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Captain Kidd
The Kidd, with its large windows, fine (but small) beer garden and mock scaffold recalling the hanging nearby of the eponymous pirate in 1701, is a favourite riverside pub in Wapping.
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Cargo
Cargo is really one of a kind on London's club scene. It doesn't go for the obvious, but chooses international music, live bands and brilliant DJs, all of which you can enjoy while eating great 'street food' and sipping cocktails or massive bottles of beer. It's the sort of place where you can feel cosy or go crazy, and a club that comes closest to feeling like your 'local', complete with a great dance floor, sofas and a courtyard with a hammock.
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Cat & Mutton
As if to seal the deal on East London's most up-and-coming eating and drinking strip, the once terrifyingly rowdy pub on the edge of London Fields (the 'Cat' is short for 'cattle' that grazed here before being slaughtered) has metamorphosed into an airy and well-run gastropub. It has mostly lagers on tap but offers a full wine list and modern European menu.
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Charterhouse Bar
Charterhouse Bar is most people's pit stop before going on to Fabric , so expect loud and relentless music on weekends, with a good pre-club atmosphere. For those preferring something quieter, pop by for brunch - the food is great - and enjoy the wedge-shaped structure, a traditional Clerkenwell warehouse design. DJs are on every evening and entry is free at all times.
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Cherry Jam
Once a must-experience club, part owned by Ben Watt of the Notting Hill Arts Club and Everything But the Girl (who still sometimes DJs on Saturdays), Cherry Jam has lost the edge it had some years ago. It's still worth a peek, though, especially for the music and good, reasonably priced cocktails (around £7 ). Friday and Saturday nights have electro and house DJs and the atmosphere is always good. Might need a shake-up or a face-lift soon, though.
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Chuckle Club
The comedian's favourite, this club has a great atmosphere thanks to comedy stalwart, resident host and all-round lovely bloke Eugene Cheese, who begins every night with the Chuckle Club warm-up song.
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City Barge
The Barge, perched dramatically close to - but not on - the Thames, has been operating as a pub since the Middle Ages (1484, to be exact). It is split into two bars (go for the downstairs one) and there is a small waterside terrace. Little known fact: a scene from the Beatles' film Help! was shot here.
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Coach & Horses
Famous as the place where Spectator columnist Jeffrey Bernard drank himself to death, this small, busy and thankfully unreconstructed boozer retains an old Soho bohemian atmosphere with a regular clientele of soaks, writers, hacks, tourists and those too pissed to lift their heads off the counter. Pretension will be prosecuted.
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Coat & Badge
The Coat & Badge has gone for a tried and tested lounge-room approach (large sofas, second-hand books on shelves, standard lamps, sport on the telly), which seems to please the local clientele. It has a short but excellent menu and a fantastic large terrace out the front.
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Comedy Cafe
A major venue, the Comedy Café is purpose-built for, well, comedy. The meal-and-show deal will cost you around £20 , though during summer months it offers an around £5 ticket for the Friday show (no dinner). It can be a little too try-hard and wacky, but it's worth seeing the Wednesday night try-out spots for some wincing entertainment.
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Comedy Camp
This gay (but very straight-friendly) comedy club, hosted by Simon Happily, has become one of Soho's favourites. It's held in the basement area of one of Soho's more enjoyable gay bars, Barcode. Comedy Camp features both up-and-coming queer comedy acts as well as more established gay and lesbian comics.
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Comedy Store
This was one of the first (and remains one of the best) comedy clubs in London. Although it's a bit like conveyor-belt comedy, it gets some of the biggest names. Wednesday and Sunday nights' Comedy Store Players is the most famous improv outfit in town with the wonderful Paul Merton and Josie Lawrence, and Thursday, Friday and Saturday's brilliant The Best in Stand Up features (you guessed it) the best on London's comedy circuit.
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Coopers Arms
A classic Chelsea pub just off King's Rd, it's stuffed with taxidermists' delights such as a moose head and a stuffed pig's face among other stiff critters, and railway advertising cartoons. Newspapers abound near the bright and sunny bar, and the clientele is mixed and jolly.
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Counting House
They say that old banks - with their counters and basement vaults - make perfect homes for pubs and this award-winner certainly looks and feels comfortable in the former headquarters of NatWest. Even though the central hall and island bar are mammoth, the Counting House can feel like Clapham Junction in the early evening.
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Crash
If Vauxhall in general is one of London's newest gay hang-outs, then Crash, in particular, is its Muscle Mary heaven. There are two dance floors churning out hard beats, four bars and even a few go-go dancers.
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Cricketers
Facing Richmond Green from its southern side (where its very own team bats and bowls), the Cricketers is a friendly and comfortable, themed (guess what) pub with a decent selection of ales and a mixed clientele.
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Cross
This is one of London's best venues, comprising several low brick rooms built under railway arches hidden in the wasteland off York Way. Sunday is run by Vertigo, a Continental-style clubbing operation, who bring over lots of Italian guest DJs. There's a great outdoor terrace for the summer months, too.
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Cross Keys
Covered in ivy and frequented by loyal locals who come here for pints of Young's and spicy fry-ups, the Cross Keys is Covent Garden's tourist-free, local pub. Eccentric landlord Brian shows off his pop purchases as bar decorations (such as his around £500 Elvis Presley napkin) and the punters range from bar props and fruit machine devotees to Covent Garden professionals, all of whom spill onto the pavement and outside tables on summer days.
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Crown & Goose
One of our favourite London pubs, this square room has a central wooden bar between British-racing-green walls studded with gilt-framed mirrors and illuminated by big, shuttered windows. More importantly, it combines a good-looking crowd, easy conviviality, top tucker and good, inexpensive beer.
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Cutty Sark Tavern
Housed in a delightful Georgian building directly on the Thames, the Cutty Sark is one of the few independent pubs left in Greenwich. There are a half-dozen ales on tap and a wonderful sitting-out area along the river just opposite. Count on about a 15-minute walk from the DLR station.
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Dickens Inn
Popular with both City folk and tourists who have strayed too far east from the Tower, this flower-bedecked three-storey warehouse is always heaving. But what keeps us going back is the waterside location, the outside tables and the fact that the building dates from the 1790s and not 1970s as everyone thinks (though it was moved here from elsewhere).
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Dogstar
Downstairs, this long-running local institution has a cavernous DJ bar, always mobbed with a young South London crowd. The main bar is as casual as you'd expect from a converted pub - comfortable sofas, big wooden tables - so dressing to kill is not imperative.
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Dove
A 17th-century coffee house-cum-pub, the Dove has many claims to fame, namely that it was in the Guinness Book of Records in 1989 for having the smallest bar in England. It was Graham Greene's local and Hemingway drank here too, and William Morris lived next door. There are good river views from the charming dark-wood interior, but if the sun is shining fight for a place on the terrace.
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Dove Freehouse
This pub attracts at any time with its rambling series of rooms and wide range of Belgian Trappist and wheat beers. But there's something about the dim back room, with its ethnic bohemian chic, that makes this pub a great place to hunker down against the chill. Of course, everyone feels the same way so don't count on solitude.
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Dragon Bar
Dragon's been super cool since it opened in the mid-1990s, and has maintained its style thanks to the fact that it's easy to miss: the name is hardly visible and only embossed on an entrance stair. Inside, it's all exposed brick, Chinese lanterns, velvet curtains and one of those illuminated waterfall pictures you buy on Brick Lane - it's ironic, of course.
