Ever Wanted to Buy a Nightclub? This One’s Yours for £70k

Given that keeping one open for more than a week seems like an impossibility for all but the gaudiest of oligarchs, we're not exactly sure as to why you'd ever want to buy a nightclub, but hey, if it's Peter Stringfellow and his bevvy of babes you see in your mind's eye as you slide into another unsatisfying night's sleep, then boy are you in luck!

All you'll need to make your entrepreneurial wet-dreams come true is a spare £70k for the lease and £150,000 a year for rent. Plus the ability to book DJs, hire bouncers, manage loo-roll stock levels, service 1210s, deal with irate punters who thought you were booking Dixon rather than ITV football pundit Lee Dixon, mop up puddles of sick, ensure the the cherry VKs are kept at the right temperature, and that the velvet VIP ropes retain just the right level of lightly furry luxury, and all that jazz. Oh, and you'll need to be prepared to move to Manchester, too, provided you don't already live there.

Local estate agent Christie & Co is offering the space, currently known as Suede, on Longworth Street. And what a space it is! The 550 capacity club comes with a 6AM operating license and all the trimmings! A soundsystem, a lighting system, and yes, ladies and gentleman, a stainless steel bar system too! IT'S CHRRIIIIIIIIIIISTMAAAAAAAASSS!

The catch? Suede currently looks like this:

That's right: as it stands, Suede looks like a Lynchian hellscape. Now, Suede might be the best club you've never been to, might be somewhere you end up on a night out in Manchester on a wild weekend away with the lads, a bacchanalian blow out beyond all reasonable proportions. It might be somewhere that you, ashen and ill, life seeping out of you at a rate of knots, look back on with the fondest of fond memories. It might be the club that in it's own little way, changed your life. It might be all those things.

But just look at it. Look at this staircase—tell me that you can't smell the stench of spilled drinks and grunting machismo.

This staircase has seen things—things that no eyes should see. Things that haunt and corrupt and ruin and rot. Things that'd be scarcely believable if the staircase sat you down in its local, sunk three quick, stiff shots of whiskey and got very lucid very quickly.

Perhaps that's why it's bathed in a murder-red glow.

Even the bar—usually a safe heaven for those of us who find ourselves in unfamiliar clubs with homicidal staircases—gives off a slightly unseemly vibe. The padded cell look is, presumably, meant to give off a debonair quality, but it sort of comes closer to abandoned asylum than Vegas glamour.

I'm also slightly perturbed by the rogue, lone sofa nestled next to the bar. Who sits there? Why do they sit there? What do they get out of sitting on that sofa, next to the bar? It reminds me of a grubby spot in an unnamed South London club that used to be occupied by a semi-elderly lone ranger each and every Friday night. He'd sit, drink-less, company-less, unsmiling, in that same grubby spot. Just watching, Just watching. Perhaps Suede—or whatever you decide to rename it—has its very own resident sit-and-watcher. Who knows. You could be that person! And it'd only cost you £150,000 a year! Bargain!

Having spent a lot of time thinking about what it'd be like to buy Suede, and even more time looking at the photos, we might stick to asking Father Christmas for a Lynx gift set and a new set of pyjamas instead.

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