipated drink crashing to the floor. Model barman shrugs sanguinely and starts again, while I fantasise about having done to the bouncing bimbo what Jeremy Clarkson envisaged as a fate for striking public sector workers. This then, is midnight at The Fourth Wall - the name refers to the imaginary wall through which theatre audiences observe the action onstage. The pop-upl is an ad-hoc shebang where jinx are high and martinis - when we finally get ‘em - correctly dry. Tonight, the party is in a secret location down a dark, dank tunnel behind an unmarked door off Brick Lane. The room is a full-scale, flat-pack replica of its creator's Fitzrovia gaff Bourne and Hollingsworth, gussied up as somebody's Peckham parlour circa Neville Chamberlain. After a two-week residency in situ, the weekends-only wingding is folded away and driven off to a new clandestine location. To find out where this bar-in-a-box will materialise next, visit its website and follow instructions. Blondie’s claim for the cocktails -decent enough at seven quid - is slightly fanciful but she and fellow (Fourth) Wall pork pie Pete aside, this itinerant sweatbox cooks on full gas www.whereisthefourthwall.com Friday 9 December 2011
The Fourth Wall, London (Somewhere in)
‘Tried the cocktails yet? Best in London!’ shouts a blonde sylph, dirty-dancing on a high bar stool to a full-on DJ soundtrack. I hope to, courtesy of a chiselled English bartender, Ralph-Lauren-model-material for sure. He’s studiously stirring a Miller’s martini when, ‘Thwack!’; egged on by a similarly wild and suspiciously bright-eyed Pete Doherty tribute in a naff pork pie hat, Blondie’s OTT gyrations send her crashing against the makeshift bar, and my much anticipated drink crashing to the floor. Model barman shrugs sanguinely and starts again, while I fantasise about having done to the bouncing bimbo what Jeremy Clarkson envisaged as a fate for striking public sector workers. This then, is midnight at The Fourth Wall - the name refers to the imaginary wall through which theatre audiences observe the action onstage. The pop-upl is an ad-hoc shebang where jinx are high and martinis - when we finally get ‘em - correctly dry. Tonight, the party is in a secret location down a dark, dank tunnel behind an unmarked door off Brick Lane. The room is a full-scale, flat-pack replica of its creator's Fitzrovia gaff Bourne and Hollingsworth, gussied up as somebody's Peckham parlour circa Neville Chamberlain. After a two-week residency in situ, the weekends-only wingding is folded away and driven off to a new clandestine location. To find out where this bar-in-a-box will materialise next, visit its website and follow instructions. Blondie’s claim for the cocktails -decent enough at seven quid - is slightly fanciful but she and fellow (Fourth) Wall pork pie Pete aside, this itinerant sweatbox cooks on full gas www.whereisthefourthwall.com 
