Alex Parnham-Cope

Craft beer fans are getting an early Christmas present this winter, as beloved brewery Pretty Decent Beer Co has announced it’ll be opening a new taproom next to Victoria Park in December. The company is East London born and brewed, and already pours pints in Forest Gate, Blackhorse Road and Walthamstow. From December 4, craft beer aficionados will be able to enjoy canal-side pints at a site that will also include a communal beer hall, a quiet front bar, an arcade machine and a foosball table, plus street food vendors including Vietnamese bites and Irish comfort food.  Those just looking for good beer on a budget are in luck. All Pretty Decent Beer Co taprooms host First Pour Thursdays, where punters can come try the weekly special release, and all the brewery’s core beers, for £4 a pint. There’s no limit on the number of beers and the offer runs from open ’til close at each taproom, including the new site at Viccy Park. Check out where else you can grab great brewery deals in east London on our Blackhorse Beer Mile guide. Pretty Decent Beer Co was founded in 2017 and has snowballed from being London’s smallest commercial brewery to bubbling away 6,000 litres of beer a week. It churns out a dizzying array of 100 distinct brews each year, and the crowd favourite is the I Could Get Better at T*sco for a Quid – a nod to the brewery’s first-ever Google review. The brewers also gives a donation to charity from each pint, keg, or can sold, so you can tick off your good deed for the

Finding an affordable place to pitch up for a drink is getting harder and harder to come by. When the news of £8 pints hit London earlier this year – and when one pub announced it would be adding a £2 surcharge to its pints this week – audible cries of agony echoed down beer miles across the capital.  But there’s a frothy glimmer of hope on the horizon. Enter the Blackhorse Beer Mile, a route of breweries and wineries at Walthamstow’s Blackhorse Road. The Blackhorse Beer Mile has alternatives for those of us searching for a crisp and quality pint that won’t set your pocket alight.   Thursday is the magic date for £4 pints at most of the BBM’s participating businesses, but we’ve scoured the T&Cs to bring you all the deals on drinks and food throughout the week as well. Check out the list below to plan your next bar crawl on a budget, and pour one out for us! High Hill Taproom The Hackney Brewery, which pulls pints at the High Hill Taproom, is offering all house beers for £4 on Thursdays. The deal is running the whole evening until close at 11pm ‘because everyone should be able to afford having a pint with their mates on a regular basis’. And who could argue with that? Renegade Wine Winery The bargains continue next door at the Renegade Urban Winery, where you can enjoy all pints on draft at £4, house wines for £5, and selected cocktails for £7 on Thursdays and Fridays. But be warned, the deal only applies between 5pm and 7pm if you’re up for a quick dash after work. Exale Tap

King’s Cross clubbing mecca Egg has built an international rep among ravers and groovers of all stripes, boasting regular sets from diverse artists across techno, house, Afro, melodic beats and more. And now those clubbers have an shiny new place to dance: Egg is reopening after an ambitious refurbishment of its five music rooms, spread over three floors. The 1,000-capacity club in King’s Cross has had work done on The Garden, Middle Floor, and Loft areas, which have all been spruced up with soul-shaking new soundsystems. The club’s classy reimaginings also include upgraded facilities and a new security team.  The venue is also being taken over by new management company Chapter 1 Creations, the brainchild of long-time Egg promoter Ali Bee and former head of operations Sen Jay. Bee says the new team is ‘extremely passionate about preserving this historic nightclub while driving it forward with our recent renovation works. ’For over two decades, we’ve set the standard for unforgettable clubbing experiences and we're dedicated to ensuring that legacy continues.’ Egg is housed in a former Victorian warehouse which first opened as a club back in 2003. The club was forced to turn to crowdfunding to secure its future after the stinging costs of the pandemic, but London’s sweat-drenched ravers dug deep to save the venue and give the legendary night spot a new lease of life. Egg’s investment in the future of London nightlife comes as welcome news when over 3,000 nightlife venues have

Ever been cautiously stopped in the street or got a double take from a stranger who’s half convinced you might be famous? Reckon you could reasonably pass as a certain former boy-bander turned singer, actor, and global heartthrob? Many men and boys of London clearly think they resemble Harry Styles, and this past weekend they flocked to Soho Square to compete in a spontaneous lookalike contest for the former One Directioner. The competition was launched on Instagram by journalist Katrina Mirpuri and quickly developed a feral following on X. Luckily the Time Out team was on hand to capture the glitter-packed carnage As It Was (sorry). The event comes after a recent explosion of unabashedly chaotic lookalike contests popping up in major cities and fuelled by social media hysteria. Take the instantly iconic Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in New York, where hundreds of blokes marched their angular cheekbones and bouncing curls to Washington Square Park to compete for a $50 cash prize. The sea of wiry-haired Willy-Wonkas and Paul Atreides quickly turned chaotic, with Timothée himself showing his famous face and the NYPD arresting unruly attendees. Only slightly less anarchic was the search to find Paul Mescal’s doppelganger in Dublin, magnetising every pale guy with a single hoop earring and short-shorts in a 30 mile radius.  i of course decided to go look confused at a harry styles lookalike contest on a random saturday afternoon xx (first guy won) pic.twitter.com/a

