It’s no secret // Events in ‘to be announced’ locations are shite

Do secrets even exist anymore or are they just mainstream marketing speak to make an event seem more exclusive?

Take Secret Cinema. More like tell-you-at-the-last-minute cinema. I mean, you know you’re going to see a film – that’s in the diary. You have the booking fee to prove it. You just don’t have a clue (unless you spoil the ‘secret’ and Google it) what it is you’re paying to see. Most probably something you saw on VHS ten years ago. The venue being a nameless South London warehouse surrounded by white chocolate popcorn and shivering drama students.

Club nights in ‘secret’ venues or ‘secret’ gigs are a similar potential misnomer. Buy a ticket assuming the event will be vaguely East and receive an email at the last hour finding out the venue is just off an industrial estate in Acton. Your name’s on the hush hush list at the end of a ‘private’ road that a regular taxi refuses to pull into.

Gone are the days when people would share a real secret by word of mouth and gather en masse for an impromptu party in a disused airfield… oh hang on, perhaps they still do and I just haven’t seen the Tweet.

Come to think of it, there was an illegal rave behind the Lee Valley park ice centre this weekend that I wandered past. It didn’t actually look massively fun. A bit short on conventional facilities for my liking but then I guess I’m a sucker for working loos and a sound system that doesn’t sound like a bunch of tins being dragged round a carpark in a bin bag.

When is a secret not a secret? The second it hits the Internet. That’s pretty much the rule. For real exclusive events look for hidden code words, encrypted artwork, whispers at bus stops or hook up with the well connected in advance for a previously unannounced after party.

And finally if that all sounds like too much hard work, just start your own. Revel in the exclusivity of inviting whoever you like that can keep a secret (shhh… I promise I won’t tell that it’s being held in your front room. Not until the last minute, anyway).

Your secret’s safe with me.