So you’ve moved from your rural town or city to our fair capital. And in the interest of living in one of the most vibrant, sociable parts you’ve settled in Shoreditch. The first thing you have to know is that you’re not exactly living in London. In fact what you’ve actually done is move from one bubble to another, only with much tricksier dating etiquette and worse mind-fuck games. Here pretty much everyone knows each other somehow and whilst it’s super-easy to be a slut, it can cause untold social-politics problems. Here’s a handy guide to navigating this sexual minefield.

DO hang out in London Fields throughout the summer. We all know it’s over-played but we all still go for 3 reasons: 1. It’s one of the few parks in East London where you can legally have a BBQ. 2. There are always people walking their puppies. MEGA CUTE! 3. The whole place is perpetually crammed with beautiful boys and girls with eyes that beg you to check them out. Please note that this is eye-candy territory only. It’s simply a wonderful place to perv on others without feeling embarrassment over your roving eye.

DON’T date anyone from Vice or The Old Blue Last. Shoreditch is cliquey as fuck but these places are clique-a-geddon for a fresh-faced hipster.

DO “chillax.” Ugh, I loathe that word but it was a piece of advice given to a friend recently that I’m appropriating for the same purpose. Basically, 99% of people in Shoreditch are a single-handed flake-a-rama. That means they will be late, they won’t answer your texts, they will blow you out on more than one occasion. And you know what? You just have to accept it. I know its hard going, but you just have to be cool about it. Sounds ridiculous, right? Welcome to Shoreditch dating, sweetheart. What you come to learn is, at some point, you’re going to wind up doing it to someone too, and totally without malice. You can’t get angry for something you’re guilty of as well.

DON’T hook up at techno raves. The people you meet there are usually sketchy fucks on way too much K. Don’t get me wrong, warehouse raves in London are the best! Fabulously grimey fun but they are not the place to meet the boy/girl of your dreams. Unless of course the person you desire most is someone who’ll listen to you babble about Seth Troxler whilst they rack up some lines on the back of your passport. Then go nuts.

DO go to as many parties by yourself as possible. This may sound a bit reckless but I actually mean parties outside your social circle. Make friends with people who are on the outer vestiges of your circle and then go off partying with them. You’ll feel safe as you’re with a mate but you’ll also be meeting a whole bunch of new people, who (hopefully) haven’t already slept with all your friends.

DON’T fall into the trap of the 7am hook-up. Everyone knows the type I mean. So you’ve been flirting all night with a person and they’ve kinda been flirting back but it’s hard to tell. Slowly the party dies out and you’re the last two standing and things start to happen at a time when no-one else is around to have any clue. Oh my lord, what are you still doing here?!? There is no dignity in this situation! The other person clearly doesn’t want anyone to know you guys are hooking up and that’s usually for a not-nice reason and not because they’re a private person or some-such bullshit. AVOID AVOID AVOID.

DO date someone in gainful employment. Sounds obvious, I know, but Shoreditch is FULL of people who don’t have jobs but somehow manage to party all the time. I know there’s the economic crisis and all and lots of people just can’t get jobs. And that’s totally not their fault. These are not the people I’m referring to. It’s the people that don’t even try. The true trashbags. The rest of us can’t work out how in the hell they manage their lifestyles (often it’s not even mummy or daddy lending a helping hand) so keep them as your party pals and only date reasonably sensible ones who work hard and won’t tempt you off the rails on a school night.

DON’T think that being a dickhead is cool. Yes we’ve all seen the viral and oh yes, wasn’t it ever so funny but gosh wasn’t that just me. No. Don’t. Just don’t. You like analogue photography so much then get a fucking film camera. You like fixie bikes so much then get one without a sodding break and peddle backwards like you’re meant to, okay? Don’t need glasses? Don’t wear cheap over-sized nerd frames then. You make those of us with -6 eyesight well jeals. Genuine people will like you for genuine originality so don’t fall into the Shoreditch stereotype.

These are by no means hard and fast rules. There may be a boy out there in a metal t-shirt and bad tattoos who isn’t a douche. There might even be a girl out there draped in Brick Lane bought vintage clothing who isn’t totally mental. Maybe.

