THIS VIP guff troubles me.
It encourages coldness, which, antithetically, occurs in a place that feels like the warm insides of a Terry's Chocolate Orange.
Hailing from Grimsby, the very nature of the VIP is an alien concept, we're all equally unimportant in Grimsby.
It was only at University that I became aware of this division between People and Very Important People. The need to section off those that knew (or were bonking) the club manager/promoter/doorman/Gary behind the bar. The ones with the boobs, the chino'd bigger Rugby boys, the Princess Eugenies (yeah I went to University with a Princess).
It’s all so Orwellian, the fat pigs sat up in the farmhouse glugging whisky, we serfs cast down into the bog and forced to scrap it out over crumbs and Carling while poor ole' Boxer gets carried out the door – Some are more equal than others, after all.
The Milton Club, Deansgate
But the truth is that VIP areas are, for the most part, utterly crap. Cretinous dens of vacuousness and narcissism that are very rarely anywhere near as much fun as down in ‘economy’ - think Leo and Kate in Titanic dancing a jig in the bowels of third class. They’re all having a bloody great time… you know, until it sinks.
Trust me; I’ve been in a few VIP areas. I took a friend (masquerading as my ‘photographer’) backstage at a big Heaton Park festival. Bloody boring it was. The ‘VIP’ section - which could be bought into for an extra twenty quid - didn’t have any bands on (which is kind of the point of festivals) and more pissed-up louts than out front, whilst the VVIP section (the backstage bit), scattered with portakabins, media-types sat silent at picnic benches and self-important tossers zipping around on golf-buggies, was about as much fun as being a insurance inspector.
The only real benefit backstage was the empty bar. Empty because it was so dull back there. Cast me out with the serfs anytime.
Milton Club
It should be said that The Milton Club on Deansgate, ‘a private members club for professionals over-25’ (a professional: a person qualified in a profession. Surely then footballers can sling their hooks?), is by no means the only venue to bask in its own exclusivity - although you only have to look at the demise of places across the city centre over the last decade to see that Manchester has more about it - but The Milton Club, to its detriment, possesses no less than three stages of VIP. Each roped, and each more V than the last (the value of V being equal to the thickness of one's wedge).
You're inThe tendency now is for venues to steer away from the tired 'VIP' tag. It's become distasteful. Roped-off VIP areas have become 'private booths/rooms', as they have at the Milton. Regardless of moniker, they're still restricted areas, they're still going to cost you.
Firstly, there's the through-the-door run-of-the-mill VIP. Providing you fit the bill (don’t look pleb'ish), you’re ushered through into the hugely impressive woody-marbled entrance hall of this baroque former-Congregational Church meeting chambers, built in 1909-1911. (Interestingly, the great biblical poet, John Milton, who lends his name to this bar and married the niece of a wealthy Mancunian apothecary, was not only one of our greatest lettered-men, penning the epic Paradise Lost, but also a god-fearing teetotaller. Funny world ay?).
If nothing else, the building is a belter.
The sign-up process is actually refreshingly painless (and free). Quick scan of the I.D. in a blinky machine to check you’re over 25 and not a non-professional or oik or terrorist or something. Then you're in. You've gained access to phase one of the VIP experience.
Grand entrance
Now, to become a VVIP you'd have to get yourself beyond the middling floor and into a booth against the back wall (roped off, naturally) which will cost you somewhere in the region of £300 on booze, or, as our barman told us: "Just know someone here that can slip you in." Ahh the sweet taste of nepotism.
The curtainThe VVIP experience not enough for you? Well then, how about the VVVIP experience? Costing somewhere in the region of £1000, these private rooms come equipped with thick gold partitioning curtains, meaning, thank heavens, that you won't even have to gaze upon the faces nor share the air of the unwashed mere VIPs.
Fuck me. Where does it end? There's only one possible outcome to all of this: the Queen, the Pope and Simon Cowell sat in a bubble astride the Burj Khalifa drinking the blood of newborn unicorns (125ml, £1 million).
This segregation is sad. It's apartheid in a bar. Standing in the way of a good, simple, honest, mingling knees-up. It promotes stand-offishness, detachment and some serious judgement (never have I seen such brutal up-and-down stares as in Milton).
It encourages coldness, which, antithetically, occurs in a place that feels like the warm insides of a Terry's Chocolate Orange.
Milton Club
The thing is, The Milton Club is a very handsome venue. The design, with its impressively clean, dark, sharp lines buoyed by splashes of orange upholstery and huge bold crocheted lampshades has been masterfully finished.
Aesthetically speaking you'd be hard pressed to find fault (even if my companion did think it looked like a 'high-end strip-joint'), it was made for the lackadaisical to gush words like 'plush', 'glitzy', 'chic', 'suave', 'sumptuous' and (the worst) 'decadent', whilst staring over your shoulder for the next 'mover-and-shaker' or soap actor to turn up.
The staff too were great. From the glamorous hostess in the fluffy red Russian cossack hat walking us through, to the lovely cloakroom gal who took the coats from our backs. Our bar-tender too, well-meaning if slightly dopey, was never to busy to engage or recommend drinks. Hell, we even shared a joke with the cheery doormen.
Something Something (left, £9.50) and Thai-tini (£9.50)
The cocktails too were carefully crafted, if a touch pricey (£8.50-£10, but what did we expect?). The pick of the bunch being the Thai-tini (£9.50), the mix of Havana rum, lemongrass, pineapple and lychee was crisp, fresh and biting. Over way too quickly, mind (around a quid a sip) - especially considering the amount of effort the bartender put in, he pinched and flicked at that glass like a master harpist.
They've allowed beer too, just, three of them: Bangla (a curryhouse beer, oddly), Bachata rum beer and Sam Adams Boston lager (from £3.95).
Or, should you be a successful amateur pharmaceuticalist or good at kicking balls and crashing cars, a bottle of Remy Martin Louis XIII is a mere £3500. Which, quite frankly, is a liberty. I paid £2500 for the same bottle in Spinningfields Australasia last week, 0.16km away. The cheek.
£3500 for Remy Martin Louis XIII, £1000 more than Australasia, 0.16km away
Louis XIII in Australasia, a bargain at £2500
So venue, great. Staff, brilliant. Drinks, precise and pricey. Patrons, mostly wearing black. Ideology, wrong. So Very, Very, Very(I.P.) wrong. 'Awake, arise, or be forever fallen.'
Until then, I'll be in the pub with the plebs.
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ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE.
The Milton Club, 244 Deansgate, M3 4BQ. 0161 850 2353. Site here.
Opening hours: Sun-Weds (private hire only), Thurs 5pm-2am, Fri 5pm - 4am, Sat 7pm - 4am.
Rating: 12/20 (please read the scoring system in the box below, venues are rated against the best examples of their kind)
Drinks: 3/5. Delicious but pricey.
Service: 5/5. Top notch.
Ambience: 3/5. Well designed but detached.
Ideology: 1/5. Three tiers of VIP? Sod off.
