Sometimes I imagine myself as that bloke in the brilliant “Boom chicka chicka wah wah� Lynx deoderant advert standing in his vest and and undies with the saucy minx bumping and grinding before him
But instead of declaring “I love your country� the words “I love this city� spring out.

Just such imagining crossed the mind last Sunday lounging outside the most excellent Brewery Tap, the pub which forms part of the Cains brewery on the edge of Toxteth.
With the sun cracking the flags tempered by a soft warm wonderful breeze blowing in off the Mersey, a heady pint of Cains 2008 ale in hand and occasional Pub Column visitor Lady Penelope of Pensby for company, everything felt all right in the world.
Generally, there’s a very good vibe in the city at the moment especially when the memory stretches back 25 years to Liverpool’s darkest days when the area around the Tap was a blighted wasteland of deprivation.
The brewery’s fortunes have changed a lot for the better in that time too and since 2002 when Cains was taken over by the enterprising Dusanj brothers it’s become a giant of a brand bringing lots of kudos to Merseyside.
Someone else who thinks so too is the writer Chris Routledge, whose latest work is Cain’s: The Story of Liverpool In A Pint which is scheduled to be published by Liverpool University Press.
“There’s an amazing corrolation between the fortunes of the brewery and the city itself,� says Yorkshire-born Chris, who moved with his family to Merseyside as the new century dawned. “If you look especially at the way things were in the 70s and 80s the city and brewery were in a terrible state whereas now things are really looking up for both of them.�
The 38-year-old author’s core inspiration is Robert Cain himself who died 100 years ago.
Cork-born Cain was one of our greatest ever characters. From humble origins he became the rags to riches mogul who began brewing in Liverpool around 1850. He owned the Stanhope Street brewery that shares his name and built two of its greatest pubs The Philharmonic and The Vines or Big House on Lime Street.
When he died at the age of 82 he left a personal legacy of over £400,000, £28m by today’s valuations.
“It’s a personal story of one man’s success against the odds but it is also a story spanning almost two centuries about the city of Liverpool itself, its wealth and poverty, rise, fall and reinvention,� says Chris who has nearly completed thebook’s first draft
“But it is also the story of the city’s people and their unique spirit.�
Since the turn of the millennium he believes that this reinvention and revival has quickened remarkably in the city and the brewery especially with the Dusanjs as its driving force.
He adds: “You could say that there are enormous parallels between Robert Cain and the Dusanj brothers. Cain was an Irish immigrant who started off with absolutely nothing and when the Dusanjs father arrived here in this country from the Punjab in the early 1960s he had virtually nothing as well.�
Chris, who has settled in Aughton, is also a big fan of the city and its people likening it to that other great survivor with a history of success from immigration and integration, New York.
“When I arrived I’d heard those stories about this being a terrible place.
“But as it turns out it’s fantastic. We love it here.�
Another case of “Boom chicka chicka wah wah� then.

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