The afternoon sessions were a success, and he and his schoolmates set up a club night back home at an arts centre in nearby Winchester. Called Wide, it was an overnight success. Sort of. "The venue closed at 11pm so we had to start really early. We had four people down on the first night." But as Wide grew wider and as the night's reputation - and crowd - increased, Alan realised that it couldn't last here. Like a moth to the proverbial bulb he was drawn back to the bright lights and late night boozers of the capital. He moved back and found himself behind the turntables at various bars and small clubs.

It was around this time that he met Simon Fullerton, an excitable Irishman with whom he shared a liking for the finer things in life - birds, booze and basslines. "He asked me to DJ at a night he was organising. It was his first pop at club promotion and my first chance to play out to a proper crowd. He paid me exactly what he'd promised and was very good at drinking. Naturally we hit it off." Alan had found the Batman to his Robin, an Eric for his Ernie. With Simon's motor-mouthed PR flair behind it, the Wide empire began taking shape. Wide Mk. II was launched at Soho's Clinic with Alan playing alongside Olly, J.B.T., Turna and his younger brother John (who would later become Debasser). Simon and Alan also started working on Wide theatre events at the Edinburgh Festival and London Fringe.

Despite the success of the parties, Alan was becoming disillusioned with drum'n'bass. "The music was going totally up itself and lost that element of fun. I wanted to get hold of party music again!" It was by pure chance that he came across DJ Godfather' & Coon Daddy's "Get Yo Jit On", a Detroit booty bass classic, while leafing through the electro section in London's Ambient Soho. It was lewd, rude and like nothing Alan had ever heard before. He was instantly hooked. "It had the chants of hip hop, the energy of drum'n'bass and rawness of electro. It was exactly what I was after."

By another freak chance, a theatre owner from Detroit who had heard about one of their shows at the Edinburgh Festival dropped by a London performance. "He mentioned that he had friends from Detroit who were DJs and producers and he'd pass on our details." Weeks later, he received a phone call from a Detroit guy who was in town. DJ Godfather, in fact. They talked about music, exchanged views and, importantly, records and CDs. Simon and Alan wanted to create their own UK-based booty scene and realised the only way for them to find out about the music and make those all-important Stateside connections was to get on a plane and get out there. "In Detroit we met Disco D, Assault - all the players. I think that kind of sealed it for us."

Back in the UK with new-found connections and bags more tunes, they started to incorporate the sound into the club night. Mixing Miami bass, Chicago and Detroit ghetto styles with breaks, hip hop and jungle, the boys were forging their own unique take on the US booty bass phenomenon. Wide Mk. III was born and bigger, bootier London parties followed. Fellow booty DJs like Andrea Parker and Ed DMX were checking them, and the press slowly but surely caught onto the thoroughly British sound they were creating. They left The Clinic at the end of 2001 to throw one-off events at clubs like 93 Feet East, Herbal and 333, as well as getting gigs in Europe and across the UK. Now they were flying the Detroit set over to the UK to play at their parties.

The club's been taking off ever since, building up a bigger roster of DJs and live acts, establishing connections with like-minded labels and clubs and, in Alan's case, making his own UK Bass tracks. "I think people are fed up with big name DJs and the psuedo-intellectualisation of dance music. It's not big or clever - it's a good laugh and something to enjoy with all your mates. Just like beer, really."

And despite the club's unprecedented success, Alan still finds time for real ale. Occasionally he sleeps, too.