Richard Bell samples ANGELS in LITTLE CLARENDON ST, OXFORD.

SO IT’S Friday night, there’s a huge weekend ahead of you full of grimy clubs and thumping beats so you decide to start it off in style with a cocktail in hand.

Or at least I did, and that’s how I found myself at Angels in Little Clarendon Street. Now anyone who’s read this article before knows that I am a beer drinker, and tend to judge how expensive a place is purely on the price of my pint, and in fact a lack of beer on draught can really put me off a place.

But of course I am well aware that in reviewing one of the most popular cocktail bars in Oxford I must allow my pint drinking hand to clasp itself around a very different sort of glass for a very different sort of drink.

I start my evening by indulging my love of everything to do with the Coen brothers, or rather more specifically of the film The Big Lebowski. Making my choice entirely through the ridiculous idea that drinking the same drink as Jeff Bridges in that film will in fact transform me into the dude, I walk away from the bar with a White Russian in hand and get a chance to explore the venue.

Angels recently had a bit of a makeover, all in an effort to transport the customer away, but curiously not to anywhere specific. The features in the bar seem confused about the effect they’re trying to achieve, as old yet slightly cartoony style paintings adorn the walls of the main bar, while on the bar itself a huge sprawling silver tree erupts from one end.

Rather than coming together to leave the customer in a state of utter perplexity, these disjointed features actually create a rather pleasant environment, and the overwhelming impression I am left with is of a prohibition era New York speakeasy.

With this in mind I order the official drink of the prohibition, a Long Island Iced Tea.

Returning to the bar to speak with the staff and receive recommendations for my next cripplingly delicious drink I get the best advice I’ve ever had, and order a Yokohama Romance.

I’m sceptical at first, as the rather inventive approach of including the story of each cocktail on their menu informs me that the drink is as delightful and dangerous as romance itself, a description I have subsequently found to be absurdly accurate – the Yokohama romance is bloody amazing.

I finish my time in Angels with a drink called a Corpse Reviver No. 2, for which the gleefully boastful menu description states is a drink which, if four are consumed in a row, will unrevive the corpse again.

Let me tell you I can believe it, as the rest of my night apparently consisted of dancing, laughing and enormously inappropriate behaviour.

Not that I remember it, all I remember is that I had a great night, to which I think I can entirely thank the glorious drinks I consumed in Angels, which is undoubtedly the best place in Oxford to start your night.