Alastair Upton, Chief Executive at the Bluecoat.It was a 7.30am start last Thursday for the Culture Company’s launch of the ’08 programme. This breakfast event was for the ‘08 key stakeholders’ and we were told it was a chance for the ‘suits’ to speak so that they wouldn’t be needed at the noon press launch. Needless to say they all popped up again at the big event before handing on to the arts team. Phil Redmond was on sparkling form, some thought him a liability but it seems to me that joking about the ‘capital of chaos’ and its well-known problems diffused the criticism. His phone went during one presentation and he had to apologize – ‘sorry, it was Robyn (Archer) on the phone to say she loves the programme’.

Who knows if she would but Fiona Gasper and Claire McColgan, who are producing the arts and participation programme, gave an excellent run through of the year. There was far too much to cover so the strands were explained and various highlights were picked out. I’ve already been on line – www.liverpool08.com - to enter the lottery for tickets for some of these (the opening event and the Britten Requiem).

I was down in London at an Arts Council event over the weekend and bumped into the chief executive Peter Hewitt who said the year is set to be ‘between good and very good’. This seems about right with work still needed to make it to very good.

The Bluecoat, as the major arts capital development for the year, will play a major part in this. First of course we have to be open. I’m not going to give an exclusive on the date (it’s already promised to 5 journalists) but we are now close to making the final decision. Kier, the builders, have said they will be ready on the date they have been saying for the last year. The architects however think they are being too optimistic (are all architects pessimistic about builders?). That said the builders are not billing us quite enough to have spent all the money needed by the finish date.

I’m sure Kier are going to tell me of a sudden surge of work about to start as they know we have a party to go to and we need to make sure it’s very good.