Where to go out in central London

Soho does not really need a plan. Start on Old Compton Street or Berwick Street, walk, and adjust. The area covers everything from tiny basement cocktail bars to pubs where the crowd spills across the road, and it turns over fast enough that a quiet street at nine can be rammed by eleven.

Covent Garden and Seven Dials run slightly earlier and slightly smarter — good for a first drink, less good if you want to still be out at two. Fitzrovia, just north of Oxford Street, is the release valve when Soho is full.

Central London's licensing is stricter than the East, so genuinely late venues are fewer and fill up faster. Chinatown handles the small hours for food, and the Night Tube on Friday and Saturday means Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road and Leicester Square are all viable exits at 3am.

The central London problem is not choice, it is capacity — the good places are full and the empty ones are empty for a reason. Realtime shows live activity from venues around Soho and the West End so you can see which places have something going on before you join a queue for one that does not.