INSIDE the bowels of The Cavern, old brick walls arch overhead and black and white photos of The Beatles from the ’60s hang in vertical rows.

Avatars gather before the stage – girls in psychedelic bikinis, ripped blokes and the odd penguin – and dance with impressive co-ordination, considering how fiendishly difficult it is to navigate them. Chris Meehan’s avatar, Chris Meehan, walks backwards and spends lengthy periods surveying walls when I try to guide him back up the stairs.

Over at Flanagans Apple, it’s a bit empty, despite the buzz of inebriated chatter which greets the newcomer, but at 4am it will be throbbing with Irish music.

This Mathew Street is obviously a work of love, because the attention to detail is incredible. There’s Karl Jung’s bust, a “no dumping – penalty £100” sign and a Capstan cigarette hoarding, as well as a Find Maddie poster. Weather is on a four-hour cycle and goes from a night sky sprinkled with stars to red-hued dawn. For those who want a real window on Liverpool, you can pop into Hardy’s, where webcams on the RL Hardys store show live footage of the street outside.

Despite the distant drone of traffic, it’s quiet at the moment. Apparently 4am is busiest, when it’s evening in the US. There’s usually a chatty Australian called Experiment Road, who apparently helped put together The Beatles’ anthology, and mans the T-shirt shop opposite, but he’s resting just now.

A bikini-clad Amazonian strides purposefully across the cobbled street, but doesn’t stop to chat – despite the lure of Chris’s bulging virtual muscles.

There’s a protocol among Second Lifers – no swearing and, despite the made-up names, no dishonesty. You have to know someone pretty well before any personal information is swapped.

This is tested somewhat by Italian Giorgio Vita who asks us the way to Liverpool football stadium. He wants to know because he’s a coach for a Serie A (our Premier League) football team. Hmm.

There’s a promenade, close to an impressive rendition of the Liver Buildings, part fantasy, part reality. It’s on the edge of the Mersey, with a ferry in the foreground, the Radio City tower behind and Antony Gormley’s statues emerging from the sea. It’s fringed by Mediterranean cafes, shops selling T-shirts and posters, palm-trees and is buzzing with the sound of jet-skis. Chris has purchased a virtual pirate ship for Linden $4000 (£10).

“I was splashing out,” he confesses.

There’s also the Crosby bar Stamps. One window, via a webcam, shows scenes of Crosby Village for the delectation of Second Lifers the world over.

There are a couple of girls on stools at the bar. Michael recognises one of them. It’s Moti Moody, from, er, Crosby. “You get quite a lot of people coming to this bar from Crosby,” he explains. You couldn’t make it up.