For members only

In case you missed the news, the Ravens Bar at Hayes Lane is now a private members’ club called The Ravens Lounge, and you, yes YOU slob-face, can become a member. Your season pass, just £115 (inc. VAT), entitles you to buy a drink in that place you’ve always bought a drink, only now… No, actually that’s it.

It may look exactly the same as the old Ravens Bar, but that’s just your oafish untrained eye speaking. This is a lounge. Like at an airport. Or like your living room if you were a bit posh in the nineties.

That word, lounge, haunts doomed premium ventures like the smell of a PVC banquette held together with duct tape. It’s a word the creatively challenged want like us to associate with luxury so they don’t have to come up with anything smarter. Wouldn’t it be better if they just said what they really mean? “No riff-raff.”