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What's the story?
Sitting firmly at the centre of one of the most consistently interesting areas of the city, The White Star is a free house which, for the past 20-ish years, has been run lovingly by Alfie and Karen. And while cigarettes, whisky, wild, wild women and one time next-door neighbour Pete Burns, in Probe Records, may have come and gone, the White Star is still in ship shape.
A programme from the Empire Theatre dated 1887 features an advertisement for the White Star Carvery and bar. The pub was almost the same as it is now, apart from where the telephone is, there used to be a dumb waiter. Where the gents is, was the back yard. Upstairs where the ladies toilets are, used to be the living accommodation.
Interestingly, there were no ladies toilets in the White Star until about 1987 because this was one of the few pubs left in the city that did not allow ladies in on their own due to the numbers of prostitutes that worked in the city from the end of the Second World War until, they say, the early 1990s.
Just after the war a chap called Mr Quinn bought about five pubs in the city, he never changed the names, but on all the front windows he had etched “Quinns”. Since then real ale drinkers in Liverpool and even The Good Beer Guide have apparently called it The White Star (Quinns 2).
Are you going to mention the Beatles at any point?
Oh.... go on then. The back room of the White Star was apparently used by former Cavern DJ Bob Wooler to pay all the club's groups, including You Know Who.
Where the Beatles wall is in the back room, is where they were paid.
There are also a number of brass plaques on the front wall: one to the Beatles, one commemorating the twinning with a Czech White Star. Others mark the twinning with pubs in Norway. One with the Mets Sports Bar in Skien, and one with The Fat Lady in, er, Grimstead.
Who goes there?
Citizens of the world, tourists, office workers, building site labourers, young PR and lawyer types, Allan Williams....
What, The Man Who Gave The Beatles Away?
Yes'm. Anyone sensitive to dog whistles and familiar with Mathew Street knows that the slight Welsh former manager of the Fabs is never far away. The White Star is a A-WI hotspot, where Allan, for whom there is a lot of genuine affection, holds court with the Japanese and American tourists, keeping it real.
Actually, to be precise, he holds court in one hand and he holds a glass of merlot in the other. Always with three ice cubes, “exactly three cubes”.
What's the crack?
While other pubs in the vicinity put bouncers on the door and will not tolerate boisterous behaviour, Allan, quite rightly, is always welcome.
Occasionally, just occasionally, there is banter and machismo too. Early Friday evening is the best time to watch the sport of kings as chaps let off the steam of the week by engaging others in thumb wrestling, friendly headlocks and
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cheery tossing of one another over their shoulders (Confidential really did witness this spectacle twice last year, although perhaps we are getting mixed up with Town Hall council meetings).
But really, the crack is the people watching, decent beer and the fact that this is now the only watering hole in a very busy tourist/nightlife patch which retains a semblance of normality. Think about it.
What's yours?
The Bowland Brewery is situated close to the exact geographical centre of the United Kingdom in the Forest of Bowland. So perhaps fitting, then, that it should supply beer to The White Star, a pub which sits a tiny spit away from an auspicious point where all the ley lines of the world are said to meet. Oh yes.
Of course, the brewery does not feed the pumps of Nicky Nook, Pheasant Plucker, Bowland Gold and, of course White Star IPA, directly. Beer lines unfortunately do not flow in tributaries from deepest Lancashire, down the M6 and Edge Lane and into Rainford Gardens, but it's a thought.
I don't do beer.
The White Star does anonymous singles and anonymous doubles, but this is no copping-off venue. Rather we we refer to the generic spirits: £1.70 for a house double, which will certainly get you there after a while. Branded spirits are £2.65 for a large one, while there is just one single malt, a bottle of Isle of Jura.
Wine, the stuff that Allan drinks, comes in small bottles only. Although Aussie White flows from a more respectable receptacle, a gallon-sized optic that is regularly replenished. Those starting their evening and looking for a livener, often pop into the White Star early doors to order a “Jagerbull”, which is a “cocktail” of Jagermeister and Red Bull, before dancing off into the Mathew Street night and the Royal later on.
Entertainment?
There's a fruit machine, and the walls are covered in interesting posters and pics of Liverpool's history on land and at sea, with a whole wall dedicated to boxing greats.
But who needs karaoke, bands, bingo, when you can meet people from all over the shop sticking their heads around the door for the first time. You will always learn something you didn't know from complete strangers, and you can even play “Liverpool ambassador”, that game for two or more which involves disabusing the passing (Brit) trade of notions that the city they are visiting is all Militant, hubcaps, GBH and, er...You Know Who.
Verdict?
If you find yourself all at sea in the Mathew Street area, The White Star is the only way to travel (that's enough maritime-related wordplay, ed)
The White Star
2-4 Rainford Gardens
Liverpool
Merseyside
L2 6PT
Tel: 0151 231 6861
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