Tag: Liverpool Weekend

No doubt to the delight of my two loyal readers, I’ve just posted separately about several exhibits at the Museum of Liverpool, but I’d better stop here as I’ll never finish writing up the weekend away. We spent just under two hours at the museum and there’s plenty to see across the numerous floors, as well as there being a variety of stuff that I haven’t seen on my previous visits.

There’s plenty of text and exhibits relating to the Liverpool Overhead Railway which operated between 1893 and 1956. This would have been a remarkable tourist attraction today, but it was decided to demolish the structure in 1957 despite considerable local opposition. The excuse for closure was that it was costing too much and it would be better to operate services using buses, which must have felt like a sub-optimal option for the regular users. There was a sad incident when in November 1957 one of these new buses collided with a lorry under where the overhead railway had operated, killing one person and injuring another seven. During the operation of the overhead railway, there were no major incidents.

There are some fine views across the docks from both directions, although there’s no external viewing platform which seems a little bit of a shame. The building that the museum is located in is an impressive structure, dominating this part of the former docks area.

The view from the other direction of the Liver Building. The museum opened in 2011 and replaced the much smaller Museum of Liverpool Life.

There’s plenty more that I could write about this museum and given that it’s free of admission charge it’s certainly worth popping in. For our group, it was time to go and visit Tate Liverpool to be surprised and delighted at their collections of modern art.

The Museum of Liverpool rather likes exhibitions on Sir Ken Dodd (1927-2018) and they’ve currently got one on (although we didn’t have time to visit that one) remembering the local comedian from Knotty Ash. This rather colourful harlequin suit was worn by Dodd during the 1970s, including on the Ken Dodd Laughter Show in 1979. Fittingly, his last performance was in Liverpool, at the Echo Arena Auditorium (now the M&S Bank Arena in what feels a rather odd piece of branding, but there we go) on 28 December 2017. He certainly brought the Knotty Ash area of Liverpool into the public awareness over several decades.

As a separate thought, I think my friend Gordon would feel comfortable in such an outfit, he’s very flamboyant. Perhaps he’ll do a special fashion show for this blog, but hopefully it won’t be like the Inbetweeners one.

There’s something moderately alarming about seeing objects from my childhood which are now in museums, as I refuse to accept any evidence that I might be getting older. But, with my very happy memories of the Amiga, it’s always positive to see one. The relevance here is that Striker was made by Rage Games, who were a video game developer from Liverpool who were in operation between 1992 and 2003. Apparently one of the things that brought them down was the David Beckham franchise of games, evidence that they should have focused on a Neville Southall franchise instead which would have been far better.

On a tangent, a few of us visited the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield several years ago (that was one of my rather good ideas if I may say so), which led to me wanting to visit the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge although I haven’t quite made it there yet. I suppose I should visit with my friend Richard, as one of his many claims to fame is that he wrote software for the Amiga in the 1990s (he’s much older than me, and he has found evidence that he is getting much older, but I digress in case he reads this). The Cambridge museum appears to have a lot of Amigas in their collections, I can relive my youth once again.

I was busily learning plenty of things at the Museum of Liverpool, not least that the great Dame Patricia Routledge has a long history with Liverpool. It’s 50 years next year since she appeared in Steptoe and Son (still my favourite TV programme), but it’s already 33 years since she was the star of Keeping Up Appearances. Routledge was educated at Birkenhead High School and then the University of Liverpool, making her first stage performance at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1952. She’s currently 94 years old and she’s still making occasional television appearances. So there we go, everyone will be fascinated to know that I’ve learned about her connections with Liverpool.

I was though already aware that Ziggy Greaves was from Liverpool, that one was more obvious.

It was unclear at the Museum of Liverpool whether this was the original ceramic hen which was used on the BBC programme Bread in the 1980s and 1990s. Unfortunately, after some checking, it’s not the original one which is a little disappointing. There’s still some authenticity to it as it was presented to Katy Carmichael, the actress who played Connie, by Carla Lane, the writer of Bread. I hadn’t given much thought about this before, but the museum addresses the negative stereotypes about Liverpool presented by the programme, which was at one point was watched by over 20 million people.

There’s a surprising amount of commentary about the whole matter of the city’s portrayal and Bread, not least at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-36425330. I still wonder what happened to the actual ceramic hen used in the show though.

This ticket is on display at the Museum of Liverpool and I thought that it was one of the most powerful items that they are currently exhibiting. It’s already inevitably an emotional reminder of the 97 people who lost their lives at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, a tragedy where so many lost their lives just because they wanted to watch football.

However, this ticket is even more poignant as it belonged to Andrew Sefton, a 23 year old who had travelled to Sheffield with four friends to watch the match. He was in pen three of the Leppings Lane end stand and he lost his life in the tragedy. Sefton’s favourite football player was Tottenham’s Gary Mabbutt and he attended the funeral on behalf of the club. The BBC have some more information and final pictures of Sefton at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-34452149.