Thai Food in Muay Thai Tapas This Saturday

On the blog this week: 

A write-up of an incredible convention in Liverpool with some Back to the Future guests. 

More updates on this Excess Project that isn’t doing my health any good. Not great when you're on camera. I’m on leave today to get on top of it all. 

I’m going to make another attempt to get this Psychology Social Group moving, this time in Egg & Co on Deansgate, for a chat about psychology books. Thursday night, 6pm. I just want to make new friends and connections away from the bar and club scene. It’s been hard work finding a place that opens in the evenings, doesn’t serve alcohol or junk food, has the space to seat us, and isn’t involved in some horrific practice in the Middle East. This egg-based restaurant seems to do the trick. 5 attendees so far. 

Saturday night: Do you like Thai food? Do you want to get drunk while eating it? Or at least have a drink? Come join Manchester Nightlife to Muay Thai Tapas, a new Thai eatery nestled in Ancoats. Spices, cocktails, good chat and maybe a few other Ancoats bars after – that’s the plan for this week’s night out. Come try it. 7pm, Blossom St. 5 of us are coming as of now. 

And now… to blog.

Come to the new Australasia Bar Saturday

Leilani May liked my guess at her ethnicity. No confirmation yet. 

Looks like Spinningfields bar Australasia has had another refurb. Hence, let’s take a look this coming Saturday with Manchester Nightlife. I’m taking a look there with the Meetup group. Cocktails, quiet house music and good décor. 9pm Saturday.

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On the blog: a review of the small but fantastic Comic Con North East that took place over the weekend. I was there on Saturday. I’m on leave today to write it all up. Found a good museum too. I’ve also got a write-up of a recent journaling event, and an update on this ridiculous Excess project.

Last Day of this Machinist Diet.

I cannot wait for this ridiculous, painful fasting experiment to be over. Yes, it’s self-inflicted. Yes, I’ve lost *some* weight. But no, it has not been fun. More later. But at least Monday’s my rest day, so I’m not staggering about with a skipping rope trying to understand Twin Peaks, which has made up most of the time of the project. 

I’m on leave today to catch up with a ton of blogging. Expect also a write-up of Sheffield Comic Con yesterday with a certain British sci-fi celebrity, a sci-fi book review and a bar and restaurant review. 

Wednesday night: Manchester holds host to former White House Communications Director Anthony ‘The Mooch’ Scaramucci on his All the Wrong Moves book tour. Scaramucci famously lasted 10 days as Trump’s comms guy before being unceremoniously sacked, after which he turned on his former boss, speaking out against many of his policies. Tickets, including a copy of the book, are £40. As for the event, there’s definitely a Q+A. No word yet of if there are photo ops or signings with it. I’m still undecided. 

Thursday: Ryan Murphy’s latest Monster series drops on Netflix, this time covering Lizzie Borden, who I understand may or may not have hacked her parents to death in Massachusetts in 1892. Murphy’s previous Monster instalments have frequently been intriguing, violent and fun, but scattered and repetitive. 

There was a Lizzie movie that came out some years ago with Chloë Sevigny in the title role. I never got around to that. 

Saturday: retro entertainment day Nostalgic Oldham arrives in Parliament Square in the town centre, with classic cars, circus entertainers and the official unveiling of a huge community-created mural. I’m intrigued by the cars. 11am-4pm. 

Saturday night: Manchester Nightlife this time tries out the new Dahlia Stereo, the food and house music venue in The Northern Quarter. Last weekend saw their first Saturday Night, and the Insta story looks fantastic – great music, a real club atmos, and even branded t shirts are available. 8pm, Lever St.

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My Patience with Meetup People is at an All-Time Low.

Friday night: ran a meetup with Manchester Nightlife to Blinker, the new cocktail bar near Parsonage Gardens. Had 2 attendees listed. Got down there on time, waited. Nice bar. Good décor and atmos with funk music. Cocktails £12-13, mostly, although I wasn’t drinking. Got evacuated due to a suspected gas leak. 3 fire engines, an ambulance and an ambulance car later, and we were allowed back in. No apparent injuries.

