The Story

Deeper complications follow when Matt discovers that the club’s “Liver Bird” singer is Ella McCabe. Although from opposite ends of the social spectrum, Matt and Ella had become playmates during their childhood when Ella’s uncle used to take her with him to the Sefton Park mansion where he was employed by Matt’s family. Both children being of a creative nature, they had spent formative years together crafting a make-believe world in rhyme and story until separated by Matt’s ludicrously snobbish aunt, Lillian.

It’s 2007. Liverpool is in a state of boom and dazed at the prospect of its own revival as it prepares to become European Capital of Culture 08.

Matthew Lightfoot (Matt), heir to a distinguished Liverpool family who amassed a fortune in the nineteenth century, is engrossed in his city’s art and history, and is planning to open his own club to promote Liverpool performing talent. Followers of the city’s thriving nightlife acknowledge this quiet, enigmatic figure as a poet and lover of Merseyside verse and song.

With the help of his friend and business partner Paul Anson, Matt finds suitable premises – The Scouse’ouse - a run-down club desperately in need of a new image and a new ethos. But his plans for a takeover are hampered by the appalling state of the club’s administration and the corruption of its manager, Lawson Phelps.

The chance meeting at The Scouse’ouse of the adult Matt and Ella is an overwhelming experience. Matt is smitten with love, admiration and grief about the past. Ella’s normal resolve is undermined by nostalgia, joy, insecurity and memory of former rejection. To onlookers, the way to the couple’s reunion seems open: at the threshold of a liberated, classless twenty-first-century, Matt and Ella have the opportunity to share their love, their gifts and the task of reforming Lawson’s dreadful club. But inwardly, the ancient class history of Liverpool joins with the pain of their own lives to hold them apart.

Can humanity overcome heredity in the battle to save The Scouse’ouse?