From cabaret star to the woman tasked with turning London into a 24-hour city, Amy Lamé’s appointment by Sadiq Khan has put her under a new level of scrutiny – but she is optimistic about the future of the ‘night-time economy’

There are night mayors across cities in Europe now, in Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich, Toulouse. In August, Sadiq Khan advertised for London’s version, which he would call a “night tsar”. The post was part-time, two-and-a-half days a week, £35,000 salary, and would have the responsibility of turning London into a 24-hour city. With the advent of the night tube, there was to be a push for a “night-time economy”. More than 180 people applied. Around 10 of those had been invited to apply. In October, Khan called one of those 10, Amy Lamé – performer, presenter, writer and host of the long-running cabaret club night Duckie – to tell her she’d got the gig. She promised a “fact-finding mission” of the city’s bars and clubs. As public positions go, this one sounded like it could be fun.

Lamé has been in the job for just a month, and has already had her tax affairs scrutinised (she immediately changed them), had old Tory-bashing tweets dredged up (she apologised for any offence caused), and been accused of being little more than window-dressing for a complex role she is not qualified to do. For someone whose public career began with a one-woman comedy show called Gay Man Trapped in a Lesbian’s Body, and who presented a show called Gaytime TV, the sudden scrutiny and need for diplomacy that comes with a political position must be jarring.

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Not only that, she is facing a near-impossible job. The night tube is being rolled out, which is good news for people who need to travel to work at night, but there is an argument that, for party-goers and clubbers, it’s a train line that now leads nowhere. Across the UK, going out is starting to look like a declining pastime: a Guardian survey in March revealed that young people now prefer a night in, because clubbing is too expensive, too impersonal, too stressful, too tiring. In the last decade, London has lost 40% of its music venues and 50% of its nightclubs.

No matter how much Khan and Lamé talk up the idea of the night-time economy, the reality can be seen by anyone who finds themselves out and about after 2am: London is nowhere close to being a 24-hour city. Most after-hours clubs have been replaced by expensive luxury flats and chain restaurants. Khan may be in charge now, but Boris Johnson’s legacy has not been shaken off yet.

When we meet over a temperate fizzy water, Lamé is friendly but seems worried about saying the wrong thing. She’s more circumspect than her brash TV and radio persona might lead you to expect. Aptly, she’s a “night bird”, happy to keep going until 3am, but in this job – which transpires not to be part-time, so much as “five, six, seven days a week” – she is doing long days and early starts.

Lamé is 45 and moved to London from New Jersey when she was 22, mostly, she thinks, inspired by her favourite bands, the Smiths and Depeche Mode. Her accent is a clipped, transatlantic half-and-half. Her first job in the city was at a lesbian community cafe called First Out, in Covent Garden, where she worked for five years. It closed down in 2011 due to a combination of unaffordable rents and the Crossrail works that have torn up much of the surrounding area.

LGBT venues in particular have been closing at an extraordinary rate; Lamé is keenly aware of this, having run a successful campaign to save Duckie’s home, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, from developers. “But it’s what you value and what is important to community cohesion. I would say LGBT spaces are priceless and we have to preserve them, just like we have to preserve other spaces.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lamé with mayor Sadiq Khan on the day her appointment as night tsar was announced. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

But a vibrant and diverse nightlife may be at odds with the profit margins of the glass-walled new-builds that have replaced many of the city’s venues. Is her focus culture or the economy? Can she do both? “It may be more economically beneficial for a development company to build luxury flats than keeping a pub going, but actually, when you tot up how many jobs are supported by the night-time economy – one in eight jobs – there are economic benefits to keeping people in a locality.” She cites Dalston, in east London, as an example of people flooding into an area for its nightlife, and spending money in its shops, restaurants, takeaways and taxi firms.

But much of east London has undergone a crackdown by the Metropolitan police on what they term “alcohol-related crimes”, which has left proprietors in “a constant panic” about whether their licenses could be revoked. Dalston was deemed a Special Policy Area in 2014, to tackle “anti-social behaviour and noise”, despite 84% of people surveyed there opposing the measure. This year saw the closure of two of its best venues, Passing Clouds and the Dance Tunnel. There is a risk that London could end up with a sanitised, palatable kind of nightlife, rather than the real deal – and something similar is happening across the country. “I can’t pretend that this isn’t a tricky issue,” Lamé says. “I want to make sure everyone in London has the kind of nightlife that they want, whether it’s raving til 4am or getting a good night’s sleep.”

One of the ways she aims to help people sleep was part of Kahn’s mayoral manifesto: a principle called “agents of change”, which says that if property developers build near clubs or venues, it is their responsibility to make sure the sound-proofing is sufficient. The Curzon cinema in Mayfair, for example, is at risk of closure after 80 years owing to noise potentially seeping into the new flats that are being built above it. Lamé says the scheme has already been successful in Elephant and Castle, where flats were built next to the Ministry of Sound club with provisions for extra noise. It’s a sensible idea. Will it be compulsory? “Well. In a few years, that is the hope. It will take a little while to get that in place. But the developers I’ve spoken to have been very receptive.”