Waited til 10. Nobody from Meetup showed. The 2 other attendees, 1 a regular, the other not a first timer but I hadn’t seen her in ages, neither got back to me. I really should block them both from the group. 

You might be asking… why do you do it? Why do you pay to run this group just to have to deal with a load of disorganised flakes, racists, homophobes, ablists and general social dunces? 

The answer is, I’m 44. Everyone else I know is married and settled. They don’t do anything any more. And I don’t want to go join ANOTHER dance group or writer’s group only to find there’s nobody there I click with either. And there are things I want to do in the city.

In other news, I discussed Weetabix with Paralympic tae kwon do champion Matt Bush.

Then I went to a Comic Con. More on that later.

Meet Red Dwarf's The Cat; Blinker Bar Meetup

Highlights of this coming week: 

Friday: Early meetup with Manchester Nightlife, this time to new Blinker bar which I hear is highly recommended. Friday night, right in the middle of the financial area off Fountain St. 9pm. 

Sunday: Sheffield Comic Con lands Sunday at Ponds Forge Sports Centre with Danny John Jules the guest attraction. DJJ played The Cat in Brit SF comedy Red Dwarf, a well-groomed, slick talking space traveller who evolved to a man-like creature after years of evolution from a pet feline stuck on a spacecraft for millennia. The actor was also Baldy’s Lookout in Scum – the guy who lets Carlin into the coal room to fight the number 2 guy. I just learned that. There are still tickets.

There’s a certain breast – related theme to this week's post.

Blake Blossom weighed in on Popbitch’s ‘baboon vs badger’ conundrum. I asked. 

 

 

I went to support the Manchester Boob Walk on Saturday, to help document the raising of awareness of Breast Cancer, and as part of this pharma experiment. If you read to the end, you’ll see I bailed on them to try and see someone famous, who is in Manchester at the time of writing. 

Who? Angela White, one of the most prolific porn stars of the last decade, is in the UK and in fact in Manchester right now. I gathered she developed a thing for Norwegian footballer Erik Haaland during the World Cup. He currently plays for Manchester City, who had a home game against Coventry FC yesterday. (1 nil to City.) 

Well, I kept checking her Insta stories in the hope of a quick photo with her. I went to 2 different Federal Cafes, still woozy from the caraway and probably dehydration too – she’d posted being in one venue, and I went to the other – not far from where I’d left people at the Boob Walk anyway. When I arrived at each one, there was a humongous queue to get in, but I doubt that was because of Angela. It’s just a popular spot. Her next update was from The Ethiad, the Man City stadium. So I got a bus, then had a long walk. I thought this was going to be utterly futile. I was right. A further update showed she was already in, meeting the squad, slapping their hands as they went into the complex. Her last post was of the players going onto the pitch. 

I went home. 

Manchester Nightlife Meetup group met in Oast House Saturday night with a plan to check out the new Sticks’n’Sushi bar in Spinningfields. We met, but the new bar / restaurant was dead, so we tried Sexy Fish which was full. I’d have liked to stay on Spinningfields, but we moved onto Box bar, which I just don’t like, sorry. Too chavvy. Got roped into pool games that I’m dreadful at. Moved onto Blues Kitchen, of which I’ve also had my fill. I didn’t last long. 

On the way out a trans influencer called Jessica Such collared me for some video interview. I’m assuming that’ll be on Insta soon. You can guess the question. And the answer.

Try the New Sticks 'n' Sushi in Spinningfields

 

Looking forward this week: 

TV and movie convention For the Love of Retro takes place this weekend in Telford, which is a little too far for me. An incredible line-up though. I could easily have spent £400 if I could be arsed with a long drive and more money on a hotel room, which I can’t. 

New bar and restaurant Sticks ‘n’ Sushi opened in Spinningfields, a Japanese / Scandinavian chain. Manchester Nightlife are headed there on Saturday for cocktails and mocktails, plus to look around a few other bars. Glamorous decor, chilled background beats, possibly the odd celeb knocking about. Come join the Meetup group. See the newest parts of the city. 4 of us so far. Will be more by the weekend.

