Inside the new dream factory
From winning the pools to making movies, the Littlewoods building is being transformed
An army of coupon checkers would sort through millions of slips each week.
Big money wins transformed lives.
Twickenham Studios plans to create a new film complex on the site.
The paint is peeling and the clock stopped years ago, but like the Liver Building and the city’s two cathedrals, this is a Liverpool landmark.
Lynn Saunders (L) and Lynne McCarrick meet for the first time outside the vast, art deco building just to the east of the city centre.
Lynne McCarrick worked here 50 years ago - when it was home to Littlewoods Pools.
“I remember I was walking up this driveway being filmed.
“There was a voiceover: ‘This is 17-year-old Lynne Robinson.’ Robinson was my maiden name and my job at the time was to make the training videos for the staff.
“I appeared in quite a few of them because they said I was photogenic.”
Lynne McCarrick in the 1960s
Lynne remembers the men who ran the Littlewoods empire - John and Cecil Moores.
“It was a factory floor, but the Moores family didn’t want you to think of it as a factory.
“Everyone was happy. Women were paid fairly well. Men were paid more of course, but you felt looked after.
“We looked forward to our annual trips to Blackpool. Trains were reserved for us, and it didn’t cost us anything.
“In fact, if I remember rightly, they gave us a little extra.”
The football pools still exist - though not under the Littlewoods brand.
About 300,000 people play regularly, but there was a time when well over 10 million customers a week took part in the world’s oldest football gaming business.
For some, filling in the coupons became a ritual.
It all began in 1923 in Manchester, when John Moores started selling coupons outside Old Trafford football ground.
At the time, Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald declared it a sinister means of spreading gambling fever, warning of “a disease which spread downwards to the industrious poor from the idle rich”.
But despite the warnings, “the pools” as they became known, exploded in popularity.
Famous Littlewoods winners included West Yorkshire factory worker Viv Nicholson and her husband, Keith, who scooped £152,319 in 1961.
She vowed to “spend, spend, spend” her winnings - the equivalent of more than £3m today.
The entertainer Bruce Forsyth handed over the cheque.
Before he stepped down as company boss in 1982, Sir John Moores oversaw the UK’s largest and most profitable privately owned firm - with its retailing, mail order and football pools divisions.
Lynne McCarrick is joined on this early spring day by another Lynn - Lynn Saunders.
Also a Liverpool native, she has spent the past three decades trying to showcase her city to the world.
Lynn Saunders circa 1990
Lynn Saunders now manages Liverpool Film Office - which is part of the city council.
In 2017 alone, her small team welcomed 289 film and TV projects to Merseyside.
Not surprisingly, they claim Liverpool is the most-filmed UK city outside London.
“I’ve spent my entire working life in the creative industries,” Lynn explains.
Lynne McCarrick worked here 50 years ago - when it was home to Littlewoods Pools.
“I remember I was walking up this driveway being filmed.
“There was a voiceover: ‘This is 17-year-old Lynne Robinson.’ Robinson was my maiden name and my job at the time was to make the training videos for the staff.
“I appeared in quite a few of them because they said I was photogenic.”
Lynne McCarrick in the 1960s
Lynne remembers the men who ran the Littlewoods empire - John and Cecil Moores.
“It was a factory floor, but the Moores family didn’t want you to think of it as a factory.
“Everyone was happy. Women were paid fairly well. Men were paid more of course, but you felt looked after.
“We looked forward to our annual trips to Blackpool. Trains were reserved for us, and it didn’t cost us anything.
“In fact, if I remember rightly, they gave us a little extra.”
The football pools still exist - though not under the Littlewoods brand.
About 300,000 people play regularly, but there was a time when well over 10 million customers a week took part in the world’s oldest football gaming business.
For some, filling in the coupons became a weekly ritual.
It all began in 1923 in Manchester, when John Moores started selling coupons outside Old Trafford football ground.
At the time, Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald declared it a sinister means of spreading gambling fever, warning of “a disease which spread downwards to the industrious poor from the idle rich”.
But despite the warnings, “the pools” as they became known exploded in popularity.
Famous Littlewoods winners included West Yorkshire factory worker Viv Nicholson and her husband, Keith, who scooped £152,319 in 1961.
She vowed to “spend, spend, spend” her winnings - the equivalent of more than £3m today.
The entertainer Bruce Forsyth handed over the cheque.
Before he stepped down as company boss in 1982, Sir John Moores oversaw the UK’s largest and most profitable privately owned firm - with its retailing, mail order and football pools divisions.
Lynne McCarrick is joined on this early spring day by another Lynn - Lynn Saunders.
