Address: Aspects Leisure Park, Newnham Avenue, Bedford MK41 9LN
Phone: 01234 326032
Opening Days / Times: Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 9pm to 2am
Prices: Thursday £3, Friday £0 (Yup, it's free), Saturday £4, plus various member and student discounts
Age Limits: 18+ all nights (They sometimes do Nappy nights on Wednesdays)
Capacity: 2500
Rooms: Entrance bar, Enigma 1 (Cap. 1500), Enigma 2 (Cap. 1000) Cocktail bar, restaurant
Who's been there: Carl Cox, Jeremy Healy, Danny Rampling, Dave Pearce, Nigel Benn, Mouse T & Hot 'n' Juicy, and loads more, including: DJ Ess*!
Who is there: Dave Burgen, Dazz Norman
Parking: Loads
Drink: Fosters, Pure 6, Smirnoff Ice, Breezer, the normal fare.

Dress Code: General good taste. No white trainers, no hats and no jeans.

Enigma is Bedfordshire's biggest nightclub. It is situated about half a mile from the town centre on the Aspects Leisure Park. Queues are normally quite short, except for Saturdays, when you can expect to wait for about fifteen minutes if you turn up at a reasonable time, and they haven't got a night on. Once in, you set off the metal detector a few times then you're into the entrance bar. 

On Fridays, only the smaller Enigma 2 room is open, but on Thursdays and Saturdays you can go to Enigma 2 for 'Dodgy' music, all 60's stuff, S Club 7, stuff like that, or you can go into Enigma 1 for the latest in House, Trance and Garage. There are bars in both rooms, raised sections for dancing, and chairs / sofas for chilling in. The restaurant is upstairs, and sells standard fare, chips, hot dogs, burgers, you know the stuff. Also upstairs is the Cocktail bar, which is worth going for itself. Three bar-staff, all dressed up in hula uniforms serve a variety of cocktails at a cheapish price. Best on offer is 'The Higher State Of Unconsciousness', a £5 monster cocktail, which is more of an event than a drink. Two of you order one each, and the staff set up a glass, a bottle of Sambuka, a pepper shaker, a double shot glass of red shit and a double shot glass of clear shit for each of you. According to the barman, the red one is "For colour and percentage" and the clear one is "For percentage". After pouring loads of Sambuka into the glass, they light it, hand you a straw each and count you down. You jam in your straw and start drinking. As you do, they add some pepper and then they pour in the red shit and the clear shit, and do a drum roll on the bar with the empty shot glasses. The first one to finish gets their hand raised in the air, boxer style, and the loser coughs up a tenner. Five seconds after drinking them your head starts to feel funny, ten seconds after that your legs start to fold up. The only downside is that house rules state that you can only have two of these per night, and that the bar is only open on Saturdays. 

Music is great, played at high volume with good sound quality, punctuated sometimes with shouts from the DJ. The lights are great, and range from subtle effects to absolutely blasting the room with different colors. Although Fridays can sometimes be a little slow, on other nights Enigma is normally very busy, but never normally gets really crowded. From the little I hear of him, the Enigma 2 DJ is quite good, and always has a crowded dance floor, but in the main room resident Dave Burgen really keeps things moving, with a selection of great tunes and excellent mixing. Busy as it is, Enigma rarely has things like dancers or other crowd pleasers like that (although sometimes you'll see Bongo Ted), but then it doesn't really need them. To coin a phrase, it concentrates on creating the ultimate music (e)x-preience, and all the dancers they need are on the dance floor. It trounces on Bedford's other clubs, with both a better atmosphere and a better class of music and décor. Plus you may see us there.

As Nase_2K and I are fond of saying "'Nigma rules!"

Check out the fourth and fifth birthday parties...

This is a misc. review.