How to make a PhD one long party

What sort of looney-tune would spend 100 nights out of 365 going to nightclubs? An advertising agency account planner, of course. In this case it was Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters’ Ben Malbon. He was compiling research for a PhD funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. He followed 18 clubbers for a year, from 1996 to 1997, and the interviews he conducted with them form the basis of his new book Clubbing: Dancing, Ecstasy, Vitality published last week by Routledge. Malbon says: “The book is concerned with some of the motivations for and the socio-spatio-temporal and bodily-emotional practices which constitute the clubbing experience.” Funny, the Diary thought it was just about taking lots of drugs and manic, stupid dancing.