best gig guide for London?

the weekly hard copy version of time out is excellent. i used it a lot when i lived in london. the website always used to be pretty barebones - presumably because they wanted people to buy the print copy. not sure if that's still the case though.

you can get it in most newsagents in london.

If your friends are looking for a straight list of what's on, they could do worse than an "advanced search" for London and the dates they're over for on www.seetickets.com , who sell for almost all of the not-tiny shows in town.

Their ridiculous booking fees make buying anything through them a Bad Idea, though.