New Years Eve is a funny one. Some people think it's the best night ever, and those who don't are kind of forced into thinking maybe they should be thinking that and invariably end up having a rubbish night. But how about you just think about it as an excuse to go dancing - that's never a bad idea. Here's our favourite dancefloor happenings tomorrow night. If it's dance music you want, then absolutely......

Dusting off the snow from last year, every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings.. Heat things up in the bedroom of your metrosexual love with saucy, designer duvets from London based......

Don't worry. We're not going to have to cling to the sides of trains. Yet. Ken's been to Delhi, where he picked up some ideas about being cool on the streets. Unfortunately it's cool on the streets in a temperature related way rather than cool on the streets in a Fresh Prince of Bel Air way. Addressing an environmental conference, Ken said, We’re heading for some tremendously hot summers, people will start dying in......

As reported last week, Monday should see you going crazy to hear that one good song (are there others) by Peter Bjorn and John at the forum. More importantly make sure you get there in time to see support act Those Dancing Days. We caught them at Water Rats on Saturday and are pleased to report they combine cuteness and moodiness with alarming grace. The much loved Beirut play an instore at Rough Trade......

It seems that half the country (and Londonist staff) is on holiday at the moment. Still, here's the best of what's on musically across the capital this week.Jazz singer-songwriter Norah Jones  is the highlight of Bank Holiday Monday night, playing with M. Ward at Hammersmith Apollo. Tickets are sold out, however be sure to check out scarlet mist and other providers. Meanwhile hardcore punk stars Bane play Underworld, with £10 tickets available either on the......

We first heard of Uptight earlier this week when the great Retro To Go blog mentioned it. Checking it out, the music policy sounded great, and the clubnight is celebrating it's 7th birthday this weekend so if there's ever a time to try it out, this Saturday would be it! We took 5 with DJ and promoter Wayne Gooderham. When and why did you set Uptight up? Uptight was born in the summer of......

Just out the Van: Lights, Music, Words, Action - It’s Book Slam time again with Guatam Malkani, author of the Londonstani, Salena Godden, writer, singer, and raconteur, and Iman, winner of the National Music Award. This Thursday at Neighbourhood, 6.30pm till late, 12 Aclam Road, W10 5QZ, £5 in advance or £6 on the door. Fresh Next Week: Michael Palin leads a reading from Another Sky, a new collection of work by writers whose lives......

Tessa 'Watch me keep a straight face' Jowell finally gave in and announced that yes, the 2012 Olympics will cost in excess of £9 billion. Thats a lot of zeros. Can't we just buy everyone a copy of Escape to Victory instead? Everyone's a winner in that except the Nazis. Central government will pay 4.93 billion pounds - in addition to 1 billion pounds already committed - to pay for the games and regeneration......

What's the skinny? Wolf & Cub are Joel Byrne, Adam Edwards, Thomas Mayhew and Joel Carey, four guys from Adelaide who make a big stompy rock noise. What have they done? Their website says: Wolf & Cub have shared stages with TV On The Radio, The Killers, The Music, Wolfmother, Queens of the Stone Age, Hot Hot Heat, Futureheads, and Death From Above 1979… played blistering sets nationwide on this years Big Day Out…......

We at Londonist try to cook with seasonal vegetables where possible and a trip to Borough Market early on Saturday (always go early before the gastro-porn tourists arrive, or on a Thursday when many of the stalls are now open) saw us staggering home with armloads of rhubarb. This long, pink creature is one of complexities. It is actually a vegetable yet we choose to use it as a fruit and it’s silky texture......

More Russian intrigue in London as authorities in Moscow ask our police to have a good nose into the death of a Russian businessman: Authorities in Moscow plan to ask British police to 'carefully look into all the circumstances of the death of Yury Golubev, insofar as there are reasons to assume he died as a result of violent actions,' the news agency cited an unidentified official as saying. Golubev, 65, was found dead......

It's New Years Eve and if like us you're very bad at making plans more than 12 hours in advance, you might be looking for something to do tonight. Equally if you were planning to go to The Truman Show in Shoreditch then you should probably know that it's been cancelled due to 'surprise' secret acts The Kooks pulling out due to illness. In any case here are our top tips: For the danceheads:......

The Envy Corps hail from Iowa and are currently "flipping around Europe" on tour. They've the same management as The Killers and the ever handy myspace let us figure out that they even sounded pretty similar. With that in mind, we thought we'd give them a looksee when they graced the infamous White Heat clubnight at Madame Jojos with their stomping brand of post-indie/post-pop/post-rock. We're guessing it must be a bit frustrating to fly......

