Crack-pipes roasting by an open fire. Junkies nipping at your toes. Yuletide drugs mixed with music that's dire. And fat middle aged women dressed up like ho's.

Yes, it's yet another celebration with Chew The Fat! the steaming yuletide logs of the dance music world floating menacingly in the U-Bend of Christmas. Everybody knows that with some vixgra and some mistletoe, and perhaps a sprinkling of Rohypnol, the Christmas party scene is open season for endless consumption, chronic humiliation and frantic dry-humping of your work colleagues after eight pints of justice-juice.

It's the time of year when Fatmail reflects on the highs and lows of the year just gone, and realises that another year of underpaid literary self-flagellation for little or no reward has lumbered by once again. Any self-respecting back-room marketing gimp would have begun questioning whether the chances of a promotion might be on the cards, but not us. All we have to look forward to is a game of 'soggy mince-pie' in the stock room and another decade of writing a progressively less entertaining sales promotion newsletter for the price of a hand-shandy and a cup of tea.

But you'll be delighted to hear that, despite rumours of our demise, Fat will return to London's popular West End this Friday like a particularly unpleasant bout of piles, clinging to the spotty arse-cheeks of your weekend, causing mild irritation, painful itching and the inability to sit down.

So read on, Turkeys, for at least two opportunities to be fisted by the pale, clutching fingers of Fatmail, and have your giblets and entrails clawed out to make a messy mid-morning treat for the family dog... enjoy your Christmas dinner!


////////////////////// CHEW THE FAT! /////////////////////////

You'd have to be terminally ill to go through the whole of Christmas without spending at least four hours in an excruciatingly claustrophobic social prison, mixing with people you'd rather undergo voluntary flaying of your urethra than spend time with, listening to music that makes you long for the sweet release of a violent and painful crucifixion.

But while some people find the office Christmas party fits this bill quite suitably, others, many of whom don't work at all, seek their thrills elsewhere. And that's where the Fat! pre-Xmas fxckfest comes in.

This Christmas, rather than sitting in stony silence with the hated siblings and spawn you grew up with, you could be rubbing shoulders with some of the least important dance music entertainers this side of Reading.

And the Christmas-crackheads in this year's festive advent are:

THOMAS SCHUMACHER - when it comes to repetitive, relentless techno that makes you shxt your lungs out, the Germans always deliver the goods. Tonight's teutonic marching marshall is sponsored by Lidl, who smuggled Schumacher into the UK with a consignment of cold meats. Feel his thrusting techno truncheon tonight at Chew The Fat!

ELITE FORCE - from techno to tech-funk, we really are going to the lengths and breadths of dance music with this line up. Elite Force, despite having a name that even Toys-R-Us's product designers might cringe at, will tonight be taking his proud place as the slightly minging sausages-wrapped-in-bacon to Schumacher's techno turkey.

PLAZA DE FUNK - despite being named after a slum in Venice notorious for ladyboy bukkake experts, it's a warm welcome for the "Square of Funk", along with his an entourage of swarthy monobrowed girl-botherers in tow.

With ressies Kid Blue in support, plus CTF's Eastern European main man DJ I.F.U. casually avoiding the Home Office spooks with his fake passport of electro breaks, it's another international passport to abject banality at London's unhealthiest club night.

BLACK RABBIT - Tonight's guest in the lounge is one of Fatmail's biggest fans; a lady who gets so juiced up about reading this occasional verbose shit-torrent that her PA has to wring her out like a damp tea-towel before she's even got to the second paragraph. If only the writer of Fatmail wasn't a wizened, hunched, half-mutant ephedrine-addict locked away in a filthy back-room of a south London squat, we'd be straight round there with a tub of snake oil and a bollock-clamper.

Now, having read the above, Lottie will no doubt be eagerly anticipating the possibility of bumping into her literary heroes this Friday by dragging her privates around the club and leaving a trail of Lady-Frieze in her wake. Mind your step, Fat! Fans.

CHEW THE FAT! @ THE END, LONDON

Friday 14th December, 10pm - 6am

IN DA MAIN ROOM...

THOMAS SCHUMACHER: taking you to Mach 12 on the Bosh-o-meter with two insufferable hours of unremitting jackhammer agony.

ELITE FORCE: forcing their way into your mind, body and trousers with a no-questions-asked policy of innocuous basslines and white wee-wee flavoured beats.

PLAZA DE FUNK: leading the Dance of A Thousand Sex Pests with his peculiar brand of slightly gay genre-formerly-known-as-breakbeat music.

