From a French student dreaming in Paris cafés to co-creating two of Manchester’s most important LGBTQ+ spaces, this is the story of Pete Dalton, Manto and Paradise Factory – told in Pete’s own words.
Pete’s story also appears as a chapter in my book Manchester Scene Stories – The Dance Years, available
In this interview, Pete joins me from sunny Melbourne to rewind back to 1990, when he was just 23 and about to help change Manchester’s gay scene forever. He explains what Canal Street and the gay village were really like before the “glass box” of Manto arrived – a mix of old pubs, after-hours dens, derelict buildings, design studios, even a brothel opposite New York New York, all quietly co-existing.
Pete talks about coming out on Manchester’s scene via the Number 1 Club near Albert Square, and how that small 200-capacity club sparked the idea that something more modern, open and visible was needed. A year living in Paris – seeing relaxed, out-and-proud café culture in the Marais – planted the seed for what Manto could be back home.
We hear how a chance reconnection with Carol turned those ideas into reality:
• persuading Boddingtons/Whitbread to back a “gay Dry Bar”
• convincing architects on Canal Street to sell their crumbling building
• and then racing from purchase to opening in just a few months, finally launching 10 days before Christmas 1990.
Pete takes us inside the thinking behind Manto’s now-iconic design: all glass frontage, visible from the street, somewhere you’d happily bring your friends or family – not a hidden backstreet bar with blacked-out windows. He explains how radical that felt at the time, and how deliberate the decision was to welcome like-minded straight friends too, rather than create a closed-off space.
We also go deep into:
• Outdoor drinking on Canal Street – how there was no clear way to licence tables and chairs outside, and how Manto effectively helped invent the “continental” Manchester look used later in city marketing.
• The arrival of Metz across the canal, the first bridge, and how new bars began to signal a full-on transformation of the village.
• The birth of Paradise Factory in 1993, turning the old Factory Records HQ into a gay club in just four months – despite magistrates insisting no new nightclub licences could be issued.
Pete shares brilliant stories about licensing battles, Breakfast Club at Manto (tea, toast, no dancing… officially), and how those late-night café licences slowly evolved into legitimate 4am music and alcohol permissions – years before the Licensing Act changed everything nationally.
We finish with the record that sums it up: “Saturday Night, Sunday Morning” – the Thelma Houston remake by TEMPO (Tim Lennox & Adam Clough), the first release on their own label and an anthem born on the Paradise dancefloor.
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