You Had to Be There
- Author Jodie Harsh
- Narrator Jodie Harsh, Russell Tovey
- Publisher Faber & Faber
- Publish Date 23 September 2025
- Run Time 9 hours and 12 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Autobiography: arts and entertainment, Cultural studies.
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What to expect
'Gallops through the pre-mobile phone era with wit and chaotic energy.'
Sunday Times
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A joyous rags-to-riches tale.'
Financial Times
'Nostalgic, salacious and bitingly witty.' Joe Lycett
'A delicious, neon-soaked fever dream.' Munroe Bergdorf
'I couldn't put it down.' Annie Macmanus
The defining book on the iconic noughties-era of pop culture in London as told by DJ Jodie Harsh, who saw, did and survived it all.
Jodie Harsh arrived in London aged fifteen in 2001, heading straight off the train from Canterbury to her first club night at the Astoria. Intoxicated by this initial taste of city nightlife, she didn't leave the party for years, falling in with the right wrong people and exploring the sides of London best experienced under cover of darkness.
Throughout the noughties, from Camden and Soho to Mayfair, from Notting Hill and Primrose Hill to Hackney Road, the city was a messy, beating, slick and sordid melting pot. New music, new fashion, new art, all came together in a mad, dizzying rush before - and during - the financial crash of 2008. Different scenes collided, exploded, were reborn and shaped across the city, at rapid speed.
Harsh grabs us by the hand and leads us back to those decadent times: from the Astoria to The Cross, the Soho Revue Bar to Mahiki, Boombox to The End and her famous friends' houses; to a time before social media and cameraphones were ubiquitous and a life without their perpetual scrutiny allowed for a more liberated, hedonistic and creative existence. You had to be there, and Jodie Harsh was. Every single night.
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