Night riders: the men behind Mahiki

A Pelly party
'It's all about the lighting. At so many house parties I go to, no one has thought about it at all. Dim the lights and use candles wherever possible. Low lighting makes people look their best. You want to create a sexy atmosphere that people feel relaxed in.'

Starting with the K Bar on Fulham Road in the Nineties, taking in the West End's Rock, Kabaret and the Stork Rooms on the way, Piers was the society darling of the London club scene, and Guy Ritchie's best man when he married Madonna. But the 44-year-old who provides a playground for the world's celebrities and aristocrats is the opposite of what you might expect. Far from being grand and jaded, he is soft and confiding, describing himself as a 'typical indecisive Pisces'.

The son of an art teacher, Shirley, and a lawyer, David, Piers grew up in North London, went to Highgate School and then Oxford Poly. ('I did estate management,' he says. 'I failed.') But it was in Oxford that he set up his first club night, at the Coven nightclub. He migrated to London and set up the K Bar group with Benjamin Fry, now a psychotherapist, and Piers and Marco Pierre White went into partnership at the Drones club in Mayfair as well as the Stork Rooms.

He met Nick House when he used Nick's entertainment company to promote nights at Rock and the K Bar. 'I stumbled around for 15 years,' is how Piers describes it, 'and it was a massive learning curve, work-wise. It was like a soufflé - 1998, 1999, and it finished in 2003.'

It was his idea to buy The Punchbowl. 'It was Guy's and my local pub,' he explains. 'No one used to go there and the owners rang me and said, "Do you want to buy it?" They were mates, you see, it was like a family business. So I phoned Guy, and he went, "Absolutely."'

He calls Tini 'an Italian aperitivo, somewhere you go for cocktails after work, where you can relax, take the pressure off. It's chic; we'll do the best Parmesan cheese, bread sticks with Parma ham, beautiful olives.' He introduces me to their Italian head barman Gianfranco Spada, late of Cecconi's. 'He's the Giorgio Locatelli of cocktails.'

Once engaged to Caroline Hickman (she married the comedian Steve Coogan), Piers lives in Kensington with his model girlfriend Sophie Vanacore, and their boys Bertie Hotspur, four, and George Hotspur, six months - he is a Spurs fan.

'Mahiki, Whisky Mist and Tini all coincided with my personal life. I stumbled across the perfect partner, I've got two beautiful children, and also the right partnership in business - life is about relationships,' he says.

Party like Piers
'The music is what counts. You want people to be silly and you can never hope to emulate a nightclub sound system, so put on your best wedding party tunes and let the mayhem begin.'

Relaxed and dashing in his smart suit and spotted hankie, 34-year-old Nick House is the top people-puller in London. He has raised crowds for everyone, including the Rolling Stones.

'He's a ghostbuster,' says Piers. 'If you haven't a clue how to fill your venue, you call Nick House and he'll pick the DJs and do it for you.' Nick's professionalism is evident as you talk to him. 'Tini is definitely one of our bestexecuted concepts,' he says. 'I'm really happy with the people we've employed. In nightlife, so much of it is about personalities.'

The son of an entrepreneur, Martin, and Avril, Nick grew up outside 'the pumping town of Tunbridge Wells', where he went to The Skinners' School, and launched his first business selling tennis rackets. At Leeds University he hosted club nights, aged 18. 'I had to work to pay my rent, and I had to hustle,' he explains with amusement.

By the time he left, he was running club nights in Leeds and London. He then went into the City and became a trader. 'I had a flat on the King's Road. I was 22, I was working for Citibank and they were paying me a ridiculous amount of money, which I didn't deserve, and it goes to show, because they've all gone bust!' He bursts out laughing.

'But it didn't suit me because I found myself looking at my watch every day and they're the best years of your life. So, at 24, I decided to do something I enjoyed.'

He set up Nick House Entertainment which now employs 25 people. 'There was a really new thing called Hotmail and I built up a few friends on it. I went on a mission of building up friends and contacts and started doing parties.' (He read information systems at Leeds.) 'I went from a production line of Mum getting envelopes, Dad stuffng them, my sister stamping them, to a database of 35,000 in six months.'

'Oh, he'll do a Branson, he's a dynamo,' Piers observes. 'A barmaid got cancer at Mahiki, he could barely run round the park, but in four months he did the Marathon des Sables to raise money for her.' Now teetotal ('I was good at the partying, but the diffculty was being efficient the following day,' he says carefully), Nick is said to be dating Geri Halliwell but claims they are just friends. Is he single? 'A grey area.'

He says the trio's next plan is to create a private members' club above The Punchbowl. His favourite clubs are 'Olivia Valere's in Puerto Banus and L'Esquina in New York'. And his best club night was 'my 30th birthday'. That wasn't the one he got thrown out of for bad behaviour? He laughs. 'It was, actually, yeah!'

The House party tip
'Always line up an option for the party to carry on to another bar or club at a certain time when things start to get out of hand - this is known as a "party hedge".'