Has Shoreditch lost its cool?

It's a sunny day in Shoreditch and a hapless young interviewee is cowering before a hip Hoxtonite in the hope of landing a job at his trendy bar. It's obvious she's not cool enough for the job as, unlike the rest of the bar staff, she is neither a part-time stylist or installation artist, nor a member of a hip hop crew. "This is a style bar," he tells her, "it ain't the Dog and bloody Duck. I mean, have you got any Japanese friends?î

Welcome to the world of Shoreditch Tw*t , a Channel 4 comedy show to be shown tomorrow night, based on the fanzine of the same name that has become as much of a Shoreditch institution as the trendy 333 club where it was created.

Like The Office, the show's characters are so cringingly recognisable that it's almost painful to watch.

Spend the day in Shoreditch, and it's scarily plausible that you might meet the recruitment consultant who moonlights as a DJ or the personal lifestyle consultant who can give your life a monthly makeover - luxury food is out, ironic junk is in; girlfriend is out, boyfriend is in (for the next three months at least).

Shoreditch Tw*t, the fanzine, was started three years ago by Neil Boorman, the club promoter who joined 333 when it opened in 1997. Its sole purpose is to promote and celebrate the independent club spirit and to satirise, without mercy, the wannabes and self-obsessed style junkies who were part of the Shoreditch style explosion in the late Nineties.

"We're in a weird situation where we're satirising and sending up what we're part of," says Boorman. "The old-school Shoreditch mafia hate us - not many of them can laugh at themselves."

At the beginning of the decade, the east London area became flooded with art students, Young British Artists and fashion designers such as the Chapman brothers, Alexander McQueen and new media types who bought self-assembly lifestyle kits, comprising of a loft apartment complete with retro furniture, a subscription to The Face, a pair of Evisu jeans, instructions on how to customise a T-shirt and a Fischerspooner box set.

It's the place where the graffiti looks like modern art, everything is "ironic", weird haircuts are spawned, and the loos in the bars are so fashionably abstract you can't work out how to use them.

Needless to say, once the area became achingly trendy - and the property prices shot up - the City bankers and trust-fund set moved in. Shoreditch's original inhabitants have been forced out - either by the influx of arrivistes or the extensive traffic works that currently dominate the area - and coffee-shop chains, high-end art galleries and expensive restaurants have opened up. And now the new Channel 4 series could be the final nail in its coffin.

But if you bought your loft apartment and spent your savings on a Seventies Chopper bike (currently all the rage among N1/EC2's inhabitants), don't worry - the area is now so uncool it probably won't be too long before Shoreditch is the new Shoreditch.

Are you a Hoxton hipster?

What to wear

Girls: army jacket and cropped gaucho trousers or drainpipe denim, worn with coloured socks and battered trainers (Converse or vintage Nike) or round-toed heels. Jewellery made by your designer friends. Your hair should look as if you cut it yourself when you were drunk.

Boys: low-slung washed-out jeans, which cost about £200 from the new vintage Levi's shop on Newburgh Street, W1, but you tell people you picked them up on Brick Lane for a fiver. Obscure trainers that you can get only in Japan. A growing-out mullet haircut and a few days' facial hair growth. Never wear a Hoxton fin - they're so over.

Where to hang out

The 333 on Saturday nights; Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen (so cool it doesn't even have a sign outside); Jaguar Shoes on Kingsland Road; the Bricklayer's Arms and the Red Lion, Tommy Guns hairdressers and the Jake and Dinos Chapman exhibition at the White Cube2 gallery.

Where to live

Luxe loft living is so Nineties. You need to live in a virtually uninhabitable warehouse (refer to it as a "shell"). It has no hot water or heating, but that will be your project for the next few years.

What to ride

A kid's BMX or a Chopper for getting about in Shoreditch, or a scooter for those rare trips out of the "ghetto".