Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar spent three hours drunkenly chatting to the Mersey Ferry pilot while riding across the river during his first trip to Liverpool.
He spent the previous night drinking in the Adelphi Hotel with fellow Northern Irish actors James Ellis, John Hewitt and John Keegan while filming a TV series in the early 1980s. On his second visit to the city, he stayed for £20 a week in a house on Huskisson Street in the Georgian Quarter owned by Beryl Williams, wife of The Beatles' first manager Allan Williams.
This week, the star of upcoming ITV detective drama Ridley was back, promoting a new festival showcasing the work of Nobel Prize in Literature winner Samuel Beckett. Described as 'one of the 20th century's most celebrated playwrights and authors', Beckett attended the same school as Oscar Wilde in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, where the festival's curator Adrian Dunbar is from.
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From Friday, May 6 to Sunday, May 8, the University of Liverpool's Institute of Irish Studies, the University of Notre Dame, and Unreal Cities Theatre Company will present intimate performances of some of Beckett's most rarely performed plays, including Ohio, Impromptu, Catastrophe, and Krapp's Last Tape. It will explore 'the politics of closed spaces' by using "incredible" and "non-traditional" venues like Toxteth Reservoir and the Black-E.
Adrian said: "I think people really get a buzz from being taken to places in their city that they thought were maybe slightly off limits to them. They get in to have a bit of a sneak peek at what's going on around the place and what it looks like, and they may have been walking past it for 20 or 30 years and wondered what was inside, and suddenly they find themselves inside, so you're demystifying."
He hopes to hold the Beckett Festival every three years, saying: "I think it's something that could take off. Beckett is a very particular person to engage with, he's a very interesting man, and I think more people should look at him and get involved with him. I get great solace from working with him and engaging with his work, even though it's asking you to ask some of the most difficult questions about human existence."
The actor, who shares a dry sense of humour with Beckett, recalls being "quite moved emotionally" by an all-female production of the playwright's Waiting for Godot while studying at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London as a 20-year-old. He was captured by the bleak, funny and absurd way Beckett asks the audience what it means to be human and what the point of life is.
Adrian said "it's great to see how animated people get after watching Beckett", and he wanted to share that with an audience in England. After meeting University of Liverpool professor, Peter Shirlow, at a Beckett festival in Enniskillen, he settled on Liverpool as the home of the new event.
Liverpool was an easy choice thanks to its large Irish population, long literary history, and Adrian's own strong connections. The Beatles and Liverpool were "the biggest influence" on his early life growing up in the north of Ireland, and he lived here for several months during the filming of local director Jimmy McGovern's BBC series Broken, released in 2017.
After nine months of planning, the three-day festival, curated by Adrian Dunbar and musician Nick Roth, takes place from Friday, May 6 to Sunday, May 8. You can see the full programme of plays, musical performances and lectures here and you can buy tickets here.
