Thankfully, The Verve don't have the same extreme policy towards amateur photographers as Prince, although I think I have the solution that could save him thousands in legal fees. All he needs to do is employ a series of tall people to plonk themselves at strategic places at his shows, thus making it impossible to take any decent photos. If the proliferation of tall people looks suspicious, he could also employ a brigade of people with big hair to hover around anyone who produces a camera. I'll swear this guy was standing in front of me for the latter half of The Verve's fantastic gig at the Roundhouse on Thursday:

Out of eighteen attempts to take photos at the gig, only one was fairly usable, thanks to Mr Big Hair, Mr Tall and Mr Can't Take Photos for Shit.

If you're ever doing the tourism thing in London, do not ask TKK to take your picture at any of the capital's landmarks.

“What goes on in the mind of a doorman?”

That was the rhetorical question posed to me by a young hottie at the Cross nightclub on Saturday.

A friend and I had planned (or, put more accurately, my friend had planned) to go to the Hed Kandi night at Pacha on that particular evening. I can’t say I was looking forward to it, especially as I’d had to fork out on a new pair of shoes (trainers being banned) and had a haircut in the same week (is it school photo day or a nightclub?).

We get to the club. Early. We get in line. We notice the doormen turning people away, which we think is for dress code infringements (trainers, t-shirt, keffiyehs...), until it was our turn to get kicked out.

“Sorry lads, you ain’t coming in. You gotta be with a partner.”

All of sudden, the reasoning behind the ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ tickets available online beforehand was made abundantly clear. It turns out that only a certain amount of unaccompanied men and women can get in, and the ‘boy’ tickets sold out almost two weeks ago (I was supposed to buy them but procrastinated for a couple of hours, by which time they’d been snapped up).

After trying (and failing) to sneak in the other exit, we met a couple of girls who agreed to be our dates for the queue (if not the evening). After a quick spot of mutual biography swotting (mine was Louise, 29, works in HR for Vodaphone, wants to do psychology, and a young hottie to boot), we get back in line.

And then get kicked out again.

Not surprisingly, as it had been less than twenty minutes since we were first kicked out, the bouncers recognized us and refused to believe our dates had suddenly turned up.

However, in a rare twist, and displaying a commitment to gender equality I didn’t think possible, the bouncers also kicked the girls out, for “trying to make us look like mugs” (on that basis I wonder if anyone got in the club that night).

Us four outcasts ended up getting in a taxi to the Cross, my favourite club in London, and sadly to close in the New Year due to the Channel Tunnel raillink extension plans (because London is simply crying out for another identikit shopping centre…), hence the opening line. Boiling the argument down to its essentials, I managed to get a chant of “Fuck Pacha!, Fuck Pacha!” going on the dancefloor amongst the four of us, which a few other people seemed to pick up on as well.

Evidently we weren’t the only Pacha refugees in north London that particular evening.