The venue for this event has changed since our visit.
What can you expect from a brunch themed around a 2004 high school film? For starters: food. That’s a pretty low bar: a meal generally involves food. But such is not the case at the first Mean Girls Brunch. At least, not for everyone.
When we arrive at midday, it’s pretty much what you’d expect: a queue of excited women, dressed in graduated shades of pink, shouting ‘Boo you, whore’. But there’s a problem: there are too many Mean Girls, and it takes almost an hour to get everyone seated. I end up in a sad annexe at the back with four people I’ve just met, well away from a screen that’s showing the film (without audio), the stage, the bar and any hope of fun.
I brush the confetti hearts off the menu, and find a list of burger and pizza mix ‘platters’.
As I pass the bar on the way to the toilet, I hear a mutiny building. The staff have ‘run out of prosecco’, even though we’re only 50 minutes into the promised hour of bottomless fizz. Time passes. A man in a Santa suit shouts ‘You go, Glen Coco!’ and throws a net of heart-shaped Sainsbury's chocolates on to our table. Some women posing as ‘The Plastics’, ask if we’d like to sign the ‘Burn Book’. I read an entry that says ‘[redacted] is a fugly slut’, and feel sad. I ask one of them if she knows when the food is coming. She breaks the fourth wall to say she’s sorry, but she doesn’t. The bubbles are bottomless again after much complaining, so I just slosh fizzy liquid into my empty stomach. The afternoon limps to 2pm. Someone spills their glass of prosecco, causing the paper tablecloth to disintegrate and creating a growing pink sinkhole in the middle of the table. I stare at it, wishing I could climb in.
It turns out the venue has now ‘run out of food’ and panicked PRs are scrambling through the front door holding wobbly towers of pizza boxes, ordered in from elsewhere. Eventually, a medium veggie pizza arrives, to be shared between our group of six. It’s cold before it hits the soggy tablecloth. Two of our table give up and leave. Around the corner, Rihanna’s ‘Rude Boy’ is blaring, and women are on stage, screaming, laughing, flipping their hair. ‘It’s like spying on a party you weren’t invited to,’ says a girl at my table. A plain cheese pizza nobody asked for arrives and we stare at it in silence, reaching for our coats. It might not have been much of a brunch, but when it comes to recreating that cold, isolating feeling that’s unique to ‘high school’? So fetch.