Mr Brocklebank's World Wide Web Log

LIVERPOOL’S favourite agony uncle, Pete Price, was Master of Ceremonies for the 800th pageant parade. Telling the crowds that overseas tourists – oh, was that the visitor waving the Canadian flag? – did not know the words to any local anthems, he invited the throng to sing New York, New York.

What about In My Liverpool Home, Liverpool Lou, or even Long Haired Lover from Liverpool. I can understand how that well-known little number from Carousel (You’ll Never Walk Alone) may have seemed a tad divisive.

Perhaps, for next time, we may need the services of a songmaster or songmistress to come up with a belter of a Scouse anthem. That way, we will never again have to beg, steal or borrow another city’s theme song.

THE closest Liverpool has to Royalty, His Majestic Squire of Knotty Ash, the Hon Kenneth Dodd, tickled many ribs with his chuckle-patter during the birthday bash at the Town Hall.

He told the diners that the legal consultants to the original charter in King John’s court was none other than that local firm of legal purveyors, established in the Jurassic Age, T Rex Makin.

I understand the octogenarian legal legend, King Rex Makin, was most chuckled.

TALKING of the Squire, I understand that he is starting to slack.

This year he is cutting the number of his stand-up shows to a mere 100, a drop from 140.

Whatever next, Mr Dodd, you will be demanding Saturdays and Sundays as days off.

IT SEEMS many diners at the birthday lunch had trouble cutting their way through the main course lamb dish.

Nothing at all to do with the toughness of the meat, I am assured, but the bluntness of the town hall cutlery.

Well, with civil war breaking out over the Culture Company, they had no choice but to hide away the silver service sets and instead break open the plastic knives and forks.

NOW the new City of Liverpool Cruise Terminal is up and running, attention has turned to whether it will be used as a proper terminal, whereby cruises can actually start and finish there, rather than a call-in for cruises from elsewhere.

Officials from Fred Olsen Cruise Line and Thomson Holidays are under the impression this will happen next year.

There is the knotty problem, though, of baggage handling and check-in, but there is even the suggestion this could be done at Liverpool John Lennon Airport (oh yeah!).

The obvious and ideal place for this is the empty Plot Seven, occupied by the Steam Packet’s Portakabin.

But this is owned by Peel, who might not want business taken from their glorious Langton Dock Cruise Terminal with its unrivalled views of Europe’s biggest scrap heap, the Sierra Metallica.

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WHEN she was PM, Margaret Thatcher never arrived in Liverpool in such style as her daughter Carol will enjoy aboard QE2 for the liner’s 40th anniversary (although we think the Leaderene might have visited Ford Halewood’s works canteen). Does Carol, famous for winning I’m A Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here – realise she’s entering a Tory-free zone? A case of I’m A Conservative Get Me In Here.

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OPTIMISTIC tourist of the year: American passenger disembarking from Seven Seas Voyager, the first ship to moor at the new cruise liner landing stage, asked how she felt, having walked three yards from the gangplank: “Well, it’s OK so far.”

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PERHAPS Mr Brocklebank is being unusually acerbic. After all, there was a massive clean-up around Princes Parade and the new landing stage before the arrival of Seven Seas Voyager. Curiously, one of the skips contained a box of wigs. The mystery deepens.

HOW ironic that the very last slice of EU Objective One dough will be used to pay for the over-sized new three-storey Mersey Ferries building on the Pier Head and last manifestation of the Curse of Lady Doreen, whose final act as planning committee chairman allowed this to go ahead. For a short time, ferry passengers will enjoy an uninterrupted view of the Three Graces before this grotesquerey is thrown up. Why on earth does Mersey Ferries need such a large building anyway?

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AT A special Liverpool council meeting last week to debate the vote of no confidence in dear leader Cllr Warren Bradley, like a prize peacock former leader Cllr Mike Storey rose to the occasion, making the most of his impressive oratory skills.

This caused even some of the most hardened “seen it all before” Lib-Dems to wonder to themselves if they were looking at the Come Back Kid rides again.

A NEWS item on BBC Radio 4 about QE2’s 40th anniversary round-Britain cruise mentioned its ports of call as Newcastle, Firth of Forth and Clydeside. Curiously, no mention of Liverpool, Cunard’s former famous home port, especially after overcoming the serious worry that the new landing stage would not be ready in time.

