MEMBERS' bars don’t work in Manchester, and haven’t for many years. Good. Invariably they're vulgar temples of vacuousness populated by steroid-hungry brutes, busty airheads and sharp-suited old lechers rattling around buckets of champagne and staring at each other’s shoes.
The club will be “a place where creatives and suits can come together", provided they can stump up between £500 and £1000
The Milton Club tried it, as did, more recently, Hotel Gotham’s Club Brass (snigger), until the chumps who’d forked out £750 for membership realised the people who make bars interesting, convivial places to be aren’t stupid enough to drop £750 to sink overpriced cocktails in an empty bar that looks like a poor man’s Manchester House.
Surely then, nobody would be daft enough to take another punt on a members only bar in Manchester?
Enter AMIRAprivé, which sounds like a 1997 three-door Citroen but is in fact a new private members' club, launching in the old Dandara offices beneath the five star Lowry Hotel on Thursday 17 December, bringing (no kiddin’) #DubaiGlamour and #LondonStyle to #ManchesterNow
…except it’s in Salford. Even better. For God’s sake don’t mention the 'S word' around the VIPs.
Of course, anyone who’s actually been to Dubai (my condolences) will know that #DubaiGlamour means sweating your knacks off, picking sand out of your arse and scrambling from one cavernous marble foyer to another, tripping over the corpses of a thousand dead migrant workers. There’s nothing glamourous about Dubai. As AA Gill once quipped, ‘Dubai is what would happen if money were left to its own devices.’
Also, #LondonStyle? Mite condescending that, is this a Rimmel ad? And #ManchesterNow? Again, Salford.
C'mon now...We spoke with the club’s membership manager, Gary Hymanson, a lovely bloke, as it happens, who told us AMIRAprivé has been backed by one of the suits from Dragons’ Den, Peter Linney, and, more curiously, an Arabian Princess called Jasmine (Princess Jasmine... is this a wind up?). Amira means 'Princess' in Arabic.
According to Gary, the club will be “a place where creatives and suits can come together to create opportunities”, provided, of course, they can stump up between £500 and £1,000 in membership fees.
Now, I’m not convinced this lot have met many ‘creatives’, because most I know can barely stump up enough money to buy a bag of Wotsits.
Still, according to Gary they’ve already shifted half of their initial 200 memberships, whilst VIPs staying at the Lowry will also be offered guest passes into the club. Mind you, those fledgling members might be a little miffed to learn that AMIRAprivé only plan to open three times in the next three months: the launch on Thursday 17 December; a £100-per-ticket New Year’s Eve bash with a £50,000 fireworks show; and Valentine’s Day.
But then, you’re probably not invited to any of those, and after this, we’re guessing we’re not either...
