Why Clubbing Is Never Better Than When You've Got a Fake ID

Newquay was cold, but luckily our post-GCSE group had made the decision two weeks earlier to have hoodies printed for our trip, so I was able to bundle myself into a big blue jumper that had a hilarious adaptation of my name on the back. It didn't do everything to stop the shivers though. The nerves saw that they continued as I edged my way up to the counter of the off license. In my hand was a laminated piece of paper, credit card sized, that I had made on Powerpoint the weekend before leaving.

Once I handed it over, there was a breathless moment as the sales-clerk considered it. Then, after what felt like an hour, he nodded and asked me what I wanted. Panicked by my own success, I asked for a bottle of Bailey's, paid up, and sprinted outside to a baying mob of friends who were half impressed it had worked, and half confused as to why I had wasted such an opportunity on Irish liqueur.

This night was the start of my brief but prosperous fake ID empire. Once word had spread round that I had successfully made a passable ticket to underage drinking I suddenly became a floppy haired, New Look wearing fixer. It started with friends, but as we moved to sixth form and everyone started trying to get into the terrible strip of clubs that ran into the centre of our town like a sticky artery, I began to receive texts from numbers I didn't recognise: "Alright, apparently you can make fake ID? Will pay."

Before long I was turning twenty quid around for every ID I made. Collecting passports after school, photocopying them, cutting out zeros, bulk-buying sticky back plastic and flattening them in The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Stocky sports kids in my year, who otherwise would have been making fun of my shit trainers, were courting me. I was their mole, tucked away in my bedroom studiously editing their legal documents by lamp-light late into the night. I was Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me if You Can, I was 'the guy' somebody knew, I was the Wolf in Pulp Fiction, I was a criminal mastermind. The midnight mogul.

My services, of course, weren't the only way my mates were getting into clubs. There were a slew of websites offering 'novelty IDs' all of which were keen to stress their fake driving license were only supposed to be used for gimmicky purposes. Then there were always the friends of mates who were over-18 and weren't going out that night. Of course, if you got really desperate, there was always the possibility you might be able to draw the stamp onto your hand if you happened to have brought a Sharpie out with you.

Getting into a club with fake ID is an unbeatable rush. It's an amazing mixture of pride, flukery, and suddenly exposed opportunity. It is the equivalent of an unknown, lower-league football team progressing through the FA Cup or discovering you haven't been charged for a starter in a restaurant. The odds and the law are completely against you, as are the bouncers, who transform into bald anti-fraud squad. The queue is spent memorising false birthdays and post-codes, often subduing a group of giddy 17 year olds into a state of concerned contemplation. The moment the security considered whatever we'd handed them, whether it was one of my altered creations or just the close-enough driving license of an older sibling, and gave the nod, the opening of the club doors felt like landing on another planet. The heady blend of spinning lights, the sickly-sweet smell of off-brand energy drinks, and the thud of terrible chart music all combined, smacking us in the face with the cheap sweaty hug of a brave new world.

This is the sad thing about fake IDs. Clubbing has never been, and never will be, as gloriously bewildering, and mind-bendingly exciting as it was when we snuck in. Clubs that used to seem bigger than cathedrals now seem like abandoned hotel lobbies. Music that once sounded like fucking the most beautiful person you'd ever met, now sounds like the in-car radio of a Renault Clio tuned into Jack FM circa 2009. Drinks that once got me pissed before I'd finished my first mouthful, now make me gag. Going out underage was a glimpse into the bright tomorrowland of adulthood, a universe where we were all better looking, smoked fags, and told each-other we had hangovers, even though we never did.

The maths behind this is fairly straight forward: you're simply getting away with something you're not supposed to. Yet more than that, it is also a brief patch of time where going out retained its sense of rebellion. Now it seems ridiculous to suggest that paying £5 to get into a bar, only to drink Fosters and listen to Kid Cudi's "Day 'n' Nite", could be seen as sticking it to the man. Now it seems like the weakest excuse for an evening activity since 'watching The Big Bang Theory' has been a thing. Only this is exactly it, in the hinterland between dweeby teenage-dom and the post-18 binge, clubbing is thrilling just by existing. I wonder if my generation was the last to really get away with fake IDs. Most clubs now use any number of scanners and UV Lights in order to sift out the frauds. That paired with 'think 25' initiatives, and it's become a much tougher world for the prospective underage drinker.

The reputation of my passport production line came to high-profile and ignominious end. The majority of my year from sixth form were in all the queue for the biggest night of the week, Propaganda. An indie club night in a super-sized venue that normally saw well over a thousand pissed up A-levelers yelling "A-Punk" back at an elevated DJ so loud they left sounding like Sean Dyche. A large portion of the queue were using passports and driving licenses that I had edited, yet as the first person, coincidentally my best mate, reached the bouncers, everything crumbled. The lead security had begun to pick at the corner of the first passport, eventually tearing the laminating off like wax from a leg, the real date of birth was exposed and he yelled down the entire line: "He's only seventeen!"

The same followed for everyone else who had used one of my fakes, with huge swathes of the queue being chased out onto the street like dogs running from a butchers. It was a massacre, and my name was in tatters. Within weeks, the 18th birthday parties started rolling around, and I went back to being another anonymous dweeb with a bad going-out shirt and a cheap bottle of aftershave.

But I'll never forget those glory days. The weird spell of reverse-nostalgia when we were given a glimpse into a bubbling future of heavy bass-lines and drink deals. The rush can still come around, the time I got into Berghain, my first pill, the first time I got guest-list for a big night. Only none of them have ever matched the thrill of an altered passport, forty quid in my wallet, and a lifetime of let-downs ahead.