DJ I.F.U.: Deportation breaks and green card house with Fatmails' most illegal import since Paul Arnold smuggled a gram of Dominican Ding-Dong Drain Fluid into the UK by concealing it in his bxll-end.

+ Chew The Fat! Ibiza residents

IN DA LOUNGE - Black Rabbit...

LOTTIE: come to us, sweet-cheeks, and suckle at the teat of toilet humour, repetitive jokes and hideous deformity.

Plus BONER, GAY WILLIAMS AND RYAN O'GORMLESS

£12/£8 NUS; 10pm-6am

TICKETS: www.ticketweb.co.uk

INFO: 0207 924 1333 / www.thefatclub.com

The End, 18 West Central Street, London, WC1A 1JJ

Dress code: Trainers OK, cxck-rings frowned upon,
Capacity: 1,000
Overbearing feeling: Intense paranoia
Average age: 18
Average IQ: 15
Attitude of bouncers: desperately struggling to conceal their ever-present keening to senselessly maim you
Average profile of punter: unusually aggressive 26-year-old southern Mediterranean male with potential sex pest tendencies



///////////// THE FAT SPODCAST ///////////////

Chew The Fat! @ The End November Podcast

Embracing modern technology as if it were a poisoned nettle: Fat! lumbers into the modern digital age with a brand new Spodcast. Expect average music, amateurish production and astounding idiocy, including:

/// Interviews & new tracks from Toddla T , Jem Haynes from Precision Cuts & Madox on his new album

/// Competition to win a lifetime supply of records from Jem Haynes' new label

/// Previews of the Baobinga & ID album & other new releases from Fat! Records

/// Gary Wilmot talks about injecting a measured dichotomy of bathos and joie de vivre into the persona of Widow Twanky in Cinderella at Croydon Fairfield Halls

/// A free sample of new ecstxsy-flavoured chewing gum from Realmint for every subscriber!

Podcast is available through the ITunes Podcast Directory. When you subscribe it automatically downloads each episode to your ITunes every month. Absolutely fxcking marvellous, isn't it, what they do these days?
Or you can listen to the stream online.

Subscribe through ITunes: http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=268478290

Listen to the stream: http://chewthefat.jellycast.com/podcast/feed/2



////////// FAT! THE LABEL ////////////

We may be a little under the seasonal weather, but sadly, the label is as healthy as ever, pumping out a never-ending stream of instantly ignored bass-driven electro-funk-hop non-breakbeat tech-funk-banjo-string-beat bopping cxckrot for you aural self-pleasurings.

This month, Merka becomes the latest in a long-line of producers to shamelessly jump genres and nosedive into the murky dungeon of bald, middle-aged white men making hip hop albums.

Fat! Records - New Releases:

Mystic Man & Eshamanjaro: Cheshire Cat / Chesire Cat (Gella Remix)

Taken from their forthcoming album 'In Heavy Weather' available February 2008.

Buy the download here: www.djdownload.com/fat



//////////////////// New Year the Fat! //////////////////////////

Coming soon: the New Year to end all New Years. The closest thing to anthrax suppositories you can get without actually committing suicide.
As if the last ten years had never happened, Fat! returns to its old stomping ground, where men were men, women were drugged, and the DJs were consistently dreadful.

Advance tickets for Babalou, Brixton, only £10, now available from:

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/24121

See next week's Bumper Fatmail Annual Round Robin for the full whiffle...



////// WIN THE FAT! /////

You could win tickets for yourself and a friend, loved one or bitter rival, to the capital's hottest New Year's swindle, CHEW THE FAT! NYE, if you can correctly answer this festive ball-tickler:

Where was the Baby Jesus born?

a) In a junky's handbag behind Brixton Kwik-Save
b) In a stable in Bethlehem

Send your answers, along with your name, age, sexual orientation, favourite position, blood type, mother's maiden name, passport number, inner leg measurement, a copy of your driving licence, 3 forms of proof of identity, your national insurance number, a scan of your thumbprint, a DNA sample and a small vial of stool, to the usual address.



///// END THE FAT! /////

It feels like Fat has been around as long as Christ himself. But if you are feeling fatigued with life, love and breakbeat, just remember that the baby jeebus died for YOU, and coming to Fat! is what He would have wanted. So this Christmas, try not to incur the wrath of a malevolent God.

See you in the cubicles
The Fat Crew x

TO UNSUBSCRIBE, PLEASE SEND A LARGE HONEY-GLAZED HAM, SINGED WITH THE WORDS 'UNSUBSCRIBE', TO THE USUAL ADDRESS.