While he was primarily a theatrical producer – technically a background role – Bill Kenwright in person radiated the confidence and bonhomie of the actor he originally was (starting in ITV’s Coronation Street) and the staging brain of the director he intermittently became: especially with recurrent productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s and Tim Rice’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Evita.
Theatre was almost as great a love for him as football and his family. Once, in the aisle at a first night, I saw him conducting alternate conversations with punters on either side about the plays of Chekhov and a new signing for Everton FC (where he had levels of investment and influence until death). Revealingly, it seemed to me that he would have found it impossible to prioritise one subject over another and so had to carry on both chats. Once, he urgently took me aside at a theatre and, instead of – as I had anticipated – giving me a scoop about Ian McKellen playing Oedipus Rex somewhere, he wanted reports on an Everton junior on loan at a lower league club I support. (The striker, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, confirming Kenwright’s interest, subsequently played for England.)
