I’VE mentioned before the difficulty clubs always seem to have with Tuesday nights.

Indeed, it’s almost as though there is a curse on that particular day of the week. The empty rooms and persistently dull R’n’B of Afrobeat a couple of weeks ago did nothing to ease my apprehension about returning to Po Na Na on Tuesday for Animal House.

Rather wonderfully, we had £1.50 beers to keep us company, as well as a menu detailing a great amount of midweek deals on cocktails and shots – more than enough, in fact, to keep us pleasantly tipsy even if the cocktails seemed to be served in miniature buckets of Flumps.

We took our seats around a small table at the end of the dance floor and got a chance to take in the atmosphere. The over-use of smoke machines, frantic lights and the curious decor of Po Na Na give you the impression that you’ve ended up in Laser Quest rather than a city centre club.

Thus, half expecting a team of eight year olds to jump out from around a corner and start shooting us I began to pay attention to the music.

A last-minute booking had brought a local DJ well known for his skills with boogie to the stage, and he turned out to be nothing short of an inspiration.

His live mixes were astonishing as he filled the venue with incredible indie electro ranging all the way from Duffy, mixed with the Police, through a mesmerising dance remix of Sex on Fire and into the pounding beats of Justice.

The floodgates had burst now, and people were pouring into the venue, filling every corner of the place, and none of them could wait to get on the dance floor for this maestro.

Amazingly he was only the warm-up, and as the clock turned midnight he handed the decks over to tonight’s headline in the form of Adam Ficek of Babyshambles, above left.

In spite of a rather embarrassing moment when he played one of his own songs, Ficek was more than capable of playing an extremely good set, and followed the previous DJ in style, seemingly unhampered by the hundreds of girls who had crowded the stage just to be near this celebrity.

I’ve said before that Po Na Na always seems to have its hit and miss nights, some rammed with people, some utterly dead, some fantastic and popular, some miserable and boring, and this night was unequivocally one of the better nights.

Animal House seems to have broken the curse of Tuesday night. I haven’t had so much fun in a long time, and with quality like this Animal House could well become the best night out in Oxford.

Utterly brilliant.