Who goes to... KX gym

The people at KX gym are proud to boast that many of their members have not bathed at home for months. Such is the pristine cleanliness of this epicurean fitness centre's changing rooms, the clinical efficiency of its laundry service (you leave your sweaty kit in a locker and it will be washed and pressed, ready for your next visit) and the unrelenting force of its Korean riot-police-strength power showers, that many KX clients actually prefer them to their own bathrooms at home.

Even in the snooty Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea there are not many bathrooms which are furnished with adjoining saunas, steam rooms and plunge pools, a common chillout lounge for men and women, wall-to-wall sprung teak floors, dark Macassar wood and non-slip surfacing on the shower floors, designed to be just like the rubber studs on the soles of Tod's driving shoes. And what domestic bathroom can claim to also serve the elegant, sanitary needs of Gwyneth Paltrow, Kylie Minogue and Laura Bailey?

Situated in Brompton Cross, just opposite Daphne's and only a few doors along from Joseph, KX (it's pronounced 'kicks', by the way) is a cut above your normal gym. Less a health club and more a second home.

Entering, you get that same silent sigh that you get when you fluke an upgrade, leave the hell of coach and discover the anaesthetised serenity of the business lounge. The reception is redolent of the lobby of an Ian Schrager hotel and the café/juice bar is like a karmically adjusted Alain Ducasse franchise. Even the leather punch-bag in the boxing gym is crafted by Bill Amberg.

Inside, the gym smells fresh and woody, and there is no evidence of that cheap cocktail of Ralgex, Timotei and rank perspiration you get in other fitness facilities. In short, you don't just want to work out here, you want to move in.

And you could... sort of. If the membership fee seems as shockingly steep as that Himalayan running-machine programme you once selected by accident, consider this option: why not rent a clean but simple bedsit around the corner for the benign, recuperative business of sleep, and use the gym for all other languid activities? You could spending every waking hour lounging around in a complimentary robe-and-flip-flops ensemble, in KX's myriad, plasma-screenequipped relaxation zones, perhaps irrigating one's overwrought chi with a glass of herbal tea. That way the price would suddenly seem like an absolute bargain.

Piers Adam, the well-connected nightclub entrepreneur, would agree. He regards KX as much as a social club as a health club. He likes to arrive at 9am, slowly undress, while chatting to resting restaurateur Mogens Tholstrup about the previous night's adventures, before joining the exercise room for a physically undemanding session of harmless flirting with his mate Gwyneth Paltrow. He will then retire to the changing rooms for a long shower. 'KX is a little bit of Beverly Hills in South Ken,' he says.

Now, we have to tread carefully as far as names are concerned because the KX management can get a bit prickly when its burgeoning celebrity patronage is mentioned. They don't particularly want you to know that Gianluca Vialli is a demon for the spinning classes, that Seal can spend up to 45 minutes on a running machine, that Lisa B and Laura Bailey are mean kick-boxers, and they certainly won't want you staring at Gwyneth as she unfurls her yoga mat.

Get the wrong bums on their expensive rowing machines and the celebs will leave in droves, they reckon. They shouldn't worry. The gym's prohibitive costs will surely guarantee a high level of exclusivity. The £1,000 joining charge should fend off any oscillating riff-raff, while the buttock-clenching £2,000-a-year membership fee will help weed out anyone else. All this, by the way, is before you start shelling out £75 an hour for your personal trainer.

Formerly an enormous, subterranean folly of a restaurant called La Belle Epoque, KX opened a year ago. British-born owner Simon Fry, 42, is a keen yachtsman and lives with his American wife, Karen, nearby in Chelsea. He was in banking for 23 years before he left his post as head of international markets at Nomura Bank (where he once received a £7 million bonus) to launch KX, in which he invested £10 million of his own money.

Fry first endeavoured to establish 'KX' as a bona fide word, giving it a faux dictionary definition: 'Noun. 1 a place where human potential may be realised. 2 an environment conducive to maximum expression. 3 where evolution happens.'

The results of his efforts, it has to be said, are pretty impressive. Your ES reporter visited KX for a restorative hour in the flotation tank --where, I was told, Kylie had been the previous visitor - and found the deluxe environs conducive both to exercise and indolence.

On the way to my static, saline voyage, I utilised my Bill Amberg key-fob pass (valid in my case, alas, for only one day) and passed by the main gym area, with its regimented lines of topofthe-range Exertris exercise bikes. I popped my head around the door of the 'dojo' room, where model Lisa B was attacking three-times world champion kick-boxer Cengiz Dervis. Refreshing myself with a bottle of KX own-brand mineral water, I entered the wellbeing zone, eschewing enticingly holistic offers of deep-tissue massages or La Stone therapies, disrobed and prepared to lose my troubles in salt water.

My tank was so vast - around the same size as a builder's skip - it would have been entirely possible that Kylie was still there, floating blissfully but undetected, and that we would only become aware of each other when we gently clunked together like a couple of lonely ships in the night. Well, a man can dream, can't he?

KXGYMUK, 151 Draycott Avenue, London SW3 (020 7584 5333) Open daily from 5am to 9pm.

Proprietor Simon Fry.

Signature drink The juice bar's zingy Urban Shot, £1.50.

Top trainer The fitness manager Gideon Remfry, who is an expert at judo and has competed at a national level.

Membership The joining fee is £1,000 and annual membership is £2,000.