Smash hit

Truth be told, Morrissey, 43, simply loves Liverpool – the Gormleys, the river, the streets, the people, the whole damn thing. This, after all, was the city where he was first noticed as a rising young actor: first at the Everyman’s Youth Theatre, then on screen playing a young runaway in Willy Russell’s One Summer. And to Liverpool he has returned to direct The Pool, a movie about a London boy coming up and being shown the sights by a local girl.

Morrissey now lives in London (with his wife Esther Freud, daughter of the painter, Lucian). But if The Pool looks set to be a celebration of the city’s unique charms, Morrissey argues that one reason why Liverpool is “such a wonderful place to film” is that different parts of the city double up as cities as diverse as contemporary Los Angeles, Moscow in the Cold War or 19th-century London. “I first realised that when I worked on Hilary and Jackie here,” says Morrissey. “The project was filmed entirely in Liverpool, didn’t have a single scene set there. I saw it in a different light after that.” JC

Liver birds (and a boy)

Carla Lane is arguably the mother of all Liver Birds. She created those icons of Seventies television – along with that other Scouse TV hit, Bread. But sadly she couldn’t join this line-up of Liver Birds and Liver Boy Paul O’Grady, as she is recuperating from a knee op. But on the phone, Lane described her creations as “women who didn’t mind losing a bit of femininity to stave off the lads... not kitteny stuff – fully grown”.

Six other Liver Birds-in-exile came along to the Phoenix Theatre in London, where Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers is showing, to honour their hometown. Not that you’d know that Dame Beryl Bainbridge had ever breathed the Mersey air. “Everyone I knew was sent to elocution classes,” she explains. Elsewhere, accents modified by years of southern living are gently unravelling in a spirit of cheerful kinship. “We’re loud, we love to talk and you can hear us all over the street,” grins actress Cathy Tyson, 21 years on from her breakthrough role in Mona Lisa, and now a stalwart of Emmerdale.

O’Grady arrives late, wreathed in cashmere and apologies. He is, he says, an imposter, “being a woollyback from Birkenhead. But I spent my teenage years living in a flat in Canning Street, so you can’t kick me out” Like the others, he relishes Liverpool’s dark humour: “A bullet-proof vest you put on in order to deal with hard times.” But what extra something has enabled this city to punch so far above its weight in cultural influence?

“I had no idea there was a difference between the high- and the low-brow until I came away,” explains Jude Kelly, the Liverpool-born artistic director of the South Bank Centre in London, “because people in Liverpool just join in with and enjoy all forms of art.” And novelist Linda Grant adds, “It has this feeling of being a city state, set apart from the rest of the country. And not just from the south, either. It even sees the Wirral as being across the water.”

As emerging theatre star Leanne Best puts it, “I identify myself as being Liverpudlian before anything else – woman, actress, whatever.” Actress Rita Tushingham, nodding agreement, has the last word. “It’s what’s in my blood and is where I want my ashes to be scattered when I die. From a boat on the Mersey, ideally. I just hope it’s not too windy a day. I wouldn’t want to be blowing back in people’s faces.” AJ

Daniel Craig

James Bond a Scouser? Who knew? But it’s true. Daniel Craig grew up on the Wirral, playing rugby but supporting Liverpool FC and being drawn to acting after spending time at the Everyman, where he’d see plays with his mum, an art teacher, mix with the actors and crew, and later work backstage.

“Liverpool has always been a big influence on me,” Craig says. “But when I left [for London, aged 16], the city was really stuck, really struggling with poverty and unemployment. There had been the riots, it was filthy, it was depressing. So to see it the way it is now is amazing.”

Craig’s feeling for the place can’t be doubted, but strange to relate, the man who plays 007 so convincingly sounds almost teenage as he declares his love for Liverpool, especially its humour. “A cliché, I know, but Scouse humour is the best, and it’s got the place through a lot. I’m going red as I say this,” he jokes, “because I know the kind of stick I’ll get for it, but I’m proud I’m from the Northwest.” JC

The scribes

Canning Street and the rows of 19th-century merchant’s houses which surround it are familiar territory to poets Roger McGough (right) and Brian Patten (left) and playwright Willy Russell (centre). McGough and Patten both lived near here before the 1967 publication of The Mersey Sound (with the late Adrian Henri) made them celebrated figures. McGough later went on to gain a chart No 1 with The Scaffolds’ Lily the Pink. Russell’s success began later with John, Paul, Ringo... and Bert (for the Everyman), but came thick and fast with Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine (both plays which became films) and the long-running Blood Brothers. But the street housing Russell’s offices has changed “beyond recognition”, from the rundown place of “brothels, squats and bars” which McGough recalls, to the swanky district estate agents now call the Georgian Quarter. “People have mixed feelings about regeneration, but it has saved these buildings,” argues Russell, “and I’m glad about that.” JC

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