What Katy Did - larging it in London

A weekend of living it large in London has taken its toll, not only on my body but my finances.

Dancing all night then sleeping half the next day was the theme over the Chinese New Year weekend, when I stayed with my friend in South East London.

Despite having lugged two heavy bags with me, full of potential outfits, I ended up rejecting them all in favour of a sexy, purple, backless dress, borrowed from my friend. The skirt length would normally put me off wearing such a garment, even with American tan tights, but thanks to the current trend for black opaque hosiery, I was able to parade my pins and pretend I suffer from neither cellulite nor thread veins (I wish that were true).

Our destination was a fashion thing at none other than the Metropolitan Hotel in Park Lane. I'd heard about the infamous Met Bar and how the private members' club is, or perhaps was, 'the' place for celebs to hang out.

With such a reputation, I'd built up an image in my mind of how grand a place it would be.

Not fancying the trek from SE24 to W1K on public transport, especially not in the ridiculously high shoes we were both sporting, we arrived by taxi (around £18 each way), fashionably late. The doors to the Met Bar, or what we assumed was the Met Bar, were guarded by a beefy bouncer who directed us to the large, revolving doors of the actual hotel.

I tried to hide my disappointment at the event not being in the actual Met Bar as we were greeted by Gabriel, the PR guy who had organised the event. Gabriel ushered us into the a small, darkly lit side bar with red sofas, swiftly poured us flutes of champagne and sat us next to the extremely chatty designer, Andrew Majtenyi.

As we made small talk and drank our complimentary bubbly, a model wandered in amongst the crowd, wearing different outfits by the designer each time she appeared. The champers soon went to my head and before long I was nodding enthusiastically to each thing the thirty-something, curly haired designer said, while chipping in occasionally with my own two penn'orth of irrelevant fashion trivia. Covering topics from the outlandish Manish Arora show (which I wrote about last week) to the debate on size zero models (apparently, many of them have yellow armpits and smell bad) I was soon itching to throw some shapes on the dance floor, despite it being the size of broom cupboard.

I asked Gabriel whether we would be able to 'go next door' at any point, i.e. to the actual Met Bar, to which he responded that this was the Met Bar. I was glad the place was dark so he could not see my cheeks blushing.

So, this tiny, nothing-to-shout-about bar charging £15 for a cocktail was the place for which people actually paid to be members! But I soon discovered one celebrity benefit as I tried to take a picture and was reprimanded by the doorman - apparently cameras are banned (so the better-known in society can drink themselves into oblivion and not fear getting splashed across a celebrity gossip mag, assuming they avoid any paps lurking outside, that is).

Later, we visited a club in Sloane Square called Kitz. What a mistake. There were far too many sleazy men and, because of the size (what is it with posh people and small clubs?), nowhere to escape other than back up the stairs, which was exactly what we did after only 15 minutes.

The next day I awoke and, as we scoffed bagels with mashed banana and Nutella (try it!) I started planning where to eat lunch, then realised it was already 1pm. We spent the day reading magazines and slobbing about before doing it all over again - the dresses, the booze, the expensive cab rides, junk food at 3am - only this time gracing the dance floor of another bijou club off Trafalgar Square, called Doon. The music was fab and we danced for hours but by 2pm-ish I was ready for bed.

Sunday was the start of the Chinese New Year; seeing as how we had consumed nothing but refined carbs all weekend, in the form of pizza, chocolate cheese cake and alcohol, it seemed fitting that it was the Year of the Pig. Oink.