If you’re in the fine English city of Nottingham this evening and you were hoping to visit Pryzm for a few drinks and some dancefloor action – why they couldn’t just spell Prism properly, I don’t know – you’ll be in for disappointment. They’ve announced they’re staying shut tonight, and it’s all in solidarity with the needle spiking boycott.

Or so they would have us believe. I published an article last week on this, giving the take of my mysterious, anonymous insider – a perspective which caused some controversy. Pryzm said “We would like to show our support to our student partners this Wednesday in raising the awareness of safety in the night-time economy. Let’s work together to stamp this out.”.

Six other bars have said they’re closing at 10pm tonight and a few have said they’re giving female staff the night off. Am I the only one who finds something extremely odd about all this?

I, for one, remain unconvinced these venues are doing these things out of the goodness of their own hearts. For starters, who decided the best night to hold a boycott was Wednesday? If they want the boycott to have a real impact and they believe nightclubs must do more to help, a Friday or Saturday night boycott would maximise publicity.

Or are they scared of a backlash from doing so? Venues being closed at the busy weekend could lead to restaurants and takeaways in the area being affected negatively, not to mention taxi drivers. But think about it – those entitled prats from Insulate Britain wouldn’t get half as much publicity if they glued themselves to the M25 at 7am on a Sunday, would they?

I get the feeling that Pryzm won’t lose much from closing on a quiet weekday evening. There’ll be no wages to pay and none of the bills which come with being open. As for the venues closing early – I used to work at a holiday park for some years, and I learnt there that they don’t like paying bar staff with no customers.

And as for sending women staff home for the night, that’s just bizarre. So the women get the night off with no pay whilst their male counterparts go to work, get paid for their time and have a lot less work to do. Yeah, that makes sense…

I worked in a hotel for a while about a decade ago. When things were quiet, we had to get our vacuum cleaners out and look like we were busy. Bar staff on duty in Nottingham this evening might wish to familiarise themselves with the location of Henry Hoover…