TALK OF THE TOWN: DJ AHOY: Splice the main beat

`The Cheeky Girls are on board," warns a friendly steward as I approach the gangplank, making me rather worry that I'm in the wrong place. I'm supposed to be attending an event showcasing the pre-eminent coolness of London's club and bar scene, hosted by the publicly funded company charged with attracting tourism and business to the city. There should be DJs representing Turnmills, the Ministry of Sound, Cargo, none of whom will likely have "The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum)" in their record boxes. But there's no mistaking the venue, even if I haven't been here since I was a cub scout. It stretches for almost 200 metres between Tower Bridge and London Bridge - 11,500 tonnes of metal painted the exact same grey colour as the pieces in that old game "Battleships". This is HMS Belfast.

Boat parties are increasingly popular during the summer months of the clubbing calendar, offering that bit of glamour, intimacy and novelty bigger and more sedentary venues have been struggling to provide of late. HMS Belfast is massive and it's not going anywhere either, but as a club venue for one night only, it's got novelty value to die for. The chocolate fountain and ice sculpture are novelty items in the pejorative sense of the word, and the poor bar staff have been made to dress up like sailors from a picture by Pierre et Gilles. But the view of the river at night that you can see through the portholes beats the contrived visuals you'll find in most clubs. And the impressive sound systems are set up in the wardroom and dining halls, expansive rooms fitted with formerly plush red carpets that give the dancefloors a pleasing atmosphere of faded glamour. At the same time the steel walls are lined with giant ventilation and turbine shafts, and pumps, chains and torpedoes are scattered everywhere, so it effortlessly achieves the kind of grungey, industrial aesthetic which was popular back when they were designing Fabric and Turnmills.

It's not an entirely practical venue for a club though. The stairs linking the decks are actually ladders in all but name and as every woman in a short skirt discovers, impossible to climb elegantly, creating huge tailbacks. And it would be very irresponsible to regularly let loose any serious - that is, drug-taking - clubbers in here. It's too easy to get lost, and there are too many shafts to fall down and things to trip over. The few that I do meet seem a little freaked out by the occasion. One girl is fairly sure that the ship is haunted.

Luckily, this is an invitation-only party, which means that, save for a few competition winners, it's attended by PRs, journalists and a smattering of glamour models and reality TV show losers. Unluckily, these are not the people who make London's clubs the exhilarating places that, contrary to rumour, they still often are. Andrea Parker plays an intriguing, moody electro set for the early crowd, and Tall Paul and Anil Chawla get people dancing with their funky and percussive house music. But my friend's comment as we first board the ship - "You can't feel it rocking at all, can you?" - unfortunately proves prophetic.