There is a cool new hotel just opened in London which I can see becoming very popular very quickly. Ham Yard Hotel is between Mayfair and Soho, just behind Piccadilly, and has been designed by the talented Kit Kemp who brings just the right mix of playfulness, colour (pink and orange zig zag walls? yeah!) texture and sense of fun (a helter skelter for oranges? why not) to lift what could be a boring corporate space into somewhere where you really do want to hang out.

It's part of a clever bit of upscale urban regeneration with the hotel at the centre of a 'village' which includes apartments, offices and shops, and a courtyard which connects Great Windmill and Denman Streets.

Down in the basement there is a fab 1950s meets Out of Africa, via some Howard Hodgkin paintings, bowling alley called 'The Croc' (look out for the driftwood crocs on the wall).

There's a theatre for movie screenings along with several bars and some seriously funky meeting rooms for hire, a library, a restaurant and a drawing room. The rooms are pricey, as you might expect, but you don't have to stay there to get a feel for the place.

When I visited there were lots of breakfast meetings going on in the ground floor cafe area and I think it will rapidly become the place to meet, in fact I think it already is. It's a stunning and uplifting and basically just really fun space to hang out in - and it's really central. BOOM.