Not so corking Champagne

Morechampagne, 5A More Place, SE1 (020-7403 0658) Mon-Fri 7.30am-11pm, Sat & Sun 10.30am-7pm *

We've been drinking in former banking halls for the best part of a decade (long before customer service operations were switched to Indian call centres), boats on the Thames have long been useful watering holes, and punters in Shepherd's Bush are now seemingly acclimatised to the fact that the bar Ginglik is a former public convenience, located deep in the bowels below Shepherd's Bush Green.

The trend for 2005, I can exclusively reveal, will be for drinking in bus shelters.

Bus shelter spotters might want to start with a look at Gelateria Valerie, in the new Duke Of York's Square shopping mall near Sloane Square. From here they should head to Southwark and More Place, the name of both a shiny new office block and one of London's newest thoroughfares linking Tooley Street with Ken Livingstone's expensive riverside headquarters.

Here you'll find Morechampagne, a state-of-the-art bus shelter (which, surprisingly given Uncle Ken's proximity to the place, is not on a bus route) housing an all-day, fully licensed snacketeria. It's non-smoking, which is nice for those of us trying to kick the habit, brightly lit, ultra modern, and virtually atmosphere-free.

Champagne is meant to be the order of the day here, and £10.65 for a non-vintage glass of Veueve Cliquot, and £14 for a 1996 vintage of the same means they're charging champagne prices. One can only wonder with incredulity as to who would pay £250 for a bottle of 1996 Louis Roederer Cristal rose. Sparkling wine is cheaper, naturally, but £6.95 for a glass of 1998 Cloudy Bay Pelorus would seem a bit steep.

There is a beer, but just the one, and I'm not sure that if I were going to sell one beer I'd choose Corona and hope to get away with £3.20 a bottle, lime wedge in the neck of the bottle - so classy - included. The most dangerous drink on the menu, though, is camomile tea (£1.20) which, when combined with the bar's atmosphere, provides a truly soporific effect.

Food is served from early morning for breakfast until late in the evening with sandwiches and tapas.

A charcuterie plate for two is beyond most reasonable budgets at

£19.95, sandwiches are as ordinary as ordinary can be (prices start at £4.95), but the real (and only) treat is the hard-to-get-wrong miniature bowl of warm, sliced chorizo at £1.95.

I'm making the rather dramatic assumption that people will not take to drinking in bus shelters, no matter how posh they might look. I hope I'm right, because when venues like this start to make sense I know I need to up my medication.