Inside Tiger Tiger last night, hundreds of young women were dancing to club classics and party anthems at ladies’ night, unaware of the drama about to unfold.

The super-bar stretches over three floors with city workers and visitors to London buying expensive cocktails and bottled beers in bars, a club and a restaurant.

At around 2am, when police arrived outside the club to find a massive unexploded car bomb, there was an hour left of 'Sugar ‘n’ Spice', the regular night billed as "run for women, by women".

The 18,000-sq ft nightclub-bar has a capacity of 1,770 people, although door staff estimate that there were around 650 in the venue last night.

The bar is sandwiched between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, which leaves the venue with a clientele dominated by city workers and tourists.

There have previously been plans to attack nightclubs in London. Conspirators convicted this year for a plot to attack Bluewater with a fertiliser bomb had also discussed targeting clubs.

They had planned to attack the Ministry of Sound nightclub. Tiger Tiger was a smaller but similar target.

When tapes of the men planning that attack were played in court, Jawad Akbar could be heard saying: “No one can even turn around and say, ‘Oh, they were innocent those slags dancing around.”

Tiger Tiger, opened in 1998, is split into five distinct venues with bars as well as a restaurant and a club. The bar’s success has allowed the owners to open nine branches across the UK including bars in Cardiff, Glasgow and Leeds.

The bar is renowned as a 'pick-up joint' and most of the revellers who have not come straight from work are likely to have dressed up for an evening out. The dress code outlaws trainers. Earlier in the evening work parties and corporate events dominate the bars, which can be hired out.

The club was bought in 2002 by Urbium, now called Novus Leisure, which owns 25 bars in London.

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