Still, with only a multi-million pound budget to spend, how can Liverpool Culture Company expect to make much impact? Or does Radio 4 know something we don’t . . . ?

LIVERPOOL city council leader Warren Bradley boasted that the cruise landing stage was finished on time and on budget. Was this the same landing stage that was once promised for last year, but then delayed, but to be ready in July for the liners Maasdam and Prinsendam. But wasn’t? In fact, is it the same Cllr Warren Bradley?

IT MUST be funny – I heard it from a Scouser: Watching the start of the 2007-8 Clipper Round the World Yacht race on Sunday from Princes Parade with an impressive fire boat water cannon display, one woman said to her husband: “The police should have one of those to clear the yobs off the streets.” And they would help clear the litter, pavement pizzas and other detritus of weekend merry-making.

THE public will have one last terrific, matchless view of QE2 from Princes Parade. Given that this is an established public right of way, with open access supported by Mersey Waterfront, let us hope that the authorities do the decent thing and keep it open, eh, chaps?

FOR reasons best known to itself, West Derby local Labour party has chosen Enfield Southgate voters’ 2005 reject Stephen Twigg to fight the seat after Bob Wareing lost an open selection contest. Halton, meanwhile, is already represented by MP Derek Twigg (no relation). With two Twiggs in our neck of the woods, will there soon be talk of a Labour branch office?

FANCY that: As our politicians head off to the seaside for the conference season, one imagines they are set for one long round of politicking, meetings and briefings. In the local govern-ment’s First magazine, Lib-Dem Cllr Richard Kemp, of Liverpool Church ward, reveals all (readers of a sensitive disposition should turn away now). Cllr Kemp writes: “Life at a Lib-Dem conference is gruelling. We start meetings from 8am and finish drinking at 7am! We train and drink, we talk and drink, we pass resolutions and drink, we sometimes drink and pass resolutions – which is not thought to be in the right order. But we do work hard!” No doubt such diligence should be properly rewarded. Trebles all round.

HAD HRH the Duke of Kent taken a vow of silence when he formally and mutely opened the new Princes Landing Stage and City of Liverpool Cruise Liner Terminal?
Does the Royal Family now see itself as a business which charges by the word, and Liverpool Culture Company in turn tried to save a few shekels on its £20m short-fall by keeping him gagged?

PRACTICALLY every Liverpool city councillor was a guest on board QE2 during her 40th anniversary visit to christen the new terminal.
One notable exception was Cllr Marilyn Fielding, who stayed ashore. Was this because she has no passport, driving licence or bus pass? It appears, if you have no photo ID, then you do not exist in officialdom’s eyes.

FREE-LOADING councillors apart, why was the city’s welcome for QE2 so invisible?
Would it not have been nice to have had some quality food vendors and stalls along Princes Parade (like those at Hope Street Feast) during the liner’s visit for the thousands viewing Britain’s most famous ship? Why was there no welcoming band, such as the King’s Regiment?
In St Petersburg, such musical ship welcomes are de rigueur – usually playing Beatles medleys (why did not we think of that?). And was this not a case for a sprinkling of Portaloos to help relieve inner stress? The trouble, Jeeves, is that we have no sense of style.

AFTER all the nail-biting anxiety about finishing the terminal in time and Cunard Line’s willingness to commit QE2 to make that vital opening visit, cruise terminal manager Angie Redhead was not kept waiting long for the answer.
Within no time of the terminal’s first occupant Seven Seas Voyager casting off, she received a call from Cunard’s Miami head office, trilling: "Hi, Angie, we hear you’ve had a fabulous time with the Voyager."
Just like in the Civil War, it appears that American spies still infest Liverpool.

WELL into 2008 and Culture year, the city’s jewels in the crown remain the Pier Head’s Three Graces. So what a brilliant idea to have one of them, the Port of Liverpool Building, covered up for major renovation.

Surely owners Downing could have done this work earlier or postponed it for a year until the events which will allegedly attract millions have been and gone?

LIVERPOOL’S former great passion for ship-gawping was revived at a stroke with QE2’s visit, completed by fireworks on a fine and warm evening following torrential rain. As the late Prof Quentin Hughes claimed, observing similarly blessed weather in mid-December at the renaming of Cunard’s Caronia: "God must be a Scouser."