By Lauren Bishop and C.E. Hanifin
Enquirer staff writers

PHOTO GALLERY

Club Clau photo gallery

The private party for Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson on Thursday night at Club Clau was designed to make everyone wish they could get inside. But the real action was happening outside the velvet ropes.

Hundreds of people, including local celebrities, showed up hoping to party with Lachey and Simpson, the pop singers and stars of MTV's Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica. The couple, who were in town for Simpson's performance Wednesday at Riverbend Music Center, spent a day off here, in Lachey's hometown.

The couple was scheduled to grace the club's red carpet sometime between the event's 9 p.m. start time and 10 p.m., according to Andrew VanSickle, the club's art director. So partygoers who were on the list - and fans who weren't - waited outside the club and along the walkway leading to the front door.

And waited.

And waited.

Here's the minute-by-minute account of the whole production.

8:30 p.m.: Leslie Kensill, 19, and Danielle Hood, 17, two Simpson fans from Mason, arrive outside the Over-the-Rhine club. They hang out down the street from the club's entrance on Sycamore Street so the doormen won't shoo them away. The only other people outside are a few club employees and about half a dozen members of the media.

8:45 p.m.: Josh Heuser, the club's director of operations, stands inside the club's nearly empty main room and says, "Give it about another hour and this place is going to be a zoo."

8:55 p.m.: The restroom attendants arrive.

8:59 p.m.: The first guests, a guy in jeans and a woman in a very short halter dress, hit the red carpet (or rather, three brick-colored remnants laid on the sidewalk).

9:01 p.m.: A doorman with a clipboard assumes his post behind the velvet rope. He makes the couple wait in front of it.

9:03 p.m. A black BMW convertible pulls up to the curb. A guy in a black suit gets out and ambles toward the club, leaving the engine running, the lights on and the stereo blaring a soul cover of Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart." It's restaurateur Jeff Ruby.

9:06 p.m.: A white limo drives by, a blond woman and two men hanging out of its sunroof. "We'll be back in 20 minutes!" one guy yells.

9:07 p.m.: A kid in an oversized blue T-shirt and red shorts walks up and asks, "Hey, was that Jessica Simpson that just went past?" (It wasn't.)

9:09 p.m.: After the doorman checks their invitation, the first couple gets into the club (after the club's photographer snaps their picture, that is).

9:18 p.m.: The first guest-list snafu of the night. Two young women stand just past the red carpet, one of them talking on her cell phone. She tells the person on the other line that someone was supposed to put both of their names on the list, but only one of theirs appeared. Much consternation ensues.

9:25 p.m.: A limo pulls up to the curb and nine people emerge, as does the strong smell of alcohol.

9:26 p.m.: Loud dance music begins emanating from inside the club.

9:27 p.m.: A bicycle whizzes past. The rider, who's wearing a fanny pack, apparently isn't going to the party.

9:28 p.m.: A woman stops by to observe the proceedings and says, "How disappointing." Maribeth Suprock, a 29-year-old law school graduate, says she grew up in Cincinnati and recently moved back here from New York City. She proclaims the scene "a little bit of a wannabe situation."

9:29 p.m.: A police car rolls by for the first of many times during the night.

9:39 p.m.: Mayor Charlie Luken chats with the TV crews, and then he and his date head inside the club.

9:42 p.m.: Kensill and Hood move closer to the club's entrance. Hood says she wishes they were old enough to get in, "so we can dance in stilettos."

9:50 p.m.: The two teenagers edge over to a corner of the red carpet.

9:51 p.m.: Two women standing in line, 21-year-old Sherrell Larkin and 22-year-old Camila Ramos of Clifton, say they got invites because they're friends with the owners. Larkin says she can relate to Jessica Simpson's naÔvete and that Lachey's famous frugalness is "a very Cincinnati thing."

9:54 p.m.: Don Mueller, the star of the first season of Who Wants to Marry My Dad?, and daughter Heidi Mueller, a cast member of the NBC soap Passions, are descended upon by TV cameras. A passerby trips on the valet parking sign behind the pair and momentarily interrupts an on-camera interview.

10:15 p.m. Jeff Hoover says he drove down to the club from Norwood because his 4 1/2-year-old daughter Zoe watches Newlyweds with him and his wife and she wanted to see its stars. "When you see somebody that's a big name from your city in the spotlight, it's kind of neat," he says.

10:24 p.m.: Zoe looks down at the red carpet and asks her father several times, "Daddy, why are we on the rug?"

10:26 p.m.: Kensill and Hood step up onto the low rock ledge right next to the velvet rope. A doorman asks them to step down.

10:30 p.m.: A female partygoer looks at the red carpet and tells her friends, "I don't want to walk on that thing." The doorman tells her to go to the end of the line anyway.

10:35 p.m.: A doorman tells Kensill and Hood that Simpson and Lachey might sneak in the club's back door. The two teens check out the entrance to the alley and decide that's unlikely.

10:40 p.m.: Heuser says he still hasn't gotten a call from Lachey and Simpson's entourage.

10:43 p.m.: Zoe sits down on the red carpet.

10:44 p.m.: Hood gets a cell phone report from a friend who's at home that Simpson and Lachey were shown on TV leaving the Montgomery Inn at the Boathouse. "They're on their way here," Hood says.

11:12 p.m.: "Where's Jessica?" someone hollers from a passing car.

11:18 p.m.: A pack of Reds, including Sean Casey, Danny Graves and Brandon Larson, walk quickly down the red carpet and into the club.

11:29 p.m.: A female partygoer stumbles in her black stilettos.

11:31 p.m.: Zoe lies down on the red carpet.

11:38 p.m.: A white van pulls up in the alley behind the club, and Simpson and Lachey slip in the back door. Only a couple of people from the TV crews actually see the pair.

11:39 p.m.: Kensill and Hood and the other half-dozen or so fans who've been waiting for hours to see the stars get the news that the couple decided to forgo their walk down the red carpet. One woman says, "That sucks." The others nod their heads in agreement. Then they all head toward home, leaving the sidewalk empty.

E-mail lbishop@enquirer.com or chanifin@enquirer.com