I've already had my most surreal moment of the Edinburgh Festival, and it happened down the pub

There are Scampi Fries behind the bar, everyone is drinking pints, and Unbelievable by one hit wonders EMF - my first gig, at Edinburgh’s Calton Studios - is playing.

As I mill around, Bez from The Happy Mondays steams over to chat. I suddenly feel underage. Because this is a flashback to 1990, right?

But, wait a minute. I have jowls and wrinkles. I am not wearing flared jeans and a The Stone Roses t-shirt. It’s a Sunday, but I don’t have to worry about school tomorrow.

Bez, who, like Kylie and Madonna, need only be known by a single name, has a thick mop of white hair, and potentially, veneers, because those toothies - like Shaun Ryder’s, these days - are box fresh and Persil white. He’s puppyish and enthusiastic, though, even if he seems to have left his maracas at home.

He points out his grown-up son, who is DJ-ing, and talks to me about another teenage child, and technology, as well as his record collection. He’s 61.

I am 50. And this encounter is making me feel weird.

If I was still a teenager, my mind would be blown right now, since those years were soundtracked by the Bummed album. I probably wouldn’t be able to talk, I’d just be sweating nervously. But, no, it’s 2025, and I’m at a press launch night of Leith Social Club - the new Edinburgh pub that’s modelled on a 1990 boozer.

This is the pre-official opening weekend and - not accidentally - its proper launch coincides with the Edinburgh Murrayfield Oasis gigs.

However, this is no festival pop-up, as I’d assumed, when I got the last minute invite. It’s a permanent thing.

Throughout the opening weeks they’ve organised a programme of entertainment, including a DJ set from Irvine Welsh on August 16 to launch the pub’s regular Acid House Saturdays. Their hanging sign outside is a rave-era smiley face.

The people passing by on Great Junction Street are peeping in, with smartphone cameras appearing above the frosted glass. I’m sure, like me, they’re feeling totally discombobulated by this break in the time-space continuum.

This throw-back destination has been created by Mike Baxter, who is behind the glamorous House of Gods hotels in Edinburgh and Glasgow. I’m not sure if it is a nutty or genius move, but he must think there’s a market. They’re calling the pub a Cool Britannia “cultural time capsule”. It’s uniting Generation X, like moi, who want a dose of nostalgia, and the Generation Zs, who deify the era.

Almost all of the clientele, on my launch night Sunday Session visit featuring Bez, are wearing Adidas, stripes, bucket hats or Burberry checks. They’re not all oldies like me. In fact, most of them are young. It’s Nineties cosplay. Except they do it better than we ever did, since they have online access to every type of merch. When I was their age, we’d have to cobble outfits together from ill-fitting charity shop finds.

I feel a bit like someone’s mad fer it mum - nay, nana - who’s come to collect them and take them home for their tea.

However, conversely, because the pub is so accurately Nineties-esque, I also feel young again. It reminds me of the counterclockwise experiment that they did, back in the Seventies. They recruited elderly men to live in an environment that reflected the times twenty years earlier, to see if they would notice any physical or mental improvements. And they did.

I believe it, and the fact that there are no mirrors in the toilets means the spell is not broken. I could be a teenager or twenty-something again, as The Smiths come on the jukebox.

I’m not sure if they’ve changed the interior since its Tam o’Shanter days, or if it was already conveniently dated, but this place also very much resembles a non-contrived Nineties pub. There is flatteringly dingy lighting, wood-cladding, and pleather seats, a dart board - with no darts on it today, probably for modern day health and safety reasons - and, best of all, an amazing jukebox, with a top 20 curated by Bez. Until August 12, they have an exhibition of Oasis memorabilia, raising funds for Maggie’s, at the back of the space.

I’m not a big fan of the Gallagher brothers, but I remember when pubs were all about the music, and meeting others, who were into the same stuff.

I went to Burlington Berties, at Tollcross, for years, simply because they had a few good tunes on their jukebox. Then there was Trader Vic’s on Victoria Street, where we’d all order bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale; the slightly seedy Lord Darnley’s, which turned into the Cas Rock, as well as the excellent art school hang-out, the Tap o’ Lauriston, not to mention The Green Tree in the Grassmarket, which was in a building that was demolished in 2002, after the big Cowgate fire.

Going to a pub was usually a precursor to clubbing, so those visits always held such expectation and anticipation, of an impending night on a sticky dance floor. I was always skint, so I could make a pint of snakebite or supersonic (gin ‘n’ tonic) last for hours.

There’s another flashback at Leith Social Club, as they also boast a Burberry pool table. This is the first time I’ve been in a proper retro pub - rather than a cocktail or wine bar - for ages, and, true to form, I imagine that I’m a demon pool shark after just two drinkies.

And I’m absolutely not. About 57 pathetic shots later, the new friend that I’ve collared into a game, pots the black.

Some things should stay in the past.

Leith Social Club is at 39 Great Junction Street, Instagram @leith_socialclub

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