3 Million Hits

This blog passed the 3 million hit mark yesterday. I’ve been running it since 2008. I hit 1 million in April ‘23 and 2 million in April this year. Either people are suddenly interested in my random nights out and amateur psychological musings, or there’s a whole lot of bot traffic out there. I suspect the latter. 

I annoyed Sabre from Gladiators with my grammar pedantry. 

Peter Cullen died, yet another person I could have met at one convention or another, but didn’t. I'm sure he was booked to attend at something local. He voiced the titular Predator, Eeyore the donkey from Whinnie the Pooh and Optimus Prime in the 1984 animated Transformers: The Movie. 

It’s a bank holiday tomorrow and I predictably have put up a last minute meetup for tonight: drinks on Deansgate, if that floats your boat. I always forget when it’s a bank holiday, and no other organiser on Meetup seems to put much up either. There’s a women’s cinema trip, a live music acoustic set in a pub, a bouldering session and a 70s disco night – great if that’s your thing – but not much else. I guess it’s down to me. 9pm, Slug and Lettuce Deansgate, 9pm.

 

Bank Holiday Breakfast

I was at a family gathering yesterday where a family member was raving about Dishoom’s breakfasts. Dishoom serves up great Indian delicacies and lassi milkshakes. I’ve been for lunch a year ago, but I kept meaning to try their other menus. Here’s their breakfast menu. 

Hence, I’ve set up a meetup with Manc Mates for food, 10am, Sunday morning. Come join. 

I predictably have no plans for Sunday night, when we have a Bank Holiday on the Monday. I’m all ears...

Up! at Six Trees: Afternoon House Music

Love a good house music stomp. Thankfully promoters Up! Supplied an afternoon on the terrace of Six Trees in Trafford yesterday afternoon. Great music from Grace Sands and others including my friend Paul Smith. 

I set up a meetup with Manchester Nightlife and got a group together - some regulars, some new people - we met in Impossible then got a taxi down there. Great music and atmos. Weather held up too, thankfully, as the sun went down.

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House Music at Up this Saturday

Afternoon sessions are rising in popularity rapidly, and with good reason: no late night taxis, no disrupted sleep, more daylight and people are more likely to be available. That’s probably why a few DJs – including a friend of mine – have put together Up, an afternoon of house music in Six Trees out in Trafford. There’s a meetup with Manchester Nightlife that you should join. At the time of writing we’re planning where to meet – probably Impossible in the city centre first. 

 

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Birthday Drinks, Meetup Drama, T Shirt Win

I mentioned on Friday that one of my Meetup attendees came out to Joshua Brooks then sacked us off to White Hotel, some competitor house music club. I’ve met up with him again last night, along with many other Meetup folk. I wanted to do some birthday drinks, and Meetup people are literally the ONLY people available to come out. So I put up an event with Manchester Nightlife (which, by the way, has now passed 1000 members. Only taken 2 years). 

8 people RSVPd. Most of them showed up in meeting spot Flok, including White Castle Guy. (Turns out he’d left JB’s last week because he’d had a run-in with a member of staff.) Some other people I knew from previous events attended, and some new folk. From Flok we moved to Lost in Tokyo, Japanese themed cocktail bar, then to Soup. For some reason I was absurdly overdressed for a warm summer’s night in hipstery Northern Quarter, wearing the blue 3-piece suit I got for a recent wedding. Soup’s doormen said they had a ‘no suit policy,’ that it wasn’t that vibe, but when they found out it was my birthday they made an exception. Fair play. 

People dropped off as the night went on, until it was just myself, White Castle Guy and a Chinese Guy who’s English was so rudimentary he was getting by with Google Translate on his phone. It was before midnight when the 3 of us were stood on the street and White Castle Guy started ranting about COVID conspiracies, vaccines and Fauci (who doesn’t even have any authority in this country). 

