My big night out: I was about to get fired – then a colleague invited me to the party that changed my life | Work & careers

In the mid-90s, I was working as an admin assistant on the listings magazine of the London Evening Standard, and was about to be fired. OK, I wasn’t that good at the job, but I was also done with it. It was on my mind that I needed an actual job, one that you could describe to someone: “I’m an X.” At what point did you get to say: “I’m a journalist”? And was that even a real thing? A lawyer friend had told me: “I see mine as a profession and yours as more of a trade.” I ruminated on that a lot.

Anyway, some time between my latest misdemeanour and my inevitable disciplinary letter, someone from the main paper, let’s call him Pete Clark because that was his name (everyone else will go by initials, but Pete’s dead now, and he would want to be named, I think), asked if I wanted to go to a party. It was no special occasion, just the launch of a bar; this happened every night in the 90s, even Mondays. He was 43, but all old people look the same when you’re 23, so I felt as if the viscount owner of the paper had noticed me from the top of his gold mountain and invited me to a ball.

I asked him why he had invited me, and he said I reminded him of Elmer, the patchwork elephant: “This great, big, maladroit thing, incredibly colourfully dressed.” I didn’t feel insulted. He was obviously just someone who liked to go about carnival-style, surrounded by freaks.

We arrived late and mob-handed: Pete, who always wore a silk scarf that he would toss like a dandy, but then come over incredibly East End if anyone admired it; C, who took so much chaos with him that it wasn’t an evening out until he had injured himself; M, who would have much preferred to go home, but was too shy to ever say, “No, I am shy and would prefer to go home”; B, who looked like a supermodel but for some weird reason didn’t know it; A, who always peeled off five minutes before any trouble started; R, the only one of us who was working, as his job was “bars”; two other people who over time I came to understand would always be with us, except nobody knew what they did during the day; and me.

The mood shift when we walked in felt like a western; a gang of ruffians blowing into the saloon, a pause while people waited to see what kind of mayhem we had brought. But the bar itself was nothing like a western – being quintessentially 90s. All the surfaces were onyx or obsidian or whatever the hell: very shiny, very black. All the waiters were dressed in black, and all the mirrors were tinted a kind of coppery grey, so everywhere you looked, you saw your face reflected back at you, except made of pure evil. The only drinks being served were martinis.

Hanging from the ceiling was a giant cage, and inside the cage was what cannot possibly have been a panther. Could it have been a vast black domestic cat? A snow leopard, sprayed black? I wish I’d spent more time bottoming this out, then the whole thing would sound less like a dream. Whatever it was, it was a living, breathing creature, sitting there, intended to convey an atmosphere of elegance and decadence, I guess.

Instead, the cat just looked pissed off, and Pete decided it was not the right environment for an animal. It was too noisy and the cat was getting smoke in its eyes, and even though we were the ones smoking, he wouldn’t let it drop. He started berating the manager, who couldn’t tell whether or not he was joking. He wasn’t even a cat person – he had border terriers – but he couldn’t abide an unhappy creature in a cage. We stayed until all the martinis were finished, and I think Pete yanked the establishment’s chain for the entire time.

The next day someone from the satanic bar called Pete’s boss to say they had found his credit card in the loo, and she laughed for about half an hour at the idea that anyone would think the implication of drug use would besmirch his reputation. They were lawless people who took a good time with them, and couldn’t stand cruelty to animals. I loved my work after that. Someone other than Pete – a senior editor, who was not lawless, who was magnificent and is still alive, thank God – hoicked me off listings and on to the main newspaper, where every day ended in a carnival of freaks going to a party. Under this, I finally discovered, as the long 90s ground to a close, was a real job.