14 things you didn’t know about Fabric

The vast subterranean venue used to be a meat storage cellar called Metropolitan Cold Stores. It took founder Keith Reilly almost ten years to find the right location.

Fabric opened in 1999, the same year as much-trumpeted club Home in Leicester Square. It was a battle of the super-clubs, which Fabric won with ease; Home closed in 2001.

Room One of the club has a 'bodysonic' dancefloor: it essentially amplifies bass signals up through the floor so that you feel the music in your head and your toes. Find the sweet spot to the left of the DJ booth and your calves will pleasantly quiver like never before.

Since its opening night, the club has always championed drum ’n’ bass – even though the number of mics destroyed by overzealous MCs along the way runs to around 70.

In contrast to the standard girl-in-bikini club flyers, Fabric’s in-house designers have always projected a leftfield edge, with nods to nature, modernism and the area’s Victorian past. Previous posters have featured a wooden reindeer head, a human totem pole and a plague doctor.

Given that on most nights, the queue to get into Fabric runs down to nearby Farringdon station, the total queue since opening adds up to more than 1,145 miles.

A cool addition to the club are its numbered mix CDs. FabricLive 84 is the latest, mixed by bass-heavy producer Dub Phizix. John Peel mixed number seven back in 2002.

Spare a thought for resident DJs Craig Richards and Terry Francis, who’ve been in situ pretty much every Saturday night since the club opened. Only the guy who reads the numbers on the National Lottery draw has a longer running Saturday night gig.

An astonishing 5,250,000 people have come through the doors in its lifetime, which (the club estimates) means around 45 million toilet flushes.

Fabric has a life in the daytime, too. It’s sometimes used for events and even conferences. Imagine hearing a CEO admonish an entire sales department through that PA! On second thoughts, don’t.

Almost 30,000 hours of music have been heard in the club since it opened in 1999.

Their annual birthday celebrations are the stuff of legend. This year the club opens for 30 hours straight, from 11pm on Saturday October 17 to 5am on Monday, with Ricardo Villalobos, Marcel Dettmann, DJ Qu, Prosumer and Dan Ghenacia just some of the DJs stepping up to the booth over the weekend.