“You think having your tits sawn off is as important as finding a home number for Mr Dave Hewitt?” he says when Tracy phones her mother about her mastectomy.Hewitt, a pop star who has never had a hit anywhere in the world (“even Zambia”), never appears, but the play’s plot is driven by Ray’s increasingly obsessive attempts to get him on the show. And at the helm stands Ray Goodenough, the Jewish producer, given to delivering torrents of abuse down the phone, even to people in the same room as him. Tracy, the researcher cum secretary cum dogsbody has recently had a breast removed because of cancer. Harry is the alcoholic presenter of The Harry Harrod Show, a chat show that’s seen better days, whose perfect guest would be John Wayne Bobbitt, and whose ratings slide will only be stopped by a kindly controller with an axe.

Williams himself, now 48, has been feted as a sage of middle-class London life, a genial buddha of suburbia whose sallies into the macabre can be put down to English eccentricity.Against such a background, Harry and Me – now previewing at the Royal Court – shines like a beacon of darkness, notwithstanding the fact it’s a comedy. His most famous creation is Henry Farr, hero of The Wimbledon Poisoner, a downtrodden fortysomething solicitor, local historian and amateur toxicologist whose obsession with poisoning his wife is topped only by his ineptitude.
Williams’s Wimbledon is a sort of comic Barsetshire translated to the suburbs, with Trollope’s sturdy burghers replaced by characters like the Nazi Who Escaped Justice at Nuremberg and members of the Spiritualist Church of South Wimbledon. It promised light relief because Williams is simply one of the country’s funniest novelists, the kind who makes you pick up the phone at midnight to read out whole chunks of his books to friends. Styron’s book is a portrait of his descent into clinical depression, a personal apocalypse that came upon him as inexplicably as it went, a stark warning to all – but especially middle-aged writers – of the funeral pall that depression can cast over even the sunniest of lives Gloomy stuff. So when Williams’s new play, Harry and Me, plopped through the letterbox, it was as a bit of light relief that I jumped on it How wrong can you be.

“In my experience most clubs meet the basic requirements but this is the best trained club in London.”In this club nothing will burn The amount of combustible material should be minimised. There is no way that you can say a serious fire will never occur here, you just minimise the risk until it’s highly improbable. The emphasis therefore should be on prevention and staff training and awareness.”. Shortly before meeting Nigel Williams, I was reading the American novelist William Styron’s Darkness Visible.

“Clubs have to be run professionally because you’d last one week if you didn’t follow council guidelines,” says manager Tim Clarke “We’re not going to jeopardise members of the public. This is also our livelihood, so we’re not going to risk it.”Ex-fireman Andrew Ings, from the Institution of Risk and Safety Management, acts as a consultant for the club. Every five weeks he checks the premises in addition to lecturing all staff on safety and fire prevention. “When we started there was no governing body to license all-night rave events so we drew up our own set of procedures and policies. The only reason we’ve been so successful is because we operate by the book.”The Leisure Lounge is one of the most popular clubs in London and has capacity for 500. The owners spent in excess of pounds 250,000 converting the venue to meet strict safety guidelines. Entry was always guaranteed providing you knew the location, possessed the entrance fee and did not work for Her Majesty’s constabulary.