Gary Numan.”With early-Eighties bands such as The Human League, ABC and Culture Club now touring again to huge acclaim, it’s almost like the Nineties never happened. But why do we look back so fondly on this period that dress- sense forget?Ben Miller, who plays Gavin, The Venus Hunters’ disturbed drummer, reckons that “it takes society a little while to choose the image we’re going to use to sum up a decade. For the Seventies, we all selected bell-bottoms and long hair. For the Eighties, we might have gone for a yuppie with a flash car or a power-dressed woman But in the end, we opted for the New Romantics We chose what we think we lack.

Now that laddishness is flying the flag, that seems like an extraordinary period where it was all right for men to wear eyeliner and lace cuffs and where everybody pretended to be gay even if they weren’t That’s how we want to be remembered from the Eighties. Not as money-grabbing, champagne-guzzling consumers, but as dreamy New Romantics.”Miller particularly enjoyed working under Clunes’s direction “I found him really inventive. He did one tracking shot around Neil Morrissey, which is incredibly difficult because, as the camera moves, so does the entire crew. Much of the film, which Clunes also directs, is intoxicated by the heady whiff of nostalgia for those carefree times. It was the era of Spandau Ballet, A Flock of Seagulls and Ultravox, when a kilt’n'kaftan combination was not laughed at but absolutely de rigueur.
In the film, one member of The Venus Hunters reminisces indulgently: “Everything changed in 1979, didn’t it? The whole lot. Simon Delancey sniffs his favourite cocktail from the Eighties – an “Enola Gay” – and says: “That takes me back The sweet smell of success Essence of Margaret Thatcher and fuel-injected Ford Capri.

Blond highlights, white puffball sleeves – and that was just the boys.”

Delancey, a character played by Martin Clunes in Hunting Venus, a new ITV film, is a former bassist in a New Romantic group. He is forced by two Misery-style fans (Jane Horrocks and Esther Coles) to reform The Venus Hunters, his one-hit-wonder band, for one last gig. The members include Charlie (Neil Morrissey) who has, since the early Eighties, become Charlotte. They have a bar that turns into a nightclub, and a restaurant. This is probably a very good place to go if you’re missing the sort of meat-markety, very-loud party with no introducing, that generally stops once people stop being students and start minding about their houses. There’s a huge room, and a smaller room, and stairs for snogging on, one of those flashy chrome loos full of unguents and helpful people who live off tips, and an upstairs bar with hacienda-style windows overlooking the main bar.
There are so many people crammed in here that you’d be hard pressed not to score if that was what you were looking for. Just don’t be tempted to find out about your new friends over a meal.The food here is not good.

I know I was in a bit of a mood because they’d forgotten our reservation, but I would have been hard-pressed if this hadn’t been the case. No, actually: my friend’s steak was good, and my spinach was good, and the tagliatelle that accompanied my slow-roasted duck was pretty nice, but really: there’s a difference between slow-roasted and carbonised, and the prawns and calamari we had to start had, frankly, seen better days some time before.Definitely one for party animals who don’t really care about ballast.Tiger Tiger, 29 Haymarket, London SW1 (0171-930 1885)SURVIVING THE WEST ENDAll Bar One 48 Leicester Sq, WC2 (0171-839 0972)Cafe Fish 39 Panton St, SW1 (0171-930 3999)Havana 1 Leicester Place, WC2 (0171-287 0101)Planet Hollywood Trocadero Centre, Coventry Centre, SW1 (0171-287 1000). Tiger Tiger is doing very well. Being enormous, and just round the corner from the Leicester Square, they have a good chance of doing well.

It’s a convenient location, and, unless you want to go to the cinema, which is the only other reason for being in the area, you can do your whole night’s entertainment under the one roof, thereby foregoing the pleasures of being shanghaied by buskers, and made to walk very, very slowly behind groups of Japanese tourists. An inspired choice: robust goat’s cheese – offset by crunchy red chard – nestled in the lightest of ravioli cases, which floated in an improbably rich (“I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-meat”) porcini mushroom, balsamic vinegar sauce.Meanwhile, my companion’s scorched rice paper lumpia potsticker, comprising citrus and soy oyster mushrooms andcellophane noodles, seemed, for the first few mouthfuls, to sum up all that was best about Terre a Terre’s cuisine: a subtle layering of flavours with cumin yielding to chilli, which in turn gave way to the merest hint of kaffir lime. Yet ultimately, all these tastes were drowned in a sea of mango. According to the menu, it was just a splash – a bit like saying that Gordon Ramsay is prone to the occasional mood swing.The puddings set us back on course, and once we’d consumed a delectable, steamed quince and mace pudding and a suitably gooey chocolate parkin, we decided to continue our debate on the merits of biodynamic wine down at the seafront – over a cappuccino Jelly Belly, or two.71 East St, Brighton (01273 729051) Approx pounds 25-pounds 30 a headVEGETARIAN BRIGHTONFood for Friends17a-18 Prince Albert St, The Lanes (01273 202310) Wai Kika Moo Kau11a Kensington Gdns (01273 671117)The George 5 Trafalgar St (01273 681055).