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From The Times
November 14, 2009

The moment: table tennis

Ben Machell

For many, table tennis is a pastime for ever linked with church hall youth clubs or slightly intense obsessive-compulsive adult men. Fun? Possibly. Cool? Never. So why have the more credible corners of the capital been echoing with pings and pongs? East End bars such as the Book Club and the Elbow Room have installed tables, online groups such as the PI Ping Pong Club mean you can arrange games against fellow enthusiasts, while Swedish jeans designer Nudie has produced a denim case for your racket.

“There’s a definite sense of it being cool, if in a geeky way,” says the Book Club’s Heather Lawton, who admits installing ping pong tables after a boom in New York, where dedicated venues such as SPiN attract celebrity enthusiasts including Matthew Broderick, Ed Norton and Susan Sarandon. For all its newfound hipness though, the game’s appeal is its communality. “People don’t want to just get drunk any more,” says Lawton. “Table tennis lets you socialise, and you don’t even need to be any good to enjoy it.”

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