See full events listings for Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008

ON the eve of Liverpool’s year in the spotlight as European Capital of Culture 2008, the city has run up a £20m debt, leading the head of its arts programme to liken preparations to a “scouse wedding”.

The deficit is so large - almost as big as the entire £22m budget for arts projects for the year - that Liverpool council has asked the government to bail it out. Gordon Brown suggested on a recent visit that a small rise in council tax might plug the gap.

“It’s been like organising a scouse wedding with rows between the families and who sits with whom at the reception,” said Phil Redmond, the Liverpool-based creator of the television soaps Brookside and Hollyoaks, who was put in charge of the arts programme in September.

“There have been lots of own goals but that’s what we Liverpudlians do. We like to give the opposition a head start.”

News of the financial shortfall is only the latest problem to hit Liverpool’s project. There have been numerous squabbles between the council’s ruling Liberal Democrats and the local Labour party, to which all the city’s MPs belong. The politicians have also fallen out with the Liverpool Culture Company, set up to run the events. The company’s chief executive, Jason Harborow, is negotiating a pay-off with the council to leave.

The arts programme, which starts in full over the weekend of January 11-13 with a concert featuring Ringo Starr, is not expected to be damaged by the problems because money has been set aside for the hundreds of artists and performers.

More than two-thirds of the events will be free; paid shows will include Starr’s concert, one with Sir Paul McCartney in June and a programme by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Sir Simon Rattle in September.

A theatrical highlight will be Pete Postlethwaite in King Lear at the city’s Everyman theatre. Art exhibitions will include a show featuring the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, one of whose works fetched £73m last year.

Liverpool is the first British city to win the Capital of Culture accolade since Glasgow in 1990. The city - in the vanguard of popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s - hopes the event will reignite its artistic reputation and help regeneration.

Redmond’s remarks reflect disgruntlement in Liverpool about what it sees as a lack of support from Whitehall. Warren Bradley, the council leader, has accused the Labour government of being so taken up with the 2012 London Olympics that it has denied Liverpool money and attention.