One thing you should know about me. I worked in social care during the pandemic as an essential worker. Loads of my clients died. I have clinically vulnerable relatives who were fortunate to make it through those years. I have no patience for anti-vaxx bullshit. 

Furthermore, at the end of the night, I had no energy to argue. I just went home. This morning I blocked White Castle Guy. Hmm. Of course he’s got a bible verse on his Insta. 

In slightly more positive news, I won the monthly photo competition from Last Exit to Nowhere again, and won 3 t shirts again! That photo was taken at the recent Comic Con Manchester.

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Miguel Campbell in Joshua Brooks

Last Friday, Manchester welcomed house music producer Miguel Campbell for a set in Joshua Brooks club on Princess St. His track Something Special was, as I understand it, a huge hit in Ibiza on its 2011 release. It’s still a favourite of deep house DJs today.  JB’s brings us occasional Full Circle events, celebrating 2010s deep house music. I set up a Meetup with Manchester Nightlife and a handful of us got free tickets (It was a free party.) Here’s what the 31st looked like last month:  

 

 

Great music. Heavy tech heading into melodic as the night went on. 

Somewhat of an odd night, it must be said. I had 2 attendees. One turned up on time in the meeting place, came with me to the club, then left to go to a competitor house music night before the headlining DJ even came on. The other, looking like some emaciated European tennis player with crazy, long, dark hair in a bedraggled pony tail, turned up late at the club wearing a full-on Duke-of-Edinburgh-sized HUMONGOUS backpack. I had to come out to verify that he had friends inside. He managed to blag the bar staff into looking after his belongings. He then proceeded to chew my ear off for the majority of the night, telling me all about his life, and women that he was definitely interested in (that he didn’t approach). He then badgered several other people (guys) who were just trying to enjoy the music. 

We stayed to the end so I could get a photo with Miguel Campbell.

Flock to Flok this Saturday

Hella behind with blogging at the moment. Expect part 2 of the Comic Con writeup. There’s also a pharmapsychological experiment that I conducted during the Manchester Day Parade last Sunday. I haven’t even written that yet. I won a competition – more details to come. I went to see a music producer / DJ in a house music club Friday. Great night. Then The Commonwealth Games closed last night, and with it this absurd fitness project. Again, there’s a write-up of that to come.

I got 2000 likes on this joke insta comment. 

Passed 2.9 million hits on this blog. 

Got an Insta commentfrom Richard Chaves, Poncho from Predator.

I recently turned 44. Going to try to round a few people up and have a few scoops this Saturday night, starting in favourite Flok and trying a few bars around Stevenson Square. I’ve told a few friends, and I’ve put up a meetup with Manchester Nightlife too. Sign up, come along. 

 

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Workout in the Park?

 

A little different this week – summer weather means it’s worth doing daytime activities rather than 2am bar crawls. I figured, why not something more healthy and outdoor? 

We’ve got a new park in Manchester. We could utilise Mayfield Park for an outdoor workout session, get some vit D and serotonin in while we have the chance, then get soft drinks and a bit of food to replenish. I’ve set up a meetup on Manc Mates, a group I took over a while ago, which I use for non-nightlife related events. It’s quite different to what I’d normally do, so feels like a bit of a risk. Also I’m not a PT. I’m just a guy who works out. Just wondered if people wanted to do that with me. 12pm on Sunday. 

In other news, looks like this 4-month bot surge on the Blogger platform is over. At one point I got nearly 28k views in a single day. More recently I got 700. Still. I hit 2.8 million overall hits recently.

Cocktails, Chancers and Saunas

Great afternoon in Ancoats Marina, in Finders Keepers bar yesterday.

Scenes at Finders Keepers Ancoats Marina Saturday. Cheong orange mai tai. And a Canada Goose eyeing it up.

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— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) 5 July 2026 at 21:21

Sat outside in the sun with the Meetup group. I say great, but in actuality, someone turned up without having actually RSVPd on the page. He ordered a drink, drank it, then left the bar without paying. I shouldn’t have done this, but I made a split decision to pay for him just to keep the peace with the bar. 

