Mr Brocklebank's World Wide Web Log

NOW that The Strand access tunnels to the huge new Grosvenor Liverpool One shopping development are finished, we are told that the road will be skewed back to its original position.

Will this also mean the replanting of the avenue of trees alongside The Strand? The Pier Head area, including Canada Boulevard and Mann Island, was totally deforested for deeply dubious reasons. The Strand trees were pointlessly felled for obstructing the Merseytram project. Remember that?

A PITIFUL turnout at Woolton Picture House on Saturday for Across the Universe, a fine musical based on 33 Beatles songs.

Mr Brocklebank’s supper party accounted for six of the 26 patrons. This audience surely could not have paid that night’s staff wages.

One despairs if such an entertaining film, partly shot here and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais of Porridge fame, cannot attract the punters to Woolton.

Where is the support after the outcry and campaign to save this gem-like cinema? Come on, chaps, use it or lose it.

RUMOURS that Mr Brocklebank’s esteemed colleague Lawrence Neild, Esq, is standing for Liverpool Council, apparently stem from a televisual appearance when he uttered the words: "In the constituency where I am standing."

This appertained to his geographical location and not his ambitions to take over the world.

MEMO to Liverpool Culture Co: Do not forget to send a current "A to Zee" map guide to Culture year opening turn Richard Starkey, as the one he used on his last Liverpool visit will be out-dated.
The idea of perching Ringo on St George’s Hall roof (so the great unticketed can see him) is not original.

This was purloined from Her Majesty’s 50th anniversary big gig, when Queen’s Brian May strummed the National Anthem atop Buck House. What will Ringo perform from such lofty heights for the Culture Co? Help!?

WILL Ringo wander along to the doomed Welsh Streets for one last look at his birthplace, 9 Madryn Street, before the two-up, two- down terraced cottage is flattened?

Or will he buy it in true Yankee style for shipping across the universe to his US pad?
WHY cannot the 08 Place sell Culture event tickets (without imposing hefty booking fees) rather than use a Nottingham- based agency?

FANCY that: photographer Mike McCartney told a national newspaper last week that Beatles manager Brian Epstein "wanted to make me into a rock star, but we already have one of them in the family with our kid, so I decided to do other things. "

Mr Brocklebank applauds his sensible decision.

HAND-IN-HAND with efforts to make Liverpool city centre motoring and parking nigh on impossible must come improvements to public transport.

WAS anyone upset by the cruel and factually incorrect jibe at Liverpool, in the satirical magazine Private Eye, with a Robert Thompson cartoon of two hoodies

WHEN the giant concrete slab side of Liverpool’s Holiday Inn facing Lime Street became a huge billboard, travellers exiting the station were at least treated to edifying adverts promoting the city.

THE ITV flagship arts programme, The South Bank Show, dedicated itself to the surviving two-thirds of the Mersey Poets – Roger McGough and Brian Patten – with host Melvyn Bragg diplomatically explaining that they now lived near other rivers (the Thames and Dart).
Riding an open-top bus, our versifiers were bemused by “New” Liverpool’s building site condition, with

A CARING Mr Brocklebank paid a call on actor/ traveller Michael Palin at Waterstone’s last week, to ensure he was not bereft of fans at his book-signing after the lukewarm critical reception to his TV series on Europe.
Instead, he found Palin’s star still glitters high in the Liverpool firmament. Half an hour after he started, there were still 400 patient

OUR Capital of Culture is all about building new relationships and friendships, which is why we need to make the most of our twin city links. To fly the flag locally, some of Mr Brocklebank’s acquaintances have suggested that the new One Park West residential block, currently arising on Strand Street, should sign a twinning agreement with the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, opened in the 1970s.

IS MERSEYTRAVEL so train and tram-obsessed that it fails to understand that all methods of transportation are not sets of vehicles to be simply coupled and uncoupled?

LIVERPOOL originated because of its sea trade. How singular that the inevitable book accompanying the BBC’s Coast series has a chapter headed”From Liverpool to Mull of Galloway” with not one

TALKING point: apparently 11 out of 12 passengers at Liverpool John Lennon Airport refused to pay new security surcharges.