The Leisure Lounge was one of the great mid-1990s London clubs. Located in a former snooker hall at 121 High Holborn, the main room downstairs was basically just one large cavernous space dominated by a huge video screen on one side and two-tiered bench seating on the other - giving a slight school gym feeling. There was a small seating chill out area and bar at one end. According to the DJ magazine 'UK Club Guide' (1995) it had a capacity of 800 with a '22K rig with Amcron amps and custom built speakers'. It stayed open until 6 am initially but I think later opened from 10 pm to 10 am.
The club's opening party was in April 1994 and included the Buzzcocks playing live. Promoter Sean McClusky told the Independent: 'I want a fashionable crowd, but I want to encourage the nutters as well. Punk has energy and colour. It attracts all the characters. All I've done is give them a beautiful club to play in.' (Independent, 6 April 1995). In its early days there was an exhibition of portrait photographs by Rankin in the chill out area.
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The club continued until at least 1998 (not sure exactly when it closed). My peak time going there would have been 1995, at that time there was Graham Gold's Peach on Friday and the club's own Leisure Lounge night on Saturdays, promoted by Sean McClusky and the late Bernie Schumann. The latter two had previously been involved with Club UK among other adventures and there was a similar 'uplifting house' vibe.
Later Simon Hobart's gay indie night Popstarz was there too, and legendary drum'n'bass night Metalheadz. Oasis had a party there after playing at the Astoria in 1994.
Flyers below from May/June 1995, seemingly I must have been at that one with John Kelly, Fabio Paras, Tall Paul etc. on 10th June as I put a cross by it! 'Join the International Disco Jetset' says one, and we did. Glammed up beautiful people dancing to beautiful music, or so it felt. Maybe not so much on the way home afterward.
Note too the Red Bull sponsorship. I remember the first time I tried one of these energy drinks was in the queue at Leisure Lounge where they were handing them out as part of a promotion. The drink had started out in Austria in 1987 but wasn't launched in UK until 1994/95 when for a while people going out at the weekend were largely replacing their alcohol consumption with other recreational substances.
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