In a city that never sleeps what else would you be doing at 4am?

DROP into London's 24-hour internet cafes at 4am and you will find hundreds of the city's night owls.

A predawn visit to the easyEverything cafe in Kensington High Street unearthed insomniacs, shift-workers, students, business people, clubbers, job-seekers and lonely hearts all glued to their screens.

The coffee bar closes down at night, but regulars say they are addicted to the Net.

Some, such as Shahid Kalhoro, 19, a student living in Earl's Court, spend at least 25 hours a week online. He plugs his headset into the computer to listen to music and download tracks for free from the US website Napster.

He explains: "It saves me hundreds of pounds I would spend in music shops."

Tony Bright, the night shift manager, says it is not unusual for the cafe to be half-full in the early hours. "We have our regulars who come in just to chat for up to six hours at a time and there are those who come in to sleep or just kill time until the Tube starts."

For 1, customers can access the internet for four hours between 2am and 6am whereas the same 1 may only stretch to 30 minutes during the daytime.

The majority of visitors during the twilight hours seem to spend their time looking for love in chat rooms or combing through news groups and "adult-content" sites.

One man in his thirties was spotted with a window entitled Lolita Babes open on his screen. He typed messages into a small text box at the bottom of the screen for a half an hour before leaving.

According to Tony, about 10 per cent of nighttime customers attempt to access pornographic material but staff use a software programme designed to block it.

Customers can also use internet telephones to make cheap international calls.

Some even regard the cafe as their place of work. Mark Segal, 33, and his friend Carlo, 34, are using its resources to get their internet startup off the ground.

They each spend 60 a week at the cafe, which they first visited after their own computers were disabled by a virus. The disaster gave them the idea of setting up a website to share information and software with other victims of computer viruses.

They find the peace and quiet in the early hours helps them to work, and the cheaper internet access keeps their costs down.

Jolenata Dubininkaite, who is from Lithuania, was using the internet to send emails home and to apply to a mime course in Paris. She studies part-time and works in a restaurant during the day and then spends the night in the cafe when she cannot sleep.

Johnny Watson, a self-confessed insomniac from Archway, likes to spend his time watching video clips of forthcoming films and listening to live audio radio.

He said: "The atmosphere in here suits me.

Nobody talks to one another but you can chat to anyone in the world on the Web if you want to."

Copyright 2001
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.