Nice and all that

The brilliant Katharine Hepburn/Cary Grant screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby, revolves around a scene-stealing leopard.

While the new Leopard Lounge (flushed out of its former Fulham Broadway habitat by the developers' ball and chain) is no scenestealer, it's certainly doing its bit for baby care by running a creche in the basement - a blood pressure-raising, red, padded playpen that apparently doubles as a chilled adult playroom and nightclub at weekends.

Plasma screens in the bar monitoring their kittens allow well-heeled mums to rip in to a second bottle of Sauvignon.

I imagine the leopard as slinky, fast and dangerous, adjectives that aren't really applicable here. 'Nice' is as enthusiastic as I can get about this baby's reincarnation - nice staff, nice decor (with obligatory leopard skin touches, natch), nicely priced world food menu and a nice cafè and patisserie (daytime only) next door.

Vodka martinis, which were more ice than nice, were nicely presented all the same and that gin and fizzbased Riviera classic, the French '75, was trËs Nice indeed.

I liked the airy, decked terrace to the rear and, if I inhabited this part of the urban jungle, Leopard Lounge might come in handy as a drop-in-centre-cum-office, with constant alcohol and food on tap.

However, on the evidence of our recent Thursday mid-evening visit, so few katz had come out to play, the Leopard was looking worryingly like an endangered species, which is not nice at all.