Ex-BBC Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac brings Before Midnight to Piece Hall in Halifax

The former Radio 1 DJ thought all that went with the territory, but she didn’t want the music to stop.

So her solution was Before Midnight, which has all the hallmarks of the euphoric dancefloor mayhem so beloved of veteran clubbers, but without the sunrise stumble home. The events start early and, by midnight, the music has stopped, the house lights are on and it’s elbows out at the taxi rank.

Macmanus brings the event to the Piece Hall in Halifax on Saturday, June 15, when she will appear alongside Scissor Sisters singer Jake Shears and DJ Gina Breeze.

“It's just been the most incredible gift for me personally to be able to put on these shows,” Macmanus, 45, tells The Yorkshire Post.

“Originally, the idea came from quite a selfish place, which was just (that) I want to be able to keep DJing and I need it to be able to work for me where I am in my life right now.

“And then to be able to share that desire with the world and have such a huge response, and have that sense of so many people wanting the same thing and feeling the same way about clubbing - which is to say that they still love good dance music, they love the culture of clubbing, they love the feeling of dancing to good dance music with their friends, but they also need to do life and they need to be able to be sharp on a Saturday for whatever reason - it was just great.

“It's made me feel, I suppose, empowered, in that we a lot of the time accept things – that they are just the way they are.

“I think I always just accepted that that's how it had to be with regards to clubbing and then to have the means to be able to put on a night and try something like this and experiment with it, and then for it to work in the way that it did, yeah I feel really grateful and inspired by the success of it.

“(I’m) so excited to get back on the road this summer. Halifax is going to be our first Before Midnight of the year since we did New Year's Eve in Dublin. I'm just champing at the bit, I want to get going.”

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A work friend from Radio 1, who is from nearby Huddersfield, told Macmanus about the Piece Hall, which is thought to be the world’s only remaining Georgian cloth hall and dates back to 1779.

“When they offered me that slot, I was like ‘this is so perfect for us’ because I like the idea of performing in venues that are unique. And for me a venue is really important - I mean, obviously, it is pretty basic - but it's really important in terms of how a space affects a show and somewhere like this for a summer show, it's so unique, it's so beautiful, it's such a dream.”

Shears shot to fame as a vocalist in American pop band Scissor Sisters and in March finished a run as the Emcee in Cabaret, his West End debut alongside Rotherham-born Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka Self Esteem).

“Jake is a friend from a long time ago and we share our love of clubbing together,” says Macmanus. “A lot of people know him obviously for being a pop star, but he is an excellent DJ. So to have him come and play I think is going to be really special.”

Macmanus, who professionally goes by Annie Mac, is from Dublin but moved from Ireland to London in the early 2000s.

She went on to spend 17 years presenting flagship music shows on BBC Radio 1, before deciding to step back in summer 2021, shortly after the release of her debut novel, Mother Mother. She brought out her follow up, The Mess We’re In, last year.

Macmanus is married to fellow DJ Toddla T, with whom she has two children, and Before Midnight, which started in 2022, came after a time of reflection during the pandemic.

She says: “Clubbing has changed. It's going to keep evolving with the times and the best, most successful ideas, I suppose, are those ones that really serve people in the moment.

“I think what I have tapped in on is something that is genuine to me and that reflects a lot of people of my age. I'm in my mid-40s, I've grown up with dance music, I was a teenager in the 90s. This stuff was huge to me and then I suppose I still feel like I want to consume it and I still love it and I'm still passionate about it, and I'm still a fan of it, but there's a sense of it not working for me. And that's the cool thing about both this party and all the other day parties that are happening now – of which there seems to be quite a wave – is that they're serving a whole swathe of people that clubbing hasn't served. And so just on an economical level, if you're a promoter, you've got this huge amount of people who have got money to spend on nice drinks, they've got their babysitters booked, they're ready to go. And they previously weren't going clubbing so it's only a good thing, I think, for the culture. I hope people think of it in that way anyway.”

In addition to writing, she’s also had success with podcasting as the host of Changes, for which she’s interviewed a range of writers, artists, musicians and other public figures on the biggest changes they have overcome.

But clubbing, it seems, will always be a major part of her life.

“The sense of collective euphoria that you get on a dance floor and that specific type of connection which is so unique to that culture, I think just has to be preserved at all costs. Especially in a world where we do so much more connections and connecting through screens. We all will hopefully have our outlets for human connection, be it football matches or gigs or whatever. Mine is this and it feels so important to me that we try and preserve it and… broaden it for as many people as possible to be able to experience it.”

For tickets, visit: www.thepiecehall.co.uk/event/annie-mac/