'I was shot at in a drive-by, robbed of £130,000 and targeted by Romanian gangsters'

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

As far back as he can remember, Sacha Lord ‘never wanted to be a gangster’. Before the Parklife boss and Manchester night time tsar was advising Andy Burnham or calling for lower VAT for the city’s restaurants and bars, he was a self-confessed ‘nerdy kid’ from Altrincham who went to Manchester Grammar School.

For Sacha, gangsters were just people in films like Goodfellas. But in the 1990s, in the early days of his career as a promoter for student club nights, he would come face-to-face with some of Manchester’s most notorious characters.

His memoir, Tales from the Dancefloor, released earlier this week, jumps straight back to those days. He’s the man behind some of the biggest music events in the UK and, in his first book, co-authored by Luke Bainbridge, he recalls some of the most defining and hair-raising moments of his career.

Whilst the stories behind how The Warehouse Project and Parklife came to life raise a smile, it is the tales from his early promoter years at legendary Manchester haunts including The Hacienda, Home, Paradise Factory and Sankeys, that reveal most about his journey to becoming one of the most prominent figures in Manchester’s nightlife scene. READ MORE: 'What a night!': Take That join Lulu on stage at Manchester gig for surprise performance “I’ve been shot at in a drive-by shooting, bundled into a car by gangsters and had death threats, which is not very acid house,” writes Lord, reflecting on 30 years in the business. “I’ve been sued, broke, I’ve had to deal with an army of rats who were high on cocaine, had £130,000 stolen from me during an armed robbery, and been targeted by a Romanian organised crime gang.” Even before he started promoting student nights though, he had come across The