Found Track, a brewery come serving bar, on an estate just off Oldham Road. I’m not a beer drinker so there wasn’t much for me to slake my thirst, but their pizzas were great. 2 left to Wetherspoons to my crushing disappointment. Remember COVID and Tim Martin, people. He was a twat. 

The rest of us walked to Freight Island behind Piccadilly approach. PBR Streetgang were on the decks, which is a name I recognise from somewhere. I thought it might be Radio 1… Turns out it’s the 1979 ‘Nam movie Apocalypse Now.

 

Didn’t stay out late. 

Today I visited FIX in the Northern Quarter. I got in on a friend’s membership as a +1. Very serene, calming venue with a sauna room, much larger than Oldham Sports Centre’s (which I was in Saturday). Not as hot, but much more organised. 90 minutes allocated instead of 50. Staff applied different oils with orange and other scents. FIX also have 2 on-site plunge baths of cold and very cold. I tried them both for a few seconds. Very quiet venue. No talking allowed. Good to have a sauna experience that doesn't include yonners arguing about Hamas and vaccines, and telling dull stories of their younger glory days. A calming and cleansing experience, physically and mentally. 

Then we got lunch in My Thai, eastern restaurant I’ve had my eye on for ages. Good spicy food.

Summer Solstice Morning Rave

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Up early on a Sunday for a rave. What in the world. Hinterland ran their first prober club event, as I understand it, with their Summer Solstice Morning Rave. This morning welcomed the longest day of the year, so the vegan alcohol free bar welcomed DJ Taurud for some chilled beats and matchas. 

The 9am start was no problem for the dedicated, who included flower-in-hair hippies, barefoot ravers and of course meetup members – some new, some not, all Manchester Nightlife attendees. 

Great music, friendly crowd. I’d do it again. Hinterland keep offering up surprising, diverse events. They’re worth keeping an eye on.

Rudy's and Katie's

Last night I went to new Irish bar Katie O’Brien’s on Peter St with the Manchester Nightlife Meetup group. Some new, some regulars. Went for food first with a mate. Were queues everywhere except Rudy’s Pizza on Peter St. 

 

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Met the meetup group in Dirty Martini. Mixed group. Guys, girls, new, regular. 

Went over to Katie O’Brien’s. The Irish bar opened a few weeks ago in the old Peaky Blinders unit with live music, traditional décor and heaving with people. Absolutely roasting upstairs. I couldn’t stay long. The heat was killing me. Surprisingly, we all got in even with members wearing trainers and baseball caps.

Decor from Katie O'Brien's last night

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— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) 14 June 2026 at 16:04

Come to the new Katie O'Brien's Saturday

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I booked today off to write up a Comic Con that I actually ended up not going to. The guests were interesting but not really my thing this time. 

But this has meant I can get on with other things. Including this one, I have 3 blog posts to write. Also, expect a recipe review on the blog this Saturday. 

But what’s happening in the city? Saturday night: new bar Katie O’Brien’s has opened and is already hugely popular. Manchester Nightlife are headed there Saturday night, first starting on the corner of Peter St in Dirty Martini. 

New Meetup group Manchester Whisky Tasting Events opens with a tasting event on the 13th. I’m dieting for an upcoming wedding, but I’ll be all over some whisky tasting after that, depending on their events. I’m a big single malt fan. I went to a couple of tastings in Oldham about 15 years ago, then again in ‘12 and ‘23 in Scotland. 

My friend Fay has set up Manchester Woman and Guys Having Fun meetup group (sic). It’s got a bit of everything: coffee meets, fitness, food, drink, movies. Keep an eye on it. 

A heads-up for anyone visiting rooftop bar 20 Stories this summer: there’s a £10 door charge which ‘will apply from Saturday 23rd May until Monday 31st August (Bank Holiday) from 5pm onwards.’ I guess if you were the manager and it’s busy season, you may as well make the money.