“He made something very, very special,” says Mr. C of Douglas’s work, “he realised our dreams.” The End was built with a smooth and safe experience in mind; cutting edge music, cutting edge design. The water fountain meant that ravers on a budget could fill up their water bottle (a move previously unheard of — at the time, venues were known to shut off the water in the bathrooms so punters would purchase water at the bar), and the dancefloor was sprung with hydraulics to alleviate the strain on dancers’ legs.

At the back of the main room, the aptly-named Speed Bar served only beer and water to minimise queuing at the other bars, and the walls, archways, and DJ booth were built with a soft curvature — nothing sharp to interrupt the flow of the sound. Clubbers would enter through a pair of shining metal doors, before descending the glowing stairs to the basement, the bass thumping behind the doors at the bottom. “Every time you go down those stairs, you’ve already got the biggest grin on your face,” says Mr. C.

The space was designed so that, despite being across the lobby from one another, there was almost no sound bleed between the main room and the smaller lounge room. “It was a crystalline vision of a futuristic nightclub. When I first went, it was like nothing I’d ever experienced before,” says Erol Alkan. The End would provide a new sort of clubbing experience on the fringe of the West End, a world away from the era of, in Mr. C’s words, “shit clubs”. That meant no heavy-handed security, warm drinks with no ice, no air conditioning, toilets with no running water, and sticky dancefloors.

The End opened on Saturday 2nd December 1995, two days before the arrival of their liquor licence. This meant that all the drinks had to be free. That night, The End gave away £35,000 worth of alcohol. “This happened last century, so if you marked that up now it was gargantuan,” says Liam O’Hare, who was General Manager at The End from the day it opened until the day it closed.

During a staff talk before the opening party kicked off, Liam tells us, Douglas asked a member of staff to clear up the ash from a cigarette they’d flicked onto the floor. Fast forward to the end of the night, and Douglas looked at Liam and joked, dejectedly, “How do we sell this place?” When the lights went up, their faces fell; so much for the end of sticky dancefloors, at least.

The team would use the takings from the night before to get alcohol in for the following party. “There we were,” says Layo, “walking to the bank with cash stuffed in our puffer jackets. We didn’t have a system for anything.” There was an innocence to the operation and the first 18 months proved to be a steep learning curve. “It was like running a stall and then opening a department store,” Layo says of their inexperience.