The dress code is a law unto itself: silky or slinky, floaty or flimsy, sensual or sparkling. Dress lightly because it will be hot. Come as your Fantasy Self. Set in Brixton, at Mass, the Night of the Senses is an annual celebration of sexual diversity for all genders and persuasions from across the world. Held in a safe, no pressure, respectful and joyful environment, guests are invited to explore their sexuality through the......

Honestly, what is it about properties being mistaken for sin-ridden dens of iniquity? Weeks after a Staines house was confused with a nearby bordello, police have now stepped in and closed down a Kilburn naturist club. The Soho Beach House on Kilburn High Road, promoted as a venue where folk can get their kit off, was shut last night after Camden Council stripped it of its license. A police dossier revealed that, over a......

If you're bothered, of a dull evening, by a drunk, leering man giggling and gurning at you with a suspicious (if meagre) bulge protruding from his pocket region, you'd be forgiven for force-feeding him a knuckle sandwich and sending him on his way. Yet this was the nightly scenario visited upon one Staines resident. Ben Craft, a former karate trainer, found himself opening the door each evening to some clueless caller looking for a......

Sexual intercourse may have begun, per Larkin, in 1963, but one London centenarian is defying that clammy logic: Eric Woodward, who dispenses advice on love, ladies, and life to a new generation in the pages of FHM magazine, has just celebrated his 101st birthday. The agony uncle (or great grandfather, more like it) was hired by FHM last year to dole out worldly-wise advice to the magazine's readership of smart, sophisticated young gentlemen (er,......

Between Morden and High Barnet travel the sexiest passengers on the network according to the results of Qype's Love on the Tube survey. About 300 people completed the cheeky survey and the prevailing wisdom is the Northern Line's where it's at for ‘spiky-haired indie kids’ and ‘hot City types’. Unsurprisingly, no mention of the swollen handed alcoholics or the billion tourists who get on between Waterloo and Leicester Square. Dowdiest is the Hammersmith and......

Libraries and whores are not natural bedfellows. Yet in the Wellcome Library on Euston Road you can work your way though more loose women than Genghis Khan on his gap year. The centre holds the world's foremost collection of tart cards -- those colourful adverts that decorate London's phone boxes. Stephen Lowther is in charge of the smutty stash, which forms part of the library's medical ephemera collection. The holdings comprise single sheet publications......

Seems the purpose of marriage for the jolly old Church of England is no longer simply 'go forth and procreate'. In a post Valentine's, pre-Leap Year PR stunt the CofE released "Growing Together - the course", aimed at making church leaders better at preparing aspirant marrieds for the choppy waters ahead, including the loss of "spark" in the bedroom. Clearly the church PR folk didn't big up the sex angle quite enough at the......

Congratulations – you can read! (Presumably. Unless you just look at Londonist for the pictures.) Literacy is sexy. Hyper-literacy, even sexier. Or so we at Londonist tell ourselves as we don our Coke-bottle glasses and curl up each night with a bottle of wine and a dictionary. But enough about our steamy Valentine’s Day plans. What have you got planned? Now, you may have inferred that we’re a jaded lot over here at Londonist.......

Her Majesty The Queen is now the oldest monarch Britain has ever enjoyed. Hang on, that sounds pervy. Let’s try again. Queen Elizabeth II today becomes the oldest British monarch. That’s better. The AFP, taking no chances that she might die overnight, filed the story thus: Queen Elizabeth II was set Thursday to become Britain's oldest monarch.. She surpasses Queen Vic, who snuffed it aged 81 years and 243 days. But our Liz will......

There have been big changes at Londonist this year - we've had new staff, a new commenting system and a brand new tagging system installed so we had a lot to celebrate at the Christmas party. And as we're not keen on making trouble for ourselves, only for other people, we thought we would go to a party already arranged for us; last night a hearty party of Londonistas headed off to the Barbican......

The legendary girls from St Trinians had their premiere last night in Leicester Square. St Trinian's is the 2007 film of the 1950s film series is getting certain bits of the press excited, with a cast that features Rupert Everett in drag, Russell Brand twatting about with no noticeable change of costume or persona, Colin Firth striding about being humourless and lots of attractive women playing schoolgirls. Celia Imrie and Anna Chancellor both have......

London is getting more dangerous by the day ladies and gentlemen. It's not enough that a quick trip down Oxford Street is going to leave you gasping like a floundering flounder on the deck of a homeward bound fishing trawler, now you can't even grab the number of your local brass from that phone booth down the road in safety. Well, not if you live in Camden, so breath easy SE London for the......

Five years ago, Sharon and Terri Arnold solicited firefighter Andy Bathie’s help in starting a family. Under the assurance that he would bear no financial or emotional responsibility for the children’s upbringing, he twice obliged. The women had a boy and a girl, but broke up soon after. And Bathie, who thought he had been doing his friends a favour, now finds himself financially liable for the children. Charity, apparently, sometimes comes with a......

The provocative title is not simply a cheap trick like putting "SEX!!!!1!" across the top of a flyer to catch people's attention for carpet cleaning equipment. The One Night Stand With... series is quite literally one night with a specially commissioned artist at VINEspace, an inquisitive East London gallery in Bethnal Green Each month, an artist is invited to present an exhibition for one night only. It is taken down in the morning so......

The cold weather - and holiday festivities - descended upon Gothamist. The Rockefeller Christmas tree was lit, Broadway stagehand finally ended their strike, and NASCAR decided to run their victory lap through Times Square. There were disturbing photographs revealing the working conditions in which many city manholes are produced and ninjas were also a hot topic, either robbing homes or entering into alibis. But the city was really rocked by how Rudy Giuliani's visits......

