The rise and fall of Discotheque Royales - the l990s club Manchester loved

The huge venue was at its peak in the 1990s... a time when clubs smelled like dry ice, spilt Bacardi Breezers, Lambert & Butler, Joop Homme and CK1

For over a decade, one of Manchester's most important and impressive cultural buildings has stood idle and abandoned. The Theatre Royal on Peter Street is a neoclassical gem and the oldest surviving theatre building in the city.

It's time as a grand theatre staging operas like Puccini's La Boheme have long gone, and in the last years of its working life the venue echoed to a different sound. Built in 1845, the building has not been used as a theatre since 1921, when it was changed into a cinema after facing stiff competition from the Palace Theatre and Opera House.

Following its stint as a picture house and bingo hall, it became home to one of Manchester's most loved and remembered nightclubs - Discotheque Royale. 'Royales' as it was more commonly known, opened in the former Theatre Royal in 1989.

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The venue's transformation to nightclub was published in a piece in the Manchester Evening News in November 1989. It read: "The transformation of the former Theatre Royal, Peter Street, into a dazzling new discotheque is giving a new lease of life to some of the building's grander features.

Continuing: "Ornate plaster and woodwork carvings on the inside and delicate masonry work on the outside are all being lovingly restored to an elegant overall theme. The theatre's magnificent proscenium arch and huge fluted pillars are being carefully refurbished to blend with new features like rich heavy drapes and 27 magnificent chandeliers."

Royales was then the latest in a portfolio of nightclub ventures by First Leisure Corporation, who also operated Blackpool Tower and the seaside town's Winter Gardens. With this pedigree, the new venue was decked-out at a cost of £3.5m and designed to be the pinnacle of nightclub opulence and late '80s chic.

As well as an impressive bar and dining areas, walkways linked all three levels from ground floor to the former theatre building's upper circle. Statues of cherubs were placed throughout and a computer controlled special effects lighting rig above the dance floor was designed to look like a chandelier.

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Royales was not the venue's only stint as a nightclub - in the following years it became known to new generations of clubbers as Infinity, M-Two and Coliseum before the venue closed its doors in 2009. But Royales was its most long-lived and iconic nightclub incarnation for many reasons.

Appearing alongside other nightclubs that have gone on to become eulogised such as the Hacienda, Boardwalk and 21 Piccadilly, Royales has earned its place at the table of Manchester's legendary '90s nightlife. Such was its grandiosity, it became a place where the city's celebrity set would regularly be photographed, having spent the night propping up its swanky bar.

One of the club's best loved club nights, Love Train, was held at Royales in the 1990s. The classic disco night's creator and larger-than-life DJ Brutus Gold - real name Nigel Wanless - spoke to the M.E.N in 2021 about the huge draw of Royales and Love Train.

"We did some regular nights in Newcastle for a couple of years then Leeds, that was the growing point, and then it was Manchester. It just became huge at Royales - we did every Wednesday and it was always sold out with people queuing right down the road.

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"It was a phenomenal atmosphere, at an incredible time in Manchester. We used to have all the footballers there in Royales, Dwight Yorke was there every Wednesday and David Beckham with Ryan Giggs," the DJ said.

After five years packing in the revellers at Royales, the Love Train moved on to a new location at the Ritz in 2000. The disco nights at Royales proved to be a popular antithesis to the driving bass lines and drum beats dominating nightclubs at that time, and the DJ now tours his Love Train show around festivals across the country.

Another claim to fame for the club was hosting cult TV music show The Hitman And Her. An episode of the late night dance music show was filmed at Royales in 1990 and featured the first TV performance of Take That.

Every week, the show would capture clubbers dancing to popular hits in the charts, playing party games and feature celebrity performances. Hosted by Michaela Strachan and pop hitmaker Pete Waterman, The Hitman and Her was often recorded on Saturday nights and then edited before airing - just hours later - early on Sunday morning.

Speaking the the M.E.N. in the early Noughties, Pete Waterman reminisced on his days on The Hitman And Her at Royales. "Sometimes one wishes that H G Wells had invented a time machine so that we could slip back to those balmy Saturday nights and once again enjoy the fun and frolics of the Hitman And Her," he mused.

Adding: "The Discotheque Royale will be forever etched on my memory. Oh, for that time machine!" The last ever Hitman And Her show was filmed at the Discotheque Royale in 1992.

The huge Peter Street venue was at its peak in the 1990s. A time when clubs smelled like dry ice, spilt Bacardi Breezers, Lambert & Butler, Joop Homme and CK1.

Along with 21 Piccadilly, Royales had a reputation as a 'fleshpot' to use the newspaper vernacular of the time. More simply, it was a prime place to 'pull' a member of the opposite sex after a few drinks. In May 1996, the M.E.N's Oliver Swanton met up with a group of lads to document a typical night out in town.

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After meeting the group in the Athenaeum, the journalist wrote: "Drinking vast quantities of alcohol was clearly on the agenda, and if a little romance was on the menu, then all the better." Having got to know the group on a bar crawl around the city centre, the lads settle on Royales, having already been refused entry to 21 Piccadilly.

Having gained entry to the club after splitting into pairs - so as not to suffer the same fate outside 21s - Swanton wrote: "It's late and upstairs all the available seats are occupied by intertwined couples exchanging saliva. Leaning against the wall a guy has his hands down the back of a girl's trousers. The lads are dispersed all over the club, chatting up women, drinking and contemplating having a dance.

"Steve and Tony [two of the group on the night out] are leaning over the balcony, discussing the merits of Royales: 'It's full of good quality talent in here,' reckons Tony. 'Loads of lovely young nubile girls,' adds Steve, laughing. And then they're off down to the dance floor."

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The same year, another writer for the M.E.N, Steve Cochrane, wanted to see what all the fuss was about when it came to the popularity of Royales. He spoke to clubbers and asked if they were aware of the Grade II listed venue's past role in the city as a place of high-culture, and not just a nightclub.

He wrote that while the exterior of the building was more or less intact, the interior was "a clash between a late eighties concept of chic (matt black, chrome and mirrors)," adorned with "sprayed on gold leaf," and "oddly positioned chandeliers and unnecessary cherubs."

In the same somewhat snooty vein, the writer added: "The disco is a cavernous place, on different levels, the balconies which were once filled with weeping opera lovers now providing a vantage point over the crowded dance floor. Or as one smiling reveller put it to me: "A great place for checking out the t**s down there."

But like all things must come to an end, Royales finally closed its doors for good in the early Noughties. The building's new residents gave clear hints they saw the venue - once a pioneer of sophisticated nightclub entertainment in Manchester - had now become dated and somewhat "tacky".

M-Two, the venue's new owners, were keen to forget old days of the Discotheque Royale, giving the building's interior a massive facelift. Selling off the last remnants of the old club, one of the two original podiums were bought by a couple who had gave it "pride of place" in their back garden.

The last remaining item - a dance stand - was put up for sale on internet auction site eBay at knockdown price of £50. "We think it's a bit of a steal," a spokeswoman for M-two told the M.E.N. "They are super fantastically tacky and kitsch."

Does Discotheque Royale awaken any memories for you? Let us know in the comments section below.