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In August, following the separate drug-related deaths of two teenagers, the superclub Fabric had its license suspended by Islington council; it was permanently closed in September, in part due to what the council called a “culture of drugs”. Following a campaign to save the club, supported by many in the music world, and by Khan, an agreement was reached last month by which the club would reopen with strict new measures in place. These include a ban on under-19s on some nights, “covert surveillance” inside, lifetime bans for anyone caught with drugs and “enhanced searching procedures and controls”.

Lamé says she is “thrilled” that Fabric has reopened. “It’s really good news for the night-time economy.” Even with such strict rules? “They wouldn’t have signed up to them if they didn’t feel they could adhere to it.” Had she been in charge when it was closed down, she says, her hope is that it would not have reached crisis point in the first place. “Obviously lines of communication had severely broken down, between police, owners, punters and the council. My role is to be able to get everybody around the table and talk these things through. Everybody wants to have a safe night out. It’s tragic those boys died. I would never want anything like that to happen ever again, and we have to do everything we can to prevent that.”

But is it really the responsibility of the venue to stop its punters taking drugs? Lamé shifts a little in her seat. “Drugs are illegal,” she says, toeing the line. “Drugs are illegal and the police do everything they can to ensure everyone has a safe night out. Fabric is clear – they released a statement saying there is no such thing as taking drugs safely.”

The fact is, though, that people on nights out do sometimes take drugs. The UK has the highest cocaine use among young people in Europe. Ecstasy and LSD use is increasing year on year. It is another juggling act for a night tsar to work out whether it is possible to have a frank conversation about drugs in a climate where she is already, a month in, so heavily scrutinised. “It is a fact of life, and if we ignore it we’re ignoring something that’s a huge part of society. I’ve had some very productive conversations with the police in my first few weeks in the job.” But, she says delicately, it’s important for her not to take sides. “It’s just as important that I listen to police as to people who do want to go out and rave and take various substances. And that those voices are heard in balance – until now that maybe hasn’t been the case.”

Lamé is a long-time Labour party member. She spent the night before her wedding at an LGBT event at 10 Downing Street, when Gordon Brown was prime minister, and unsuccessfully stood for Labour candidate selection in 2014 in Dulwich and West Norwood. She is cautious about discussing the current state of the party, calling it a “big family with room for lots of different personalities” but will point out that Labour is in “an incredibly strong position in London at the moment. Sadiq’s mandate is enormous.” That isn’t reflected outside of London, I say. “Yes, but we’re in London.”

What of the semi-serious post-Brexit suggestion floated by some Remain supporters that London should splinter off into its own state? “We’ve seen the benefits of having people from all over the world in this city. It’s one of the things that makes us so strong, so vibrant, so successful. There is this disconnect in a way, because as Londoners we appreciate that and then you go outside of London and a huge majority of people voted for Brexit and are anti-immigration or want curbs on it. It’s a debate we have to have, but for Londoners I think it’s particularly difficult because we just see the great benefits of multicultural society.”

When Lamé was first appointed, Gareth Bacon, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, quoted several of her old tweets, in which she called George Osborne a “cunt”, Ruth Davidson “Tory scum” and said “Ding dong the witch is dead” on the day Thatcher died. Lamé has been largely diplomatic and by the book in our conversation so far, but she is crisp when I bring it up today. “I’ve apologised, profusely,” she says, looking exasperated. She has also deleted the tweets. “I’ve never lived my life like I was preparing to do a job in public service. But now, I won’t be tweeting like that any more. I’ve apologised to the people who were offended.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amy Lamé on stage at Duckie, the cabaret and performance art group she helped found

Much of the criticism levelled against her by Conservatives has been wrapped up in the implication that she is a famous face in a ceremonial position without the expertise necessary to handle the “economy” part of the “night-time economy”. It was initially reported that the tsar would also take over the London Night Time Commission; the roles now appear to have been split. “The Night Time Commission is a group of stakeholders that work across the night-time sector. And I will be a part of that. I will definitely be a part of that. I’m just not going to chair it,” she says. “People have made a really big deal about this, but I don’t feel like it was much of an issue to be honest.”

Well, it implies that you won’t have any real power. “I have 21 years’ experience of running my own nightclub, on the front line of the night-time economy. I’ve worked for the last three-and-a-half years and chaired a community organisation to save our local pub. Some of the things the Tories have been saying I just don’t recognise, because my experience on the frontline is copper-bottomed.”

The brutality of the shift from club night to City Hall was expected, but there have been times when the toxicity of the political world has been surprising. “I’ve had death threats, I’ve had rape threats,” she says, sadly. “Someone sent me a tweet that said: ‘I hope you get raped to death by Muslims.’ With a smiley face at the end. It’s shocking. Block, report, block, report. You have to build resilience to be a woman in the public eye in 2016.”

Lamé says she’s optimistic that she can make London’s nightlife better. I tell her I think she’s facing an impossible task. “I’m not going to sit here and pretend it’s easy. It isn’t. But I love London at night so much. Growing up in America, but living here for the last 24 years, I have a kind of optimistic cynicism. It’s all the cynicism of being British with the optimism of being American.”

After all, she came to London for its nightlife, to live in the place she’d heard Morrissey singing about. “All I wanted to do was dance until the small hours and be with my friends and have a few drinks and soak all that up.” And she’s still doing it – she’s off to DJ at the Labour Women’s Network Christmas party tonight, and Duckie, which started in 1995, still happens every Saturday. “After 21 years! It doesn’t lose its potency.”