A StreetWars competition is currently taking place in our city. We've sent one of our own, Alex, to take part . Here's how he's getting on.... The man in the white t-shirt pictured to the left is an assassin. He might be the assassin who's coming after me, but I wouldn't know, because we're now two days into the competition and no one's come anywhere near me yet. My experience thus far is not......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. The Beckett Centenary Celebration continues this week with a season of his shorter works at the Bookshop Theatre, A Piece of Monologue on Tuesday ("the summing up of the last two and a half billion seconds of a man's life") and The End on Wednesday (One man’s testament to the lack of care in......

Dawn has left the House. Why? Um, we don't really know; the official site will only say that she broke "one of the fundamental rules of Big Brother", possibly the one to do with communicating with the outside world (???). What was she doing - writing GET ME OUT OF HERE on the lawn with Nikki's makeup? And we thought the whole point of BB was that the housemates show us, the viewers, what......

A day earlier than usual, here's the Londonist skinny on next week's giggage. Tonight: Not just the Blang night we mentioned last week but also a night of aMIGO's blues-funk, courtesy of Tim Staffell, the man whose band became Queen, at the George IV, 185 Chiswick High Road. Friday: So on the one hand we have glitterpunks Lorca at Purple Turtle making lots of noise and on the other Whirlwind Heat return with new......

It wasn't that long ago when the issue of what to do with the millions of sticks of chewing gum that end up being trodden into our nation's streets raised it's ugly head. Well, if you're in Wimbledon, you just stick it on a board instead. It's that simple. Those nice folks at Merton Council hoping to alleviate some of the £150 million a year they spend on the problem have erected four boards......

Since discovering that her marriage into British Royalty might have been based around an early Heat poll a month or so after Lock, Stock etc was released, Madonna's further excavation of her family tree has revealed that she's perhaps a little closer to the real thing than she might ever have imagined. Now you might be wondering why this is in anyway worthy of coverage, anywhere, but read on faithful Londonistas as we reveal......

Nature, red in tooth and claw. So there was some sort of nature programme that everyone and their spirit guide has been going on about (Planet Earth, Sun 9pm BBC1), which even we thought we’d better watch, although nature programmes have never been high on our list of ‘favourite genres’ (distinct lack of gun fights, murder mysteries – the lion did it! – and space battles). Our verdict? Well, it was a pleasant enough......

Not a moment's hesitation in recommending The Eighteenth Day Of May's Bush Hall show on the 28th April as our buy of the week. If you need to ask why then there's gonna be tears and spilt milk at tea time. We give the Americans James Blunt, insipid ex-army bloke who makes Heat readers go week at the knees because he registers with the part of the brain that induces coma. They give us......

The only people who enjoy school are sociopaths. Then again, people who didn't enjoy school are quite likely to be sociopaths, too (Zero Hour: Massacre At Columbine High School, Mon 11pm Five). Even teachers hate school - well, wouldn't you? In such an environment of hate, hormones and whooping cough, it's amazing anyone makes it out alive, and even more amazing that, for some people, love manages to blossom in such sere and toxic......

The other day in the Londonist offices we sat down over a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits and realised that we were neglecting an important element of the fabric of the capital: the pub quiz. Everyone loves a pub quiz. It's like an IQ test with booze. So it makes sense that Londonist should start to document some of the finest pub quiz experiences to be had in the city...plus it......

As we walked out of the Royal Albert Hall at the interval of last Friday's performance of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, we pondered which was more shocking: the fact that a hall packed with several thousand punters was forced to wait a full hour for the concert to begin while the technical staff of the Royal Albert Hall attempt to stop a high-pitched whine of microphone feedback, or the fact that Anne Sofie von......

So it's hot. You may have noticed. London Underground certainly have as they've rolled out their annual "Beat the Heat" message, encouraging passengers to carry a bottle of water with them or not use the tube if they're feeling unwell. Sound advice, but certainly no substitution for a permanent cooling solution, the absence of which must fall squarely on the shoulders of us, Joe Public. In July 2003 London Mayor Ken Livingstone challenged the......

What is it about the press and this need they have for US celebrities to fall in love with London? We know Heat and the like exist on these things, but ever since Madonna relocated here it seems the denizens of 'tabloid world' have made it their life mission to convert every semi-celebrity who travels within the M25 that London is Heaven on Earth and they need to make it their home RIGHT NOW!......

Today a list of the Prime Ministers dinner guests was released after Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb requested it under the Freedom of Information Act, as part of his "campaign to secure greater openness in government". Yeah, right. Not an opportunity to make Tony Blair look like a Heat magazine reading celebrity obsessive, and when you read the list it's hard not to see it like that. It's a mixture of talk show hosts, comedians,......

It's a long time since we had any global warming panic (not counting the marketing campaign behind The Day After Tomorrow of course). So Londonist was pleased to see this report (PDF File), released today, which claims that "London could face summers as hot as New York and as dry as Israel by the end of this century". The report from the Energy Saving Commission entitled Forecasting The Future warns that "Heat could reach......