It’s a scorching late-summer day in east London, and the sun isn’t the only thing that’s blazing. The air is suffocating, even under the canopies that provide shade for the punters at Street Feast, an outdoor maze of shipping containers that attracts hordes of hungry hipsters to Dalston Yard – a run-down old industrial space, now reborn as a foodie heaven overflowing with tacos and booze – every weekend. In other words, it is rum weather.

Well-fed and lubricated, I slink up to the bar to order our sixth round. The man at the bar has a raffish moustache, longish hair and he’s wearing a kitschy shirt that would have suited Bret “The Hitman” Hart in his heyday. “Not sure if you have somewhere like this up North,” he begins (always a good start), “but if you’re into rum you have to check out this place in Hackney, they’ve got about 30 different rums behind the bar. It’s ace.”

I am appalled. “Mate,” I spit back in the over-emphasised Glaswegian tone that I always seem to adopt as soon as I leave the G postcode area, “I stay down the street from this place The Rum Shack that has about hundred. Literally a hundred. And then ten minutes away” – by this point I am slurring slightly and not quite sure where I’m going with it – “there’s another hippest place to live in the country,’ and it has a hundred rums too. So yeah, we do have somewhere like it up North.”

We do, and it’s Distill. It’s one of the best bars in Finnieston: a vibrant, modern space with bubbling disco beats and outstanding food. And it keeps getting better with age. It was here doing its thing before any of the new wave of eateries and watering holes arrived, and its musical offering – DJ sets from the likes of LuckyMe and Numbers are common – is up there with the best in the city. Of course, it’s not in Hackney and it isn’t full of media types with ridiculous haircuts, but it’ll just have to do.

What’s your outrageous prediction for the year ahead?

1. Kat Loudon, 25, Woodlands, “Things will get better… I hope”

Adam Paris, 25, West End, “Trump will get abducted back by his alien family”

2. Sean Iles, 24, East Kilbride, “Scotland will qualify for the World Cup”

Katrina Durie, 23, Finnieston, “We’ll go to war with Russia”

3. Lorna Grzybek, 28, West End, “I’m too scared to say it out loud, in case it actually happens”

Shani Ross, 28, Finnieston, “Mickey Mouse will get married to the Queen.”

4. Ashley Jane, 24, Broomhill

Favourite Club? SWG3

Favourite Bar? Distil

Favourite DJ? Greg Wilson

Favourite Band? Led Zeppelin

What You Drinking? Tequila

First Club? Sub Club

Describe Your Dancing? Like I’m losing control

5. Simon Small, 36, South Side, “Religion will disappear”

6. Amy Malloy, 28, Springburn, “There will be a Friends revamp starring Mark Wahlberg”

7. Gordon Reilly, 35, Argyll, “A Donald Trump/Boris Johnson love child will be born”

Siobhan Brown, 25, Argyll, “The world will explode, and none of us will be shocked.”