Liverpool impresario Bill Kenwright tells Philip Key of his secret talks over ideas for the Capital of Culture

HE MAY live in the St John’s Wood area of London, and have his office in Shaftesbury Avenue, but there is only one place theatre producer Bill Kenwright calls home.

“It’s when I arrive in Lime Street,” he says. “That’s when I know I am home, back in Liverpool. That’s my home town.”

It is the reason he wanted desperately to contribute to the city’s year as European Capital of Culture. But, for a long stretch, it seemed as if he would not be invited to do anything.

“They did come to me originally – but then the lines went dead,” he explains. It was only recently that Kenwright, with his many years of showbusiness expertise, was called in to provide his own unique brand of entertainment know-how to the year’s celebrations.

The catalyst was the arrival of television writer/ producer Phil Redmond as vice-chairman of the Culture Company board.

Kenwright had known him for years and Redmond contacted him to see what he could do. The answer was, a lot. The pair now have a weekly dialogue, according to Kenwright, and have been discussing many ideas “big and small, all over the place.”

He is unwilling to go into detail at this stage – there will be an ann- ouncement shortly – but Kenwright says there will be two new shows and a major revival which would be premiered at the Liverpool Empire. In all, he expects to be announcing “six or seven” events.

Kenwright was in Liverpool for a number of days to oversee the launch of his big Christmas show Doctor Dolittle at the Liverpool Empire, along with his football work – he is chairman of Everton FC – and make preparations for his production of the Liverpool musical Blood Brothers which will open the 2008 festivities at the Empire Theatre.

He has managed to squeeze all this into a non-stop lifestyle which has seen him in the space of seven days also work on the Any Dream Will Do Christmas Special for television, fly to New York for the preparation of a new Gershwin musical, and take his mother to the Royal Variety Performance.

When we talked, he was full of the Doctor Dolittle Show which he was promoting like fury, determined to fill the theatre for the show’s run.

It was a run that had been shortened by preparations for the Royal Variety Performance and the request to launch the Empire year with his production of Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers starring Lyn Paul.

He wanted the Dolittle show to succeed as much for its star Tommy Steele as for himself. Steele, it seems, has been his idol since, as an 11-year-old, Kenwright had watched him perform in Goldilocks and the Three Bears at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre.

He particularly recalls a moment when Steele – then a rising pop star – took out a comb and combed his quiff. It made the girls scream.

“That changed my life. I thought, this is my world, I want to be in theatre. I want to be the man who does that.” Kenwright did become an actor – most famously in Coronation Street – and later one of Britain’s biggest producers.

It was to be many years before he worked with Steele, and when he did it was an instant success. Tommy took the title role in Kenwright’s production of Leslie Bricusse’s musical Scrooge, also staged at the Empire and later the London Palladium.

He remains a fan of Steele, but is also now a close friend. “Tommy is a very loyal man and in his life has worked for only two producers, Harold Fielding and myself,” he reports proudly. “Scrooge sold out at the Palladium for four months last year and there is now a plaque at that theatre explaining he is the biggest star who has ever appeared there with more performances than anyone else.”

It was the success of Scrooge that led Steele to work with Kenwright again on Doctor Dolittle, the show rewritten for him by its writer Leslie Bricusse. That will be going to the West End, and there is also a Broadway plan.

Blood Brothers is Kenwright’s most successful show, still touring and still running in London after 21 years. “And it still gets a standing ovation every night.”