Parklife founder Sacha Lord on life in Manchester clubland

Sacha Lord says Manchester now boasts the best nightlife in the UK

Parklife festival founder Sacha Lord has told how he was shot at by gangs when he first started running club events in Manchester back in the 1990s.

It was the "real Wild West" then, he said, with "gangs running the doors" in the city that had been labelled "Gunchester".

But the co-founder of the Warehouse Project said three decades on, the city boasts the best nightlife in the UK.

"We've cleaned our act up," the 52-year-old nightlife guru said.

Now Greater Manchester's night-time economy adviser, he has chronicled his life in the industry in his memoir, Tales from the Dance Floor, which he has co-written with Luke Bainbridge.

The former Manchester Grammar School pupil's ambitions to go into the club world did not go down well at home.

He said he "didn't want to go down the traditional education route" and the day he turned up with "two Us and an E at A Level" was "not a good day in my household".

"I just wanted to put parties on.

"I was obsessed with the music scene."

Sacha Lord co-founded The Warehouse Project, one of the world's biggest nightclubs

The first event he staged was at the legendary Hacienda on 4 July 1994.

He said it was "his first big mistake" - with the idea of putting on a "student night" flawed by the fact that by that date "the students have gone home".

"I just about scraped to break even but I got a real buzz for it," he said.

In the book, he recalls being shot at by gangsters at the Home nightclub in the book.

"Manchester in those days was the real Wild West", he said, adding the city had gone from "being known as Madchester" to being "classed as Gunchester".

"The gangs were running the doors and this car slowly came round the corner and sprayed the door full of bullets.

"They were after the door team but what the door team did was they all ran inside pulled the shutters down and left me there, aged 23."

He said he never told his mother and she only found out when she read his book.

The Hacienda and Home are long gone, but Lord said Manchester's nightlife has gone from strength to strength.

"London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield... are looking at what is happening in Manchester.

"We cleaned our act up and they're bringing events to the city," he said, citing the recent Chanel fashion show held in the Northern Quarter.

Sacha Lord says his "proudest moment" was raising £600,000 for charities during the coronavirus lockdown

He said his "proudest moment" was the live streaming service from a closed nightclub he launched during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 to boost the city's nightlife.

Roger Sanchez, Paul Oakenfold and Mel C were among artists who performed, securing 20 million views online and raising more than £600,000 for charities, he said.

He hopes to help people who left school with few qualifications build similarly successful careers.

He and his wife, Demi, have set up a charity foundation for young people from Greater Manchester to get them into the events or hospitality sector.

"The proceeds I get from this book are going straight into that," he said.