Britain’s adorable puffins have had a tough run of it recently. They were already ranked on the ‘red list’ of our most endangered birds when they then faced a vicious wave of disease. Thankfully, the affectionately nicknamed ‘clowns of the sea’ have been spared the fate of the dodo, and a welcome boost to their numbers has been reported.  The good news is all thanks to the National Nature Reserve on the remote Farne Islands, just off the coast of Northumberland. The rugged rocks dotted with lighthouses are home to around 200,000 sea birds like Arctic terns, kittiwakes and, of course, puffins.  Researchers were worried about how puffins were coping after a devastating bird flu on the islands in 2022 and 2023 killed nearly a thousand of them. Fortunately, a new study by the National Trust has found that the deadly outbreak seems to be over. That means conservation workers have returned and visitors can ferry out to the islands to enjoy the scenery and hang out with the winged locals. National Trust Area Ranger on the Farne Islands Sophia Jackson said: ‘We just didn’t know what to expect with this year’s count. We feared the worse … but it’s been amazing to get this positive news; and it seems due to the species’ own self-isolating behaviours that they have weathered this particular storm.’ The study found puffin numbers had risen to around 50,000 breeding pairs, a healthy 15 percent increase from the last tally done in 2019. It also found that more puffins have moved their fled

It's a truism that London is far from one singular city – the capital really consists of countless neighbourhoods crammed in next to each other, each stuffed with its own distinct stuff. Hackney Wick and Dalston vie as top nightlife hubs for punters looking for niche craft beer and dizzying techno. The greenest borough is surely a tight race between the likes of leafy Kingston and idyllic Richmond. But which London area is happiest? Well, a new study reckons it can tell you. Homeware company Furniture Box surveyed over 5,000 people around the UK in a mega study to find the happiest place to pitch up, considering a bunch of different factors to get an overall idea of which neighbourhoods really get the serotonin flowing. Are there beautiful surroundings and plenty of green spaces to frolic in? Is housing affordable and inclusive? Are there good state schools to support families? Pubs, restaurants and shops were all thrown into the mix to see whether people have great places to kick back and relax. Sadly, the capital gave a pretty poor showing in the rankings, clinching only two places in the top 70 listed. Maybe that's not particularly shocking, considering a study from last year claimed that Londoners need to be earning around £79,524 a year to be properly happy. But all is not lost! Clearly a few postcodes in the big smoke are pockets of sunshine and rainbows, and maybe we can all learn a thing or two from them. According to the study, Clapham is the happiest place to live i

Big-budget public renovations are, in theory, an exciting prospect: shiny new shopfronts, independent eateries and (gasp!) a promise of affordable housing on the horizon.  Speaking of such, we have some news for you: plans to shake-up Lewisham shopping centre have now been formally submitted for council permission. The £1.3 billion project will be part-demolishing, part-converting the concrete metropolis built in 1977 into a sprawling new site with plenty of homes and shops. We’ve waded through the paperwork of the spanking-new planning application to reveal what south London might have in store. Back in 2023 we reported on the first whiff of Lewisham’s spectacular glow-up, when plans for a new high street and thousands of homes were announced by LandsecU+I. (No, that’s not the name of some tech bro’s latest offspring, but the regeneration branch of Landsec, the current owners of Lewisham Shopping Centre.)  The plan is to keep the streets brimming with local businesses and make them totally pedestrianised with plenty of cycleways. The proposal even includes a public meadow the ‘size of a football field’ on the shopping centre’s roof. Ambitious, sure, but developers said they’re aiming to provide precious public green space and let locals frolic to their hearts’ content (just hopefully not too close to the edge). Last month we dropped the first look pictures of Lewisham’s Shopping Centre following the initial demolition plans being submitted. These include knocking down the ol

London has no shortage of historic sites and royal intrigues, but now a major jewel in the capital’s crown is set to finally properly open up to the public. Between his busy schedule of marrying and beheading his unfortunate wives, King Henry VIII found time to construct St James's Palace, a grand complex of towering turrets and exquisite decor in Westminster. Unlike its bougie bigger neighbour Buckingham Palace – where the King actually lives – St James's Palace is the formal royal court and not usually open to us lowly punters. But next year that’s all about to change.  Following successful trial tours in 2023, you lucky lot will be able to sneak a peak at the gold-gilded opulence of St James’s Palace as soon as next spring.  The tour will let royal fans nerd out about the Palace’s history and our weird and wacky traditions. Built a whopping 500 years ago, the site is a fascinating jumble of Tudor architecture and early 18th-century glamour. Like other old palaces, it’s more of a collection of buildings from different periods of history you can nosy around and explore, from its foundations as a 12th-century leper hospital to surviving bombing in World War II. St James's is so significant, in fact, that it remains the official seat of the British monarch. When overseas ambassadors come flocking to London, they’re technically not the ambassador to the UK, but the Ambassador to the Court of St James. The palace is so important that it looks like taking photos on the tour won

This week a new charity will start offering free books to residents in west London. The charity, which is called Bookbanks, will bring books to a Hammersmith and Fulham foodbank based at St Matthew’s Church from Friday November 8. Bookbanks launched this year and has already set up shop across Norfolk and at another site in London – at St Jude & St Paul’s in Newington Green. It has so far donated over 3,000 books ranging from from swashbuckling fantasy to mouthwatering cookbooks. Bookbank stalls will be open for Fulham foodbank users between 2pm and 4pm on Fridays. Users will be free to enjoy their new page-turners themselves, or put them under the tree this Christmas for friends and family.  Bookbanks’ founder and director Emily Rhodes said: ‘When guests approach our stalls, our trained volunteers are there to help them find the right book, whether it’s for themselves, their children, grandchildren or friends. The books spark conversations [helping to] create a positive community atmosphere, which is especially vital at this challenging time of year.’ Gabriela Garbutt, who works at the Hammersmith and Fulham Foodbank, said the new partnership will help them offer proper holistic support for those struggling to meet their basic needs. ‘As well as providing emergency food to those in need, our approach is to provide wrap-around support that tackles the root causes of food poverty,’ Garbutt said. She hopes the initiative will encourage foodbank users to join their local library