Also a Liverpool native, she has spent the past three decades trying to showcase her city to the world.
Lynn Saunders circa 1990
Lynn Saunders now manages Liverpool Film Office - which is part of the city council.
In 2017 alone, her small team welcomed 289 film and TV projects to Merseyside.
Not surprisingly, they claim Liverpool is the most-filmed UK city outside London.
“I’ve spent my entire working life in the creative industries,” Lynn explains.
“It made us realise we had great film-making and writing talent here.
“We set up the first film office in the UK, modelled on New York.”
Lynn Saunders knows more than most what a game-changer developing the Littlewoods site could be.
“I remember the national papers saying, ‘Hollywood of the North, who do they think they are?’ But we have the history here.
“In 1897 the Lumiere Brothers filmed each other outside St George’s Hall in the city centre.
Filmed in Liverpool: Sherlock, 2009
starring Robert Downey Jr
“In recent years, the Harry Potter prequel, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, was also filmed there.
“And this year, the BBC’s A House Through Time was a great way of showing our amazing Georgian housing stock.”
And Fast and Furious 6 went into the Mersey tunnels.”
It’s very dark in places and there’s no electricity.
As they walk around, Littlewoods’ Lynne shares her teenage memories.
“My mother sent me out on a Wednesday afternoon and said, ‘Don’t come back without a job.’ And I didn’t. This was the job, here at Littlewoods.
The women enter a dingy corridor.
“This led down to ‘plush alley’ - the only bit of the building with carpet. There was a big sitting room with fireplaces. And that’s where our studios were.”
In the canteen, she remembers the live bands that used to play.
The first disc recording made by The Quarrymen - the band started by John Lennon which led to the formation of The Beatles - was aired over the sound system in 1958.
A friend of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who worked at Littlewoods, brought in the only copy of the 78rpm shellac resin disc.
On one side was a cover version of the Buddy Holly classic, That’ll Be The Day - and on the other, In Spite of All the Danger, the only song to be jointly credited to Paul McCartney and George Harrison.
Upstairs, where light pours in through vast skylights, Lynne McCarrick notices an old sign on the wall.
“‘Comp’ meant competition number.
“The date was changed daily - and the competition number once a week.
“They used to slide the corresponding numbers into those slots.”
“This is the room where everything was done. Where the winning coupons would be found and set to one side.
“Those winning tickets were then dealt with somewhere quieter.”
He’s development director at Capital and Centric.
His company is trying to make the transformation happen with Twickenham Studios.
But for him too, this project is personal.
“We are a Manchester-based company but I’m Toxteth born and bred.
“That’s about a mile away from here and my old school is a few minutes’ walk from the Littlewoods building.
“You could see the clock tower from nearly every classroom.”
It’s stood like a testament to the hard times the city has been through.
Now it’s a symbol of Liverpool’s rejuvenation.”
Is this a bit of hyperbole?
“No,” says John.
“One thousand three hundred days of filming took place in Liverpool last year - but all of that was shooting on location.
“So what happens when producers want to do interior studio shots? They go to Manchester or London.
“And with those producers goes money spent in hotels, restaurants and bars. Liverpool needs to stop that money going away.”
Twickenham Studios in south-west London - where the Beatles films Help! and A Hard Day's Night were made - has announced it will transform 85,000 sq ft of space on the Littlewoods site, including creating two giant sound stages.
One drama director and producer who has fallen for the filmic charms of Merseyside is Betsan Morris Evans.
“The main thing for me is the extraordinary variety of locations in Liverpool.”
Betsan is back in Liverpool producing a new adaptation of HG Wells’s The War of The Worlds.
Actors Eleanor Tomlinson and Rafe Spall lead the cast of humans, as Martian war machines - Tripods - attempt to conquer Earth.
She says having two sound stages at the Littlewoods site - each covering 20,000 sq ft - should make a huge difference.
They should entice bigger projects to come and encourage others to stay for longer.
“I know of productions that would love to film here but need to build sets and so can’t come because of the lack of studio space.
“The whole region is very welcoming. We've used the city and its nearby beaches and villages as film sets.”
They talk about what the future holds for this old building.
And what it would mean for their city.
“I’m passionate about this space and really believe it can make a difference to people’s lives,” says Lynn Saunders.
“My passion comes from my own experience in this industry. I left school in the early 1980s. There were no jobs. No opportunities. No colour.”
That inspired me to think that there were interesting jobs and careers out there.
I want to pass that inspiration on.”
Lynne McCarrick - Littlewoods Lynne - is just as emotional.
“It has broken my heart over the years to see this building fall apart.”
It matters to me that much.”