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Chilly Gonzales takes the stage at the Pigalle Club, a Forties-style dinner and cabaret spot in London’s West End (circular tables, low ceilings, regular intervals of green velvet), and assumes his place at the piano. He is wearing a brown knee-length silk robe with matching trousers and a pair of generously cushioned slippers. His hands are encased in pristine white gloves. With shadowy deep-set eyes and slicked back hair, he is the very image of the brooding piano maestro.

He eases into a medley of slow, spare classical pieces. The music starts off somber and restrained, but his fingers move with such fluidity that they can’t resist adding little flourishes here and there. The embellishments begin to mount up. What opened with an air of great solemnity is now becoming increasingly comical. Now he’s playing a blues standard with one hand, a blur of white hammering away at the lower octaves.

He wraps it up and turns to confront his audience. “Hi, I’m Chilly Gonzales. If you don’t know me, I’m a Grammy-nominated producer.” This is true. He continues: “I hold the Guinness world record for longest continuous piano concert at 27 hours.” This is also true. “I’ve got a lot of famous friends.” He pauses for effect, then performs a modest raise of the shoulders. “In France, where I live, they call me un génie musicale.”

In 2004, Gonzales, who is neither French nor Hispanic but Canadian and whose real name is Jason Beck, released Solo Piano, an album of concise minimalist classical numbers in the vein of Erik Satie which gave substance to the génie musicale claim. Those who came to know Gonzales through that album – his best-selling by some margin – would have been shocked to learn that the author of those beautiful, delicate pieces had previously made, among other things, a gleefully profane lo-fi rap record called The Entertainist.

It’s not entirely surprising that a musician who rolls out his “unfuckwithable resume” at the beginning of a show, and makes unabashed reference to his musical genius at every opportunity, should dabble with rap. Rapping is, after all, the art of the inflated brag. The Sugarhill Gang were extolling their globally-endorsed sexual prowess and enviable motoring options as hip-hop drew its first breath, and given the amount of hot air that’s been blown over 4/4 beats since then, it’s no wonder the ice caps are melting.

Gonzales embraces the spirit of boastfulness on The Entertainist and its more lavishly produced follow-up, Presidential Suite, although in Gonzoworld the line between brag and self-skewering gag is always porous. Yes, he may be “the greatest entertainer of the year”, but he is also “the worst MC” who gets “more pussy than a priest”. He is “the prankster Frank Sinatra”, a “combination of Joe Stalin and Woody Allen”, whom you may address as “Fuckeye” or “the one-eyed Jew”. Or “Chilly Chaplin”. Or “Santa Klaus Kinski”, because he spent a few years living in Berlin.

“I am the worst MC” is at once a villainous sneer and an admission that Gonzales’ rapping abilities circa 2000 left something to be desired. In fact, as he demonstrates during tonight’s show, Gonzales is a pretty good rapper – stylistically derivative perhaps, but deft, playful and always entertaining. He spouts vast jets of nonsense in his rhymes but somehow manages to be more upfront than any other rapper you’d care to name.

Musicians rarely speak about, let alone lyricize, the shallow calculations that often underscore big career decisions, yet here is Gonzales on why he left Canada for Berlin: “I still remember when it first occurred to me./ Fuck it, I’m gonna move to Germany./ I don’t speak German, screw it/ But hey! I’m Jewish/ And I need a new press angle and that should do it.”

These kinds of outrageous proclamations make listening to Gonzales, or attending one of his shows, enormously fun. His almost pathological frankness presents an interesting challenge, however, when it comes to interviewing the guy. Any criticism you’d level at him has already been anticipated, and slyly underlined, in his music, or on other platforms. When he released Soft Power, his paean to Seventies soft-rock, in 2008, he posted a video online in which a Mercury label honcho begs him to take singing lessons to soften his harsh Montrealer tones. In the clip he circulated to promote his London dates, Gonzales tells a buffoonish interviewer, also played by Jason Beck, that although he “owns” France, he remains an underdog in England, adding: “I’m not a young man anymore. This could be my last chance.”

So why all the second-guessing?