The group enter the stage with Nat Smeda saying, “We’d like to do a number we recorded in London some time ago, it’s called ‘If I Could Write a Book.’ As they perform the camera looks back and forth from the group performing to the faces of girls in the audience.

After they finish the number Ida appears and announces “Hello again. Well, to come on stage in a few minutes we have a group and to us Liverpudlians we think they’re fab and I’m sure you will too. So I will leave you now with the very talented Earl Preston & the TT’s.

The group come on stage and begin performing a number I’m not really familiar with, so I refer to it as ‘’Why Did It Have to Be You?’ The audience actually seems to be composed almost entirely of girls who, at one point, drag Earl from the stage. At the end of the song he announces,” Thank you. I’d like to introduce the singer Cy Tucker who’d like to sing a song, ‘My Prayer.’”

Cy then sings ‘My Prayer.’ He is then followed by Earl performing another number which isn’t familiar to me as it’s not the type of song I remember Mersey groups performing.

The camera then travels briefly through the Mersey Tunnel into a night-time street scene with Farson saying, “When Ken Dodd was asked who so many comedians come from Liverpool he said, ‘Well, you have to be a comedian to live there’. The bright Scouse sense of humour is yet another aspect of the Beatles and the other great Liverpool group, Gerry & the Pacemakers, who reached No. 1 in the hit parade with each of their records.”

Gerry is on stage at a theatre performing “I Like It.”

Throughout the number the girls are constantly screaming, the same level of fervour as at shows by the Beatles. Between shots of Gerry performing, we see the faces of the girls raised in ecstasy and a sense of bliss!

As he finishes the number, Gerry says “Thank you very much indeed…” his voice is drowned out by screams and we just catch the tail end, “…’You’ll Never Walk Alone.’”

Gerry begins to sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and the audience is silent, with some of the girls mouthing the words. He finishes and makes another announcement: “Thank you very much indeed. Now I’d like to carry on with a much faster number. It’s a rock and roller. It’s called ‘Pretend.’”

The screams begin again.

By the close of the number we are on the Liverpool streets at night. Daniel Farson is narrating, “Night falls. The streets grow emptier, but work still goes on and play continues inside the late night clubs. There’s a great sense of community in Liverpool, from the poverty and the ugliness, from the mixed races and religions, comes, oddly enough, a warmth and a pride in the city.

“The groups may grow rich but they do not wear gold lame jackets or adopt a new accent or sweep up in a Rolls Royce, they are still the boys next door and this is their great appeal.

“When the Beatles are playing nearby they travel miles to return to their friends and for a late night drink-in at clubs like this one, the Blue Angel, where I chatted to Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney after they’d returned from an evening in Blackpool. This lack of pretension is one of the charms of Liverpool where to be pretentious would only get one laughed at.”

Following Gerry’s performance the visuals showed a city at night, a ‘coggy’watchman beside his fire, ripples in the dark waters of the Mersey, then people entering the Blue Angel club. Brief glimpses of the clientele, members of groups such as the Escorts, then Terry O Toole of the Mojos is playing the piano.

Farson’s narration continues, “Leaving the Blue Angel I went down the street to hear yet another type of music at the Jacaranda. It is now 2 o clock in the morning and as one might expect, Liverpool seems to be a city that never goes to sleep, indeed one gets the impression that Liverpool is more for tomorrow than today and maybe in a few hours time another singer, another group will be discovered and head South for the moment of splendour. But behind in Liverpool in the pubs and clubs and dancehalls and in coffee bar cellars like the one below me, the music will still go on.”

The visuals accompanying this voice-over show the Jacaranda coffee bar and the sounds of a steel band. In the cellar, a musician plays the distinctive sound of a steel drum and a couple dance in the confined space. Upstairs, in the coffee bar section, Farson turns to the camera and finishes his narration.

The credits unfold over a view of the Mersey at night:

Written by Daniel Farson

Production Assistant Bill Harry

Sound Recording by Keith Barker, Freddie Slade

Film Editors Beryl Wilkins, Michael Taylor

Photographed by Ron Osborn, Peter Povey

Directed by Charles Squires

An Associated Rediffusion Production.

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