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00:00Where did the idea from Manchester City Classical come from?
00:05That's lost in the mists of time, I think.
00:09It probably involved conversations and alcohol and late nights.
00:14Fletch, who manages Hacienda, spoke to me about it.
00:18I was working at Sankey's at the time.
00:20They got a phone call from an orchestra and they're like,
00:22we want to come down and, you know,
00:24to work out how we could do something within a dance environment and in the club.
00:27Then, next thing I know, we sat in Acosta in Wilmslow
00:32with a guy called Tim Crooks, our conductor, to see if it could work.
00:36I got a call one day from a guy that I knew,
00:38saying that they were putting something together.
00:41Was I interested? And so I kind of went along.
00:44We had the meeting. I was just like, I just couldn't see it working at all, you know.
00:48What they wanted to do in Sankey's was have their live musicians perform along with the DJs.
00:53And it just, for loads of reasons, it didn't work.
00:56It didn't work acoustically.
00:57It didn't know where the speakers were positioned.
00:59Strings of Life came on at one of Graham's sets.
01:02And it was like, you know, it just fitted perfectly for an orchestra.
01:05You know, one thing led to another. We discussed it more.
01:07We took the idea to Hucky, who wasn't...
01:09Hucky thought we were bonkers at first.
01:11I was struggling with the concept, mating a live orchestra to dance tracks.
01:18And then once we mocked up the idea and put it together, my God, it made them bigger.
01:29Until I got a DJ mix from Graham and Mike the very first time,
01:33I think then I sort of started to understand what I got myself into.
01:39The next minute, Fletcher's email on us a couple of weeks later going,
01:42I booked the Bridgewater Hall in February.
01:44It ended up being two shows.
01:46Next thing we know, it's festivals.
01:49And it ended up being 14 shows.
01:51And then every year, shows got bigger and better and more fantastic.
01:56We actually got quite a lot of criticism in the first year that we did it.
02:04From various journalists saying, you know, this is a really weird format.
02:09It doesn't really work.
02:10And I thought, well, actually, it's not.
02:12Because people want to pay money to come and have a good time and dance to music.
02:15That's, you know, it's a good product. It's a great product.
02:18So Castlefield Ball does appear, if you go in there,
02:21to be this beautifully produced, well-run, slick, well-oiled machine.
02:26And it is, but there's always, like, stuff going on backstage.
02:29I mean, one year at Castlefield, it was...
02:32We had thunderstorms, which were like...
02:34I mean, the rain was just insane, you know what I mean?
02:36But I actually thought that brought the whole crowd together
02:39and made it a really special event.
02:40But it was quite close.
02:41We never had to cut it off,
02:42because the thunderstorm was, I think, three miles away.
02:44If it got within two or something like that,
02:46we would have to cut it off.
02:48Luckily, it didn't happen.
02:49Yeah, that was memorable on that.
02:51You know, a load of people dancing off the tits in the rain.
02:53It was brilliant.
02:54Playing Castlefield is like coming home.
02:57The energy at Castlefield is absolutely electric.
03:00It is a deep honour to be part of that show.
03:05And every year, the show seems to get better and better and better.
03:09Like, it's the ground, it's Manchester, isn't it?
03:11And they're in that space with 8,000 other people.
03:14It's difficult to put your finger on what it is.
03:16It's almost the fact that it's surrounded by fire ducts and buildings and stuff.
03:21It's just a very interesting space,
03:23and it sort of, it brings people together right in the middle of the city.
03:26That kind of spread of generations,
03:29a special, special kind of atmosphere,
03:33you can only get from a Manchester crowd.
03:36That's the grand.
03:37That's the grand.
03:38Thanks to the grand.
03:39You