If you’re a fan of musicals then you probably think the bigger the better. In which case you must pop down to the BFI Imax, where their After-Dark All-Nighter event will be screening four modern musicals on the trot on Saturday 8th December. First off the bat is 1980’s high school classic Fame at 11.15pm where the students of the New York High School for Performing Arts discover sex and show tunes. For those......

After a 2-month hiatus spent reading Finnegans Wake (alright, would you believe rubbish romance novels?), The Book Grocer returns, with a continually evolving format and its diary stuffed full with book-ish events. Here are our picks for the week: Tuesday: Anne Sebba, author of Jennie Churchill, Winston’s American Mother, in conversation with Hugh Whitemore, playwright and writer of the Emmy-award winning Winston Churchill drama The Gathering Storm, at Waterstone’s Notting Hill Gate store, 7pm,......

Our weekly roundup of film reviews continues, courtesy of James Bryan… This week Michael Caine and Jude Law give it some Pinter in Sleuth, Wes Anderson delivers his latest quirky offering in The Darjeeling Limited, Christian Bale eats maggots in Rescue Dawn and Blade Runner gets polished up in a new release. Sleuth should be a masterpiece, a quartet of talent coming together to intimidate us all into how it’s done. We’ve got national......

Hello Jeff! But don't bother opening your mouth to reply, because I haven't got the time to listen; I'm too busy celebrating! No no, don't worry, you haven't missed St. Satan's Day. I'm celebrating because it's been a year since I started doing stand-up! You'll have to forgive me, as this may be quite a self-indulgent post. But I can scarcely believe I've managed to persevere for this long! You see, I'm a notoriously......

Whilst the Sex Pistols and The Verve were hawking their wares for the proper reviewers, Londonist was hightailing it down to the Empire for an early start. Since The Broken Family Band cashed in the cool Cambridge climes for our dirty old town, we can now legitimately claim them as our favourite London band (no doubt to howls of protest from the other Londonist writers and possibly the guys themselves). TBFB (for all you......

Whenever Londonist is feeling a tad glum, we have but to turn to Matt Harding and his amazingly silly website to get all cheered up again. Matt Harding is one big internet sensation, albeit a very unlikely one. The former games programmer has made a new career out of dancing badly in front of some of the world’s most recognisable and iconic buildings, and in some of the planet’s remotest terrains. But Londonist has been......

Londonist does not support prostitution, let’s get this straight right away. But we were pleased to spot this news flash about a Guildford hairdressing Madam having her prison sentence reduced from 18 months to 12 months. Chunxia Bao was very naughty – she made an estimated £200,000 out of her ‘special upstairs salon’, where she employed two prostitutes to administer the old personal touch. Until prostitution is regulated or legalised, running a brothel is a......

Ear of the Year? It's not a typo, nor is it an attempt to fetishise one of the body's less aesthetically appealing organs through association with their derriere-concerned namesake (though we'd applaud any such effort). The capital's already got plenty of sex if that's your thing. Ear of the Year is in fact part of a campaign by the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. They're trying to find the country's best ear, or......

Looks like HRH is having a bit of a Blair old time right now (either Blair will do). There's that pesky enquiry and now this latest plot to blackmail a minor member of the royal family over some man on man nightclub naughtiness, although thank goodness for the police who've now arrested two men. We* here at Londonist are deeply disappointed at the sad, sorry state of the proceedings. Firstly, it's a minor royal.......

Local trader Mike Weedon has proposed new toilets to be built in the trendy bar and club-filled area of Islington. The proposal has been taken seriously by Islington Council as imore public conveniences should be available ... but not if they're named after Joe Orton. This infamous homosexual playwright of the 1960s rocked London with controversial plays such as 'Loot', What the Butler Saw' and 'Entertaining Mr Sloane' (a corpse in a cupboard and......

We’re gob-smacked we are that Brits have a bad bed rep. As far as the eye can see, quite literally, we’re about as randy as a canine on heat. Sexual sighting number one: freshers strip during freshers week – now that sure is an original way to make friends (although the residents of Kingston might argue to the contrary). Sexual sighting number two: Swedish porn at the ICA. This really qualifies as six sightings,......

You might have heard - the Spice Girls are reforming for a few concerts. It wasn't very publicised, so you could be excused for missing it. Tickets for the London concert on 15 December at the O2 Centre went on sale on Monday and sold out in thirty eight seconds. That's right. Thirty eight seconds. That means the tickets could have sold out 4.74 times while you listened to an average pop song. Or......

Anarchists, nihilists, thorns in the establishment's side, punks, poets, property developers, reality tv stars, radio show hosts; if nothing else the Sex Pistols are a contrary bunch. So whether the 30th anniversary bollocks celebration/reunion tour is a final nail in the coffin or breath of life to that ephemeral thing they call Punk attitude, only history, possibly as written by the NME, will tell. Either way their initial batch of Brixton dates sold out......

Anyone remember the Sex and the City moment when Carrie has her Manolo’s snatched? They wanted her shoes – say what? Well, such crime is no longer confined to the silver screen, nor the streets of Manhattan. Early yesterday morning, two fashion houses, Brora on Marylebone High Street and Luella Bartley in Mayfair, were broken into and handfuls of handbags and cashmere seized. The villains – reported to have travelled by moped – skilfully......

A new exhibition opens this week in Trafalgar Square. For one week only the Journey installation will be wowing visitors to the square. But there’s good wow and bad wow, and this is definitely in the latter category. For the exhibition is portraying the misery and reality that is modern sex trafficking. The expo unfolds through a series of seven containers designed by some big artistic names including Anish Kapoor, each one representing different stages......