We’re in the Hornby Library, next to the even grander Picton Library, on John Brown Street, beside the Keble Fountain and the Walker Art Gallery, a very grand bit of central Liverpool, built in the city’s glory years, when huge mercantile fortunes were quickly made and then spent, in part, on civic projects such as these, created for the glorification of the city and the edification of its citizens.

It’s tempting to wonder what the Victorian philanthropists who backed such schemes would have made of today’s line-up of local cultural luminaries – of Ken Dodd, for example, the self-dubbed “George Clooney of Knotty Ash”, complete with tickling stick. Or Carmel Morgan, scriptwriter of great dramas of working-class life from The Royle Family to Drop Dead Gorgeous? Because for all the splendour of the Victorians’ culture palaces, it is arguably the life and the language of the streets around them that gives Liverpool its cultural edge. Cabbies who puncture pretension as effectively as Jim Royle, barmaids who deadpan as deftly as Dodd, there is a verbal facility to many Scousers that doesn’t come from libraries – although the words often end up there, or as often as not, on stage.

Here at the Hornby with Dodd and Morgan are novelist Kevin Sampson, photographed the day before filming starts on Away Days, the movie version of his novel centred on fans of the other Liverpool team, Tranmere Rovers; novelist Helen Walsh, who talks of the “magnetic pull” which drew her here from Warrington.

“I never expected to be this stimulated, this invigorated every day,” explains another inward migrant, Gemma Bodinetz, artistic director of the Playhouse and the Everyman Theatre, while for actor Pete Postlethwaite, the city’s influence stretches back to his days at the Everyman in the Seventies, when the theatre was hothousing talent as considerable as Willy Russell, Alan Bleasdale, Julie Walters and Bill Nighy. “It was an electric time,” he recalls, “when I realised for the first time that acting could be a force for change.”

Young playwright Lizzie Nunnery has also been making waves at the Everyman, but agrees that Liverpool’s appeal isn’t just about the arts scene. “Everyone here is a performer.” JC

Kim Cattrall

Move over New York, Liverpool can claim Kim Cattrall, currently filming her reprised role as Samantha in the film version of Sex and the City, as one of its own. Her family emigrated to Canada when she was little, but “I’ve been surrounded by Liverpudlians my whole life,” she says. “They always tell me exactly what they think about my latest film – good, bad or indifferent.”

She also has fond memories of living in the city in her teens (left). “I returned to Liverpool in 1968,” she recalls. “It was one of the best years of my childhood. It was such an exciting place to be.”

Her love for the city hasn’t diminished. “I have a couple of great aunts who still live in Liverpool, so I try to go back as often as possible. I have also become good friends with Paul O’Grady and Cilla Black.” And despite her success she admits that, “One of my remaining ambitions is to play a Scouser. It is quite a hard accent to do but, I luv it, it’s grand!’” AS

David Morrissey

David Morrissey clearly enjoyed a quiet moment amid the spectacular Antony Gormley sculptures on Crosby beach, just a few miles away from his native Everton.

“It was fun to get away from directing a film just for a moment and to be on that beach with the photographer. I love that place,” he explains, “that juxtaposition of sand and water, right up against all that industrial stuff.”

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