The Alchemist’s Cookbook
Your personal ownership of a ‘cookbook’ per se may still be limited to Delia’s seminal ‘How Not To Mess Up Your Eggs You Idiot’ tome, so any suggestion of turning lead into gold may seem a bit beyond your culinary skills. However, this evening of grown up magic, which sneers in the face of ‘cabaret nonsense’ for ‘anyone with the mental age of I Watch X–Factor’ (we love them already), promises alcohol, swearing, The London Magician, Brother Mark and of course, Ludo the Butler. Now, would you like your gold straight up, or on the rocks?

Align
Ah London town. Sure we call you ours, drop gum on your pavements and probably treat you worse than we’d treat a dirty, one–legged pigeon – but do we really know you? In this witty two–man talk, you’ll get a nice abridged version of our city’s colourful history, using words, pictures and music to present a ‘hallucinogenic lecture’ taking you from the Neolithic age to the present day. Travel along ley lines to discover the psychogeography between you and your city and fall in love all over again. Or for the first time, as the case may be.

Mass Photo Gathering
Apparently the police have been arresting innocent Nikon wielders as suspected terrorists for such crude and horrifying acts as snapping photographs of campaigning Santas. As a backlash to this nonsense, which has even seen a BBC reporter in the slammer, photographers will be gathering en masse at Trafalgar Square today to er, take pictures, presumably. Of each other most likely. And perhaps the odd pigeon, which they’ll really over-expose just to dig it in a bit. Yeah, that’ll show them. Go and see how many bunny ears you can sneak in. Well, it’s an hour isn’t it.

Bangers & Mash Big Kiddy Party
Nothing cheers up a January evening like a good old bout of musical chairs – and we’re not talking family feud round the fire variety – we’ve had enough of that post-Christmas thank you. Join Bangers & Mash as they throw a grown-up kiddy party, complete with face paint, jelly and DJ sets from Black Daniel, 18 Carat Love Affair, Toxic Funk, Berry and Electrocution. Just don’t cry in the punch when that boy you like pulls your hair. Remember – it means he loves you. Ah the vaguaries of childhood.

Danceworks Free Open Day
If Dirty Dancing is anything to go by, dance is the thing that gets wallflowers out of the corner, muscle-bound bachelors into bed and a watermelon cradled in your arms. All good things, you have to admit. So whether it’s samba, lambada, ballet, bollywood or a good old Britney style music video workout you’re after, now’s the time to try it out as Danceworks puts on taster sessions all day for free. We can’t guarantee overbearing fathers will be put in their place, but at least you’ll have had the time of your life. Oh come on, like we weren’t going to go there. Please.

Circus Klezmer
A sell out performance from last year’s Mime Festival returns for 2010, bringing with it the nice Jewish wedding set to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting Eastern European village, made of a ramshackle cardboard box set. Rings go missing, the Mother-of-the Bride performs a potato-peeling strip-tease, and lost invitations result in domestic feuds in amidst daring feats of acrobatics, clowning and of course live klezmer music. Sounds like a typical set of nuptials to us. Oye vey.