Page 186 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

The Eurovision superfans are already starting to arrive CREDIT: Getty

And while Eurovision is about camp, OTT acts, self-parody, faux-nationalisms and, as many
Scousers are planning, getting bevvied and ’avin’ a laff, it’s also more for Ukraine and the telly
audience than for Liverpool itself. Mae Muller’s not bad, but she’s not Frankie, The La’s, The
Lightning Seeds, The Zutons – the list of homegrown greats is longer than the dockside.
Behind the showcases and headline-stealing razzamatazz, the North’s most idiosyncratic city has
lived through decades of ups and downs that have scarred it while making it strong, proud and
ready for anything. I grew up in a “woollyback” town, St Helens, tripping into Liverpool several
times a year with my mum to window-shop and look around, until my late teens when I started to
go in for gigs.

Now I’m living once again in Lancashire, I always choose Liverpool over Manchester or Leeds for a
day out. These past few months, I’ve been in for the fantastic Art of the Terraces show about
football fashions at the Walker, a superb production of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls at
The Everyman Playhouse and Scott of the Antarctic at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, with
Vaughan Williams’s music performed live. The latter two venues are on Hope Street – the most
aptly named street in the world, linking the city’s two wondrous cathedrals, and always lovely for
dinner or a drink – preferably at the Grade I-listed Philharmonic Dining Rooms pub (“The Phil”).