My friend Bernie Carroll, who has died aged 75, was an inveterate writer of letters to the Liverpool Echo newspaper, firing off four or five of them each week over a period of about 40 years. He was labelled “the most opinionated man in Liverpool” by one Echo reporter, and embraced the title with glee.
Bernie also made a local name for himself as one of the maverick members of the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun, a gathering place for experimental actors, writers, musicians and free-thinkers that was based in an old fruit warehouse during the 1970s.
One of his chief partners in mischief there was the actor, director and writer Ken Campbell, and between them they ran the underwater theatre at Liverpool University swimming baths, where performers would go through productions dressed in full costume while breathing through snorkels.
Bernie was born in the Wavertree area of Liverpool to James, a civil servant, and his German wife, Marga (nee Theel). He was too much of a mischief-maker and iconoclast to follow his father into desk-bound government work, and after finishing at Skerrys school in the late 60s he worked as a tiler, chef, gardener, bouncer and upholsterer, before setting up his own business drawing, printing and selling postcards and posters.
It was in his early 20s that he came into the orbit of the Liverpool School as an artist, street musician and one-man band, and by his 30s he had begun to write to the Liverpool Echo, often on a daily basis. “When I discovered the letters page I thought ‘well, I’ve got a gripe with society. I’m going to write in every day,’ ” he once said. Bernie married Steph Dodds, a fashion designer, in 1994, and she joined him in his postcards and posters business until he began to wind down operations over the past couple of years.
He is survived by Steph, a niece, Michelle, and a great-nephew, Jake.
