Clubbing Saved My Life

TIM Brown always wanted a rock n' roll lifestyle, but up until three years ago, the closest he got was getting dragged down the local Ritzy once a year. At 28, his social life was cnon-existent. Tim saw himself being sucked into "40 more years of boredom" and the prospect terrified him.

"I was working really hard in my marketing job," he says, ensconced on a vast sofa in his huge flat, in conservative Surbiton, Surrey. (Ironically, he lives in the street where cosy BBC 70s sitcom The Good Life was filmed.) "And I'd been bored of my life for six years, but somehow, I never managed to get the life I wanted." A six week holiday in South America was fun while it lasted, but back home the thrill wore off. Tim even went to Glastonbury in 1994, saw Orbital, but didn't get into it. "I hated it. I stood there in this cold field listening to this strange music and I thought, 'I wanna get out of here.'" Then during 1995, Tim went to London's Club UK, took an E, and suddenly it all clicked into place. "I thought it was amazing, even though people tell me now that Club UK three years ago had lost it. I walked in and it was the most amazing, glamorous, wild place I'd ever seen," he recalls. "It felt like there were no rules, you could do anything, people were dancing on the bar, you could wear what the hell you wanted. I couldn't believe you could go up to strangers and talk to them. It was incredible."

TIM went about once a month and, as he puts it, "a whole new world of music opened up" in front of his eyes. He duly kitted himself out with a wardrobe fitting for his weekend life, "ridiculous" PVC trousers and satin shirts - a far cry from his sober jeans and T-shirt uniform of before. And then came Tribal Gathering where Tim met a group of six people who were to become his 'clubbing mates'.

"I've now got a group of about 20 really close friends - I didn't know it was possible to have relationships like that. My other old friends say it's not real because we met in a club, that it's all superficial, but that's bollocks, 'cause I know the friends I've made at clubs in the last two years are friends for life." Tim shows me the pictures to prove it. A group up to their eyeballs in mud and gooning around at Glastonbury last year, snaps from Gay Pride, where Tim dressed as (a very fetching) woman. "I'd have never done that two years ago," he laughs. The last year has been a whirl: festivals, Coalesce parties (he never misses one), nights at places like Escape To Samsara and his new love, Torture Garden. "All I ever wanted from life was to be happy, to have good friends and a good social life and that's what I've got now. And I can't imagine any other way I would have got that, apart from through clubbing." MIRANDA COOK

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