MA Egerton's, the tiny theatre pub by the stage door of the Liverpool Empire, has been welcoming back one of its favourite customers.
Lyn Paul, currently playing the leading role of Mrs Johnstone in Willy Russell's musical Blood Brothers at the Empire, has been visiting ever since she first did the show nearly 10 years ago.
"Marie and John who run it have become great friends," she says. "Most nights we get into there. And when my son had his 17th birthday the other day, that's where we went to celebrate. They put on a great spread for us."
It is fairly clear that Lyn loves Liverpool and Liverpool loves her. Every night, the show gets a standing ovation.
Not that that is anything new. "I have never known a night when it did not get a standing ovation," she says.
"If you get on and do it as Willy wrote it, it can't fail. There is a standing ovation every single night and it never misses."
Lyn has been a regular visitor to Liverpool for most of her showbusiness career, from her days with the New Seekers and then the cabaret days.
Despite an early start as a child actress in Coronation Street and a short spell as pop singer Tansy Paul (she changed her name from Lynda Belcher) it was in the pop group the New Seekers with another name change to Lyn Paul that she hit the big time.
She sang the lead vocals on all their hits in the early 1970s including I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, written as an advert for Coca-Cola it became a number one chart success. Another number one was You Won't Find Another Fool Like Me.
She left the group to follow a successful solo career and hit the cabaret circuit, a time when she was a regular visitor to Liverpool's clubs. "Oh, the Wookey Hollow, the Shakespeare, they were great," she muses. "I have some wonderful memories of clubs in the north but they just don't seem to exist any more. It's very sad."
