Make new friends in London

With a population of eight squillion in London, you'd think you'd have mates clinging to you like used condoms to the banks of the Thames. However, if you've just moved to town, recently escaped from a religious cult or made the disastrous mistake of telling your mates what you really think about their simpering other-halves, it's all too easy to find yourself kicking pigeons down Lonely Street.

Luckily, there's no need to start facebook-stalking everyone on that massive London group; the big smog is full of people worth meeting and some of them haven't stabbed anyone for years.

To start off, we all know that sport brings people together. Sometimes it's on the wrong end of each other's fists, but what the heck - it's a start. Sign yourself up on an ultimate Frisbee (www.londonultimate.com), netball (www.socialsports.co.uk) or touch rugby (www.londontouchrugby.com) team at your local park or leisure centre - the bigger the team the more likely you'll find a few mates among the meatheads. Gumtree (www.gumtree.com) is plastered with desperate pleas for last minute stand-ins for league games too, so you can go from Billy no-mates to softball saviour in one swing of the bat.

Of course, we're not all blessed with breathtaking ball skills. Some of us prefer mind over matter and for those sensitive souls there are loads of ways to top up your think tank while meeting new people. Weave a fictional web to trap new comrades at a writers' circle like those at the famous Groucho Club (www.writingcourses.org.uk) or take your best trash-gossip to share over clacking needles with the fun and friendly guys at iKnit in Vauxhall (www.iknit.org.uk). If you'd rather not wait until after the main event to get the beers in with your new bezzie mates, go for a club night like Craft Night at Notting Hill Arts Club (www.nottinghillartsclub.com) where a baggy of buttons and beads is all you need to get stuck into a prickly orgy of inebriated needleworkers.

Of course, if there's one thing that brings people together more than booze, sport and artistic endeavour, it's a good old fashioned flash mob. Luckily, London is teeming with secret societies who live for the chance to turn up in random spots and unite with complete strangers in the name of weirding out the normal people.

We bring you Santacon (www.santacon.co.uk), Pillow fight club (www.mobile-clubbing.com) and if you're feeling like taking your shadowy social life to the next level while simultaneously gaining 459 new friends-cum-conspirators (and counting), become an undercover agent with the Urban Prankster Network (http://improveverywhere.ning.com/group/londonuk). Just don't blame us when your new buddies have you bollock-naked in Trafalgar Square for the annual Nelson's Columnathon.

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