The Big Interview: Bill Kenwright

When the impresario Bill Kenwright appeared on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs some years ago his eight choices ranged from The Searchers’ Needles and Pins to Anthony Newley’s Why and Victor Young’s The Call of the Faraway Hills.

But the disc he said he would rush to save from the storm and waves was Call to Arms by Blueknowz – also known as the theme to the 60s police series Z Cars and as the Everton FC song. As a small boy growing up in Wavertree, Liverpool, life revolved around match day – which always ended with the family singing songs around the piano.

Even when Bill’s dad’s building business took off and they could afford to move away from the house with the outside loo to something more upmarket, still the epicentre of the world was Goodison.

Now 66 and living between homes in London and Suffolk, he’d still have to be prostrate with illness to miss a match. But then nowadays he is the chairman and major shareholder of Everton FC – and the target of many a barb by some who believe he’s not the man for the job. Especially after a 0-3 reverse at Anfield in the latest Liverpool derby.

He and the board have been looking for a buyer for the club to put in the millions needed to bring in the right players and take it to the top at home and in Europe. In the meantime, the fans who don’t like him gather to shout jibes like “Kenwright out” before every match.

As he says, if only life was as simple as having enough spare cash to pay off all the debt and invest in the club himself – more, that is, than the £20m he and his partners put together to become the biggest stakeholders 10 years ago. However, he says he doesn’t.

“I’ve been a fan for 59 years and I’ll still be there whatever happens, whether I’m in the directors’ box or paying for my ticket with everyone else. We need a buyer to take Everton where it needs to be, but it’ll never be a minnow whatever happens.”

His voice becomes thick with emotion when he talks about the club. “They say about being an Everton supporter that they are not manufactured, they just are – and it’s so true.”

He may throw in the odd “darlin’” at the end of a sentence, but Bill Kenwright still glories in being a Scouser, and although he is one of the UK’s most successful theatre producers (with 16 productions currently touring the UK and the world, including Blood Brothers, now in its 23rd year) the ferocious work ethic learned from his hard grafting family is as active as ever.

The seemingly endless list of his productions, co-productions and shows he has also directed more recently in the West End runs from the award-winning Three Days in May to The Pitmen Painters, The Wizard of Oz. The Country Girl and On The Waterfront to The Canterbury Tales, The Glass Menagerie and A Man For All Seasons.

His crowd-pleasing musical shows include recent smash hits Dreamboats and Petticoats (coming to Bradford Alhambra later in the year) and Save The Last Dance For Me, which will be at Hull New Theatre next month.

He has also produced films, including Don’t Go Breaking My Heart and Cheri, starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Then there’s the phenomenally successful co-production Elvis – The Concert arena tour. It seems that Bill Kenwright must never sleep.

“I work 24/7 and always have. I don’t do holidays because I love work, whether it’s the shows or the football,” he says. “I don’t watch much TV, but I could never just sit and enjoy a programme. I sit there surrounded by scripts, spreadsheets and a calculator. I’d feel guilty otherwise.

“I don’t sleep very well, so I lie there quietly listening to my music – mostly stuff from the 50s and 60s. Jenny’s very tolerant and has got used to sleeping through it. I have this feeling for that era of music. To me it’s as important as the Berlin Wall coming down. Suddenly teenagers had a voice and a sound of their own.”

The young Bill Kenwright was a bright spark who’d been at the Liverpool Institute high school at the same time as Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Before turning to acting, he toured local pubs and clubs with his R and B band, The Chevrolets. “At that time all Liverpool bands played the same sound, copying the American rhythm and blues records we got from merchant seamen coming in to the docks.”

At 18, he won a place at Manchester University to study English and Drama. On the day he was to start, he waved his proud parents goodbye and got on the train. But, walking up Deansgate and with some time on his hands, instead of turning right towards the university something made him turn left towards the Granada TV studios.

In a window was a sign saying “Room 501 – Casting”. In he went and blagged his way into the audition with “I’m an actor – got any jobs?” Within minutes he’d landed the role of an 18-year-old office boy in a series called The Villains at 65 guineas a week.

“I got back in the lift and rang mum from downstairs, saying ‘It’s easy, you just walk in and ask...’ She was so happy for me and didn’t ask about university.”

Not long after that, Bill was cast as Gordon Clegg, son of Rover’s Return barmaid Betty Williams in Coronation Street. He stayed a year, leaving to become a theatre producer, but has reprised the role occasionally over four decades – and will appear at Betty’s funeral in the show next month.

“Originally, I was given three weeks off Corrie to play Billy Liar on stage with Oldham Rep. Shortly beforehand, they rang to say the show was off because they’d double-booked the theatre. I still wanted to do the play, so I lured a few friends into helping me and we put it on in Buxton. That was it, really. My company started the idea of plays touring provincial theatres. Before that you just had panto and the odd Easter season.”

His early coup was to get Pat Phoenix out of the Rovers and onto the stage to star in The Miracle Worker, which broke box office records everywhere it played. “Mind you, I had to put up signs asking people to stop talking during the performance – they all thought they were in their own living rooms watching Elsie on the box and could just chat away.” He followed up by putting Anne Reid from Corrie in Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s Come Laughing Home.

The shows he has had the longest association with are Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, and Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers, the nature/nurture story of twins born in Liverpool who were separated at birth but end up at opposite ends of the social divide and fall in love with the same girl.

“I just had a feeling about that show even though it took a while to become a big hit,” says Kenwright. “If anyone had told me back then that it would still be running 23 years later I’d have called them daft. It really touch me then and it still touches me. I feel so blessed that it came along.”

A panoply of female stars have queued up to play Mrs Johnstone, from Barbara Dickson and Stephanie Lawrence to Kiki Dee and Mel C. Getting Americans to love BB wasn’t so easy, though, as Kenwright recalls. “Blood Brothers got the worst reviews ever in New York, and no show in history had survived savage reviews there. I lost a lot of money but I saved it by launching an ad campaign. By the end of 16 weeks over there with the English cast, we’d lost double the amount I’d put up for the show.

“So I got David and Sean Cassidy and Petula Clarke in and the following week it went from 50,000 dollar loss to 150,000 dollar profit. Suddenly it was ‘the miracle of Broadway’ and it saved David Cassidy’s career.”

Kenwright was recently called in by Andrew Lloyd Webber to iron out direction problems with the Phantom of the Opera sequel Love Never Dies, and among the many plates he successfully spins (“but don’t make it sound like it’s all been success...no-one has that, and I have the diaries to prove it.”) he indulges his love of classic pop and R&B music with shows like Save The Last Dance For Me. He describes it as “Dirty Dancing meets Yanks meets Dreamboats and Petticoats” and the tour is packing them in around the country.

“Like me, there seem to be loads of people who love a romantic story and loads of songs from when they were young.

“Someone asked me once about who I thought would miss me most if I wasn’t around any more. I listed the dancers, choreographers, actors, theatre owners, writers...’ and this guy said ‘No, it would be the audience’.

“Maybe he’s right. If I’m good at doing anything it’s being a member of the public and understanding what people like.

“One thing I’ve learned along the way is that if you do anything just to make money it won’t work. And you can only get there, wherever you want to be, by working hard. That’s my philosophy, if I have one.”

Save the Last Dance for Me, Hull New Theatre from April 23-28. 01482 300300.