Before Russell Brand wound up Jordin 'not a slut' Sparks with his antics at the MTV Video Awards earlier in the week, he was most famous to Americans for appearing as a British Rock N Roller in break-up comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Out on DVD on Monday, the comedy has teamed up with us to offer two readers a pair of guestlist to next Saturday's Feeling Gloomy at Islington Academy. There you can share......

Fancy getting up close with the man from UNKLE? James Lavelle who normally fills huge tents at festivals and massive clubs will be playing tonight at The Old Queen's Head on Essex Road. Usually packed to the rafters, we're sure tonight will be busier than ever as James headlines monthly club Apocalypso. Abley supported by Punks Jump Up and Dekker, it's just £4 in.......

PiE&MASH's monthly grub and tunes party night in Vauxhall is going apocalyptic tonight. Yes, in the face of farting cows, melting ice caps and rising temperatures eat pie, get drunk and boogie! Doors at 8pm, entry is free and grub's up around 10.30pm. It's the end of the world as we know it, so let's eat pie. Find the fun at the Vauxhall Griffin.......

If we wanted to dancing on a Thursday night, we're sure we'd be heading along to Soho Revue Bar tomorrow for special one off party 'Modern Love'. The team behind trendy gay night 'Rebel Rebel' have teamed up with Sophie Ellis Bextor and Richard from The Feeling to serve up a night of great love songs. The husband & wife pop combo will be DJing under their guise of Me & Mrs Jones and......

Super cool Tuesday night club White Heat has a particularly fun sounding line-up tonight at Madame JoJo's on Brewer Street. From 8.30 London pow pow! kids /The Clik Clik will bounce their way through a set before girly space warriors Poppy and The Jezebels pull some mystical shapes. Then recent Listen Up! stars XX Teens round it all off with songs from their new album. £6 on the door from 8pm - Mdme Jo......

Love your pop music? We've got 2 pairs of tickets up for grabs for tonight's Wonky Pop clubnight at Cargo in Shoreditch. Although Annie was due to headline, illness has forced her to pull out, but she's replaced by the awesome London girl Ebony Bones. It's an all star cast with The Clik Clik and Helsoise and The Savoir Faire also playing live while Richard X, Alphabeat and Popjustice DJ. First two to email londonist.music@gmail.com......

Tonight Amy Winehouse will be hosting her own clubnight 'Snakehips at The Monarch' on Chalk Farm Road. On Saturday night we spotted her chatting to the amazing DJ Bioux in the small room at Proud and now it seems the pair will be going head to head for a DJ battle playing 50s and 60s. Judging by what he was playing on Saturday we think this would be brilliant even without Amy. We dread to......

If you're into anything dancy you'd be hard pushed to find a better night out than at Fabric. Tonight in the floor quivering Room 1 Drop The Lime drops in from Brooklyn to play along side Switch & The Scratch Perverts while over in room 2 Australian drum and bass chart invaders, Pendulum, headline with support from the likes of Goldie. It's room 3 we're most excited about though as it celebrates the release......

Every so often we take a more indepth look at clubnights round London that peak our interest. This week it's Beat Poetry, an ecletic funky night which moved from Brixton to Spitalfields earlier this year. If you like the sound of it, the next installment is taking place this Friday (13/6) from 10pm and entry is a mini £3, with a promise of lollies, jelly beans and free CDs. Cool! When and why did......

We've got to be honest with you, we're not particularly keen on The Guillemots; they make us kind of itchy and we want to reach into the television and give them a good shake. But if you are (and we recognise people do seem to like them quite a lot), then you're probably be very excited to find that they're playing a live club date this Saturday night at the relatively small 93 ft......

The 2008 running of the Womens' Head of the River race on Saturday was certainly as unpredictable as many expected given the absence of Britain's elite oarswomen at a pre-Olympic training camp. In the picture above, one of many in a marvellous Flickr set from London Annie, you can see last year's winners, Thames A, on the far right being overhauled by Osiris, the Oxford University Blues Boat, who went on to take the......

It's officially Spring and by Pisces it's lovely out there in the sunshine. Crocuses have been spotted in Highbury Fields so our biggest recommendation for expenditure light trips this week is get to the parks and into the gardens and witness the miracles of the changing seasons. If you're in need of more artificial stimulation, however, and are squirrelling all your spare cash into your ISA before the end of the tax year then......

This week saw Londonist get incredibly excited about a few live music events. First up, was French pop sensation Yelle, who played an intimate show at the Old Blue Last. Then, we had the Camden Crawl line up which, as ever, is pretty amazing for those of us who value music over sleep. Finally, Sally got (understandably) excited about The King Blues @ the 100 Club. Once we've come down from our excitement of last......

Ah, the transformative powers of education. Last week, we saw the kiddies philosophizing. This week, we learn of prison inmates dramatizing. And this isn’t just any kind of dramatizing, nor is this just any prison: This is Shakespeare as performed by the inmates of the California State Correctional System, in collaboration with the London Shakespeare Workout Prison Project. Forgive us our naiveté if upon spotting this photo we weren’t immediately reminded of a scene......

Now Londonist gets to see some pretty cool gigs in the name of keeping you apprised of stuff. But NME staff writers we ain’t, and quite often we can only blog and dream. Someone out there has gotta go see The King Blues supporting at this gig ‘cos we can’t and we’re real sore about it. Londonist was racking our rather small brain trying to think of how best to describe The King Blues’......

