Guilty Pleasures at 20: We made ABBA a serious dancefloor option

If you’ve been to a music festival in the last two decades and wandered into a tent playing back-to-back pop bangers, chances are you landed upon a Guilty Pleasures party. The touring club night is celebrating its 20th anniversary on 11 May by returning to Koko in Camden, where they used to have a residency. Ahead of the birthday blowout founder Sean Rowley talks to us about his best memories from two decades leading the dancefloor.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR BIG BIRTHDAY? I’m flabbergasted that we made it to 20 years and are still going strong. Clubland is a transient world where fads tend to come and go – but somehow we’ve kept going. I was getting on a bit when it started to take off, now I’m an old git, but I love it more than ever.

HOW WILL YOU BE CELEBRATING? The big news is that we’re going back to our spiritual home, KOKO in Camden, where we held down a monthly residency for over 15 years. Also, because we pull in an older crowd, it’s a daytime/early evening event (3pm-9pm), which means we’ll all be home in bed by 10pm! In the main room we’ll be banging out huge pop anthems from the last 4 decades, we also have a room devoted to sing-a-long power ballads (think Toto and Journey) pop divas (Kylie, Madonna, Mariah and Cher), and guilty country (Dolly, Shania). Some very special guests have been lined-up, including The Beyonce Experience, a viral smash on Britain’s Got Talent; The LipSinkers, London’s ultimate lip syncing drag cabaret; and the sexy, funny burlesque of Shotgun Carousel.

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WHAT ARE YOUR BEST STORIES FROM OVER THE YEARS? We’ve dabbled in karaoke over the years, one of the highlights being when Charlotte Church got up and belted out ‘Love Is In The Air’, which has the most amazing, climatic key change. As she walked off stage she looked at me and proclaimed ‘That was fucking high!’. We’ve played all the major UK festivals and opened for some of the biggest names in pop, from Elton John to Take That. We also DJ’d for George Micheal in 2007 at the newly opened Wembley Stadium, which means we can lay claim to the title ‘First musical act to play Wembley’.

HOW DID YOU GET THE WORD OUT WHEN YOU BEGAN? It was all word of mouth. It may sound a bit old school but if you put your heart and soul into pulling off a great party, people come back and tell their mates how amazing it is. I remember being blown away by the incredible response we got from people who attended those early Guilty Pleasures parties, the atmosphere was giddy, with crowds dancing and singing to these tunes they were ashamed to admit to loving, and feeling liberated by the whole experience. The phrase ‘guilty pleasures’ moved into the public domain, and the mainstream media went crazy for the concept. It became a regularly used question in interviews. National newspapers started up Guilty Pleasures columns. Then things got really surreal when we made the front page of the Guardian newspaper, who declared our club night at KOKO the future of clubbing. We even got our own one-off Saturday night TV show.

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ANY BANGERS YOU INCLUDE EVERY TIME? Before we started no one was playing Abba or Queen or Fleetwood Mac without irony in clubs. All of these are still in our sets.

WHAT’S THE SECRET TO YOUR SUCCESS? Do it because you love it.

Guilty Pleasures returns to Koko on 11 May and tickets are available online