Southport is a town of approximately 80,000 residents on the coast, some 20 miles from Liverpool and was, effectively, developed as a dormitory town for those working in Liverpool and Manchester.

The town has always been somewhat schizophrenic about its relationships with Merseyside as there is a strong Lancastrian tradition, but there is no doubt that the economy is based very largely on tourism including retail and many people from the Merseyside conurbation visit regularly.

I started work in 1961 at Canadian Pacific in the Royal Liver Buildings in Liverpool and paid regular lunchtime visits to the Cavern.

I kept a five-line, five year diary in those days and have a classic entry from early 1961 which says “A friend took me to the Cavern to see this group called The Beatles – I didn’t think they were much good!”

My wife only went to the Cavern once and had a request played by John Lennon, but she found the atmosphere so damp, smokey and depressive that I could not persuade her to go back and she couldn’t speak for a few weeks afterwards with a terrible cold!

The Beatles, however, did play the Southport region on many occasions.

There was quite a thriving scene and Gerry & the Pacemakers often played at a club on Sunday afternoons, as did Rory Storm & the Hurricanes with Ringo Starr on drums before he played with the Beatles.

One of my best friends at school was Gibson Kemp who replaced Ringo in Rory Storm’s group and then went on to join Ted ‘Kingsize’ Taylor & the Dominoes.

Ted is a butcher in Birkdale, Southport, and in recent years has started to play again, proving that without a doubt he was one of the top groups of the Mersey Sound era.

I remain convinced that I saw the Beatles play in the now demolished Palace Hotel in Birkdale in 1962.

I remember it because there was also a traditional jazz band on the bill and the contrast between the two struck me at the time as being quite ridiculous.

However, despite great efforts I have never been able to find any form of documentary evidence about the date but I did ask locally and received an interesting letter from a local resident, John Power:

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