As winter's days grow increasingly numbered, it's the time of year when our thoughts must turn toward formulating a survival plan for the most gig-loaded two days we know: the Camden Crawl. Back for its 7th year from 18 - 19 April, Camden Crawl 2008 will see 130 artists playing across the festival's 25 venues along with, for the first time, the addition of an outdoor stage. A variety of daytime activities are planned......

Just as London spring begins to break beautifully over the city, the Flamenco Festival is charging into Sadlers Wells to make us all long for the heat and sultriness of a Spanish summer. The fiesta spans the spectrum of the dance form from the Farruquito family presenting traditional gypsy flamenco to one woman and one man pushing flamenco into the 21st Century. There's a showcase homage to the great women of Flamenco, tributes to......

Following the Oscars this weekend there are free film screenings all over town this week. Edify thyself and make new friends running across 5 different genres of movie for no expenditure whatsoever. Monday: The Duke Mitchell Film Club is holding heist night at the Cross Kings Bar on York Way with a long lost Italian heist movie "Seven Golden Men". The film starts at 8pm but there's also a "trailer trash" collection of vintage......

With her comedy partner Joe, Nicko runs the Bad Film Club, a monthly club at the Barbican centre where glorious bad films are watched and laughed at. On Wednesday, the club hosts Jaws: The Revenge (yes, that is the one with a roaring shark who has a personal vendetta). What is this Bad Film Club business all about? It's just a place where likeminded people can gather without shame or the need for explanation......

A fairly quiet time for Londonist music, but this week saw us introduce you to The Wave Pictures on Thursday, catch indie up-and-comers Parka at the Borderline on Tuesday, and suggest you catch "J-Dilla changed my life" at Cargo this evening. Throughout the week, NME favourites play their three week series of Awards shows, and this week sees Babyshambles play Brixton Academy on Monday night, Richard Hawley and Mercury nominated Maps play the Astoria on......

On the day the Premiership announces plans for its clubs to play matches in far flung destinations Ruislip Manor FC would settle for seeing out this season on their own patch. The club, who play in the Molten Footballs Spartan South Midlands Premier Division, effectively eight levels below the likes of Chelsea and Arsenal, have spent the last few weeks staring extinction in the face, culminating in a dramatic fight for life last Wednesday......

If you were inspired by yesterday's interview with competitor Olivia Brown, you might want to go along to this weekend's Winter Swimming Championship at the Tooting Bec Lido, the largest fresh water swimming pool in Europe, to find out more about the joys of an outdoor dip. The festivities start today with registration, practice and media activities. The competition proper opens on Saturday at 9:10 am with the first of 95 heats of 25-metre......

On a cold winter night in North London, we meet with hotly tipped indie pop beat combo The Wave Pictures before their gig at the Islington Bar Academy. Counting Jeffrey Lewis, Dean Wareham, Darren Hayman and Herman Düne as fans David Tattersall (vocals, guitar), Franic Rozycki (bass) and Jonny 'Huddersfield' Helm talk to us about their inspirations and what it's like to be finally getting recognition after years of obscurity. How would you describe......

This weekend 670 swimmers from 21 countries will converge on the Tooting Bec Lido to take part in the international Winter Swimming Championships 2008. The event, which always takes place in an unheated outdoor pool, is being held outside Finland for the first time ever. Olivia Brown, a member of hosts the South London Swimming Club and entrant in three of this weekend's races, took time out from training to tell Londonist why she's......

Happy February, FOBGs. Another healthy serving of book groceries awaits you this week. Stick to a well-rounded book diet, and you’re sure to stave off a winter cold. We have no actual data to support this contention – we’re book geeks, not science nerds – but it certainly sounds promising. So eat your greens, drink your grains, and check back later this week for a bonus edition of the Book Grocer especially dedicated to......

Is it just us or was January rubbish? Nice then that February, with its special extra day this year, commences with Brazilian Carnival, yummy pancakes and Chinese New Year... it's like a whole new start for 2008 and lots of it totally FREE! Monday: Get some Monday Love at the Inspiral Lounge, Camden Lock as UK Indymedia host their radical film, talk, and music night. Free entry for all those who still believe in......

Strictly Come Dancing may be but a glitzy, Christmas twinkle in the memory banks but for all of you that fell in love once more with the heat and hustle of the latin section, Samba Dance Club night at Sadlers Wells is something you need to know about. Starting at 7.15pm with a beginners class (ie you don't need to know ANYTHING) then progressing to intermediate at 8.15pm (for those of you with a......

The Book Club is dead! Long live The School for Gifted Children! Robin Ince's Book Club, for the unacquainted, was a delightfully ramshackle evening of intellectual mirth and experimentation, which was given a grand farewell in December at the British Museum. Tonight The School for Gifted Children kickstarts the glorious sounding N20 Comedy Festival for show, stories, songs and outright lies in the dinky Studio 68 at Battersea Arts Centre. Robin Ince is in......

We've not done very well on the virtuous January front and seem to have spent all our money and most of our nights out on the lash with a flagrant disregard for propriety and our bank account. We don't mind though because, as usual, there are some excellent free things to do in town this week. Monday: British Asian gangsta folk ska punk is where it's at with the intriguing sounding Barbar Luck at......

It's finally been announced that Clerkenwell club Turnmills will be closing down in March after the landlord confirmed plans to redevlop the site. The club's lease on the venue is nearly up and a mutual agreement has led to the venue wanting to end on a high. This deals a bit of a blow to London's danceland who also recently suffered the closure of The Key, The Cross and Canvas as part of the......