Stop clubbing at 37? You must be joking, right?

Everyone should be able to shake off the stresses and strains of the working week at a nightclub, no matter what their age.

A new study – and by ‘study’, we of course mean ‘press release by a brand that wants to sell you stuff by making you feel bad about yourself’ – has revealed that 37 is the age at which most people think you should hang up your glow sticks and quit clubbing. As someone who wants to be laying waste to a dancefloor well into her sixties, I say bollocks to this.

I also feel like ultimate disco diva Grace Jones, 69 – a woman who once flashed me her pants in long-gone-but-not-forgotten London nightlife nirvana Trash – might have something to say about the matter. Not to mention the fact that many of the biggest DJs in the world are on the wrong side of the survey’s suggested endpoint to partying. Unlucky, Major Lazer man Diplo, 38; techno titan Ellen Allien, 48; Radio 1’s Annie Mac, 39; big beat daddy Fatboy Slim, 53; LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, 47; and the inexplicably popular David Guetta, 49. Even producer of the moment, shouty Jet Ski aficionado DJ Khaled, is 41 and must apparently retire from the club with immediate effect.

Ridiculous, no? One of the many great things about clubs is that they’re places for people to find out about themselves and work out who they really are – something that happens through interaction with new people. Clubs are places to meet folk from different walks of life: different classes, different cultures and, yes, different ages. A club is a mini society, a community built around repetitive beats, talking nonsense and wearing silly clothes. How boring would that society be if everyone was 23 years old?

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Going out is one of life’s simple pleasures – after all, there’s only so much joy one can derive from sitting on the sofa and nose-diving into Netflix every night with only a takeaway pizza and the occasional Twitter notification for company. Everyone should be able to shake off the stresses and strains of the working week at a nightclub, no matter what their age.

Take, for instance, the Dancefloor Meditations night hosted by Jarvis Cocker, 53, at Kings Cross’s Spiritland venue earlier this year. The evening was a tribute to the 808 drum machine, as well as a potted history of the discotheque. In total darkness, the former Pulp frontman poetically purred into a microphone over the Bee Gees’ ‘Staying Alive’ as he beckoned the audience to join him on the floor. Through the smoke I could see young, old and been-raving-so-long-it’s-kind-of-hard-to-tell. And it was beautiful. Stop clubbing at 37? You must be joking, right?

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