Cocktail girl

A clipboard queue, its own express lift, spangly regulars and the Corrie cast - Manchester's Cloud 23 ticks all the boxes


The Cocktail Girl has a lot of time for Manchester. I am indebted to Manchester, in fact, on account of: the Smiths, the Stone Roses, Take That, the hot footballer movement (Manchester United is surely the spiritual home of the HF?) and Coronation Street. Furthermore, I have a debilitating weakness for a Manc accent on a chap (Corrie's like porn for me. Extraorder, but true). And I have a fierce respect for a people that wear virtually no clothes even when it's freezing cold for fear of compromising their look. That is dedication to the righteous cause of glamour. I pop up there whenever my exhaustive tour of the fleshpots of the western world allows. It was on such a foray that I discovered Cloud 23.

Tell me more. Do.

OK! The Hilton Manchester Deansgate is, essentially, a business hotel. An unusually tall, well-executed business hotel, quietly efficient and deftly serviced, but still an identikit, blankly styled business hotel devoid of the quirks and fancies of the more fashionable boutique venture. Yet in one respect the Hilton Deansgate totally outcools boutique equivalents. You see, it's home to the hottest bar in the city.


Isn't it? Cloud 23 is located, unsurprisingly, on the 23rd floor of the hotel, which gives it unfettered views over Manchester and instils in its drinkers a heady combination of vertigo, awe and a sense of superiority. It is serviced by its own private express lift which ascends from the hotel lobby. From about six in the evening, a queue of hopefuls loiter on the roped-off red carpet that leads to the lift doors; doors which are guarded by a large man and a clipboard-equipped lovely, who restrict entry when Cloud 23 reaches capacity. So: two people descend, two people are allowed to replace them (assuming they are adequately dressed. This is a no-trainers sort of a joint). Hotel residents and Cocktail Girls get priority; everyone else must chance their arm in the queue (although even that's a cheery sort of a business - no one, it seems, minds queuing for this bar).

Is it worth the hassle?

Oh, totally! You exit the lift and walk directly into the bar, and you are instantly overwhelmed by the knowledge that you are in the hottest joint in this particular city. There's no way that anything better - glitzier, sexier, more rammed with potential - could be happening in Manchester right now. Cloud 23 throbs with that kind of energy. This is partly because of the view. The bar wraps itself around two corners of the Hilton and is lined with floor-to-ceiling windows. It isn't quite the lobby bar of the Mandarin Oriental on Columbus Circle in midtown Manhattan - but you know what? It isn't far off.

And what of your fellow revellers?

Gorgeous and spangly. I like the peacockery of Manchester's party people. I like that the boys have manicures and do their hair up like footballers, while the girls make shiny pop poppets The Saturdays look underdressed. The Cloud 23 crowd is about as dollied up, bronzed, preening and pretty as it is possible to be. Bravo. As an added bonus, Coronation Street's Kelly Crabtree sashayed out of the lift some moments after I did.

How were the cocktails?

The menu is camp and Manc themed. There's an Ena's Sparkles, a Hand In Glove, a "The Hac"...

I drank vodkatinis (perfectly, moderately dirty, like all my favourite things in life); my companion for the evening stuck to mojitos. He noted that the tabletops in Cloud 23 are illuminated, which is "clever, if a bit Hammer House of Horror - and not that flattering, CG". He placed a cocktail menu so that it obstructed the light shining into my face, and suggested that "ladies on a first date might quietlydo the same". Reader, I battered him.