The Grand Party Hotel BBC1: Inside The Shankly in Liverpool

The rooms look like something even King of Bling Liberace couldn’t have dreamt up. It boasts the most dazzling furniture, animal ornaments hanging from the ceiling, twinkling lights, secret rooms and even a whirlpool bath bubbling away at the foot of each bed.

Not only that, but there’s space for a guest and 23 of their closest friends!

Welcome to The Shankly in Liverpool, where a wild and crazy time is guaranteed for all. The deluxe décor in 48 of its unique party rooms is seriously over the top and designed for a rowdy night in – the rooms sleep six, 12 or as many as 24 people. On a weekend night its reception area looks like Piccadilly Circus.

BBC1’s new four-part documentary The Grand Party Hotel peeks behind the scenes of this raucous establishment. Filmed before the pandemic, the series introduces us to hotel guests and the managers, doormen and event planners who make the magic happen for guests who are there to let go.

‘What sets The Shankly apart is it has something for everyone,’ says co-owner Lawrence Kenwright, who is responsible for the room décor. The hotel is a magnet for Instagrammers and photographic shoots. 

Celebrities who’ve stayed include Lana del Rey, Dua Lipa, Kerry Katona and even Hollywood star Tom Hardy, who supported the Kenwrights’ homeless shelter, set up after they discovered homeless people sleeping in their car park.

It doesn’t feel like exaggeration to say the décor in The Shankly’s rooms makes the Palace of Versailles look understated. There’s an Alice in Wonderland corridor that has upside down furniture and the yellow brick road embedded into the ceiling. The Laurent Perrier room with ceiling frescos, ornate wood décor, 12 double beds, a dance floor, cinema wall and a Roman bath. 

Rooms might have secret extra bathrooms that can only be found via a code hidden in the room – if you’re lucky enough to find it a luxury bathroom is revealed featuring three copper baths filled by taps in the ceiling along with mounted (fake) animals’ heads on the walls.

‘I’ve created something totally outside the box,’ says Lawrence. ‘Guests are walking into something that is absolutely vivacious big, loud, proud.

‘Guests post photos of themselves on social media, saying, “Look at me. You’re at home watching Coronation Street and I’m sat in this double whirlpool bath.” It’s not like I have to advertise.’

With all the partying going on in its rooms, hotel staff have to keep a lid on noise levels to keep guests happy.

‘Things can get out of hand because before Covid we could have 240 people in the restaurant, 790 in the bedrooms and 1000 on the roof,’ says Lawrence. ‘Many times during summer we’d have that and that’s when a hotel goes beyond its capacity and that’s when it creaks,

‘Because my wife and I live on site we’re in the eye of the storm. I’m normally out there to make sure everything runs as smoothly as expected, and we have a security guard who’ll go around every 15 minutes to make sure noise is kept to a minimum.’

Guests can be cheeky, too. ‘They might try to sneak in their own drink or individuals who shouldn’t be there. Some you catch, some you don’t – it’s the same at every hotel around the world.

‘But I’ve learned to accept that at least two or three things go wrong in the hotel every day. Nothing fazes me anymore – which is actually quite scary!’ 

Events are what fuel the hotel’s revenue, even more so since the pandemic. In a typical year the 125-room hotel hosts up to 140 weddings and more than 1,000 stag and hen parties, plus corporate events, graduation ceremonies, tea dances and kids’ parties.

‘When it comes to parties, our mantras are “nothing can’t be done” and “the more extreme, the better,”’ says Lawrence. ‘We consider ourselves an events building that happens to have hotel rooms. During Covid, events have kept us going.

‘I worked ten hours a day throughout the pandemic LOCKDOWN? to turn the grey walls of the outdoor space into floral walls and asked local clubs, DJs and bars to host events there. We have socially distanced tables and have to keep the noise down to 75 decibels, but it meant we were at 94 per cent capacity in our rooms when we re-opened in July.’

There’s even a soap star on the staff to up the glam factor. The hotel’s senior director Kris Mochrie, made waves in Emmerdale last year playing rapist Lee Posner. Part-time actor Kris has worked at The Shankly for the past four years. 

‘I’m good at my job, but I absolutely adore acting as well,’ explains Kris, 34, who also had a role in Brookside. ‘So I had the idea that if I work my a** off at the hotel and show my bosses I’m indispensable, when an acting job comes in they’ll let me do it. And they have. Emmerdale were brilliant, too, letting me film part-time, so I juggled the two jobs.’

Kris’s hotel role is to bring to life Lawrence and Katie’s super-ambitious party plans. ‘Lawrence comes out with these crazy bonkers ideas,’ says Kris. ‘He’ll say, “In six days time we’re holding a glamping event on the roof to create buzz for the hotel.”

‘Having tents on a roof in Liverpool with the wind and rain and wooden decking? I thought, “How the hell are we going to manage it?” We phoned seven different tent companies before we found one that said they could do it. The problem was finding a way to secure the tents.

‘Most recently, Lexus wanted to do a car launch on the roof. We got a crane, got permission to close a side road and got a car on the roof. It’s all about thinking outside the box and doing things other hotels don’t.’

Sometimes it goes wrong, confesses Lawrence. ‘One of the craziest events was an outdoor Hot Tub Cinema, with 50 bathtubs on the roof. It wasn’t the warmest night but everyone got into bathtubs and got 360-degree unencumbered views of the city, watching a film.

‘At the end of the night we had to empty the bathtubs, but the drains were blocked so water drenched the events room below, which had to be got ready the next day for a wedding. You could not make this stuff up!’

Lawrence co-owns the hotel with his wife, Katie, and Christopher Carline, the grandson of legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly, after whom the hotel is named. The Kenwrights are property developers and hoteliers who opened The Shankly in August 2015. The indefatigable couple live in an apartment on-site with their four-year-old twins, juggling the demands of parenting with running their business empire.

The couple’s pillow talk often revolves around dreaming up new marketing ploys. ‘Come night-time we’re always trying to think of different things to make people come and stay,’ confesses Katie. ‘Lawrence says “We have to switch off at 8pm – it’s our family time,” but I just want to keep talking and talking.

‘He has the most amazing ideas and so do I. He’s so determined and focused and he never sleeps.’

But it’s not always easy for the hotel’s 150 workers having their bosses so close by. ‘I think the staff do absolutely feel more under pressure with Lawrence and I living there,’ says Katie. ‘At any time I can walk upstairs unannounced and go into an event and check the standards.’

Last November, Katie piled the pressure on Kris to organise an event close to her heart – her twins’ Arabella and Lawrence Jr’s fourth birthday party for 150 guests. Kris and the team organised stilt-walkers, unicyclists, superheroes and an indoor parade with a man-sized elephant puppet as guest of honour.

But Kris panicked when the piece de resistance was nearly a no-show. ‘At the last minute we couldn’t find the elephant,’ says Kris. ‘The parade was about to start and everybody was waiting, but it had got stuck in the lift. I was running around the hotel looking for it and pulled my back.’

Occasionally, however, his job is intensely rewarding. In episode three viewers will see Kris pull out all the stops to turn one of the hotel rooms into a fairytale bridal suite at the last minute. Bride and mum-of-two Kaylea Callacher was at the hotel to fulfil her final wish, to marry her partner Mark McCole, as she was dying of bowel cancer aged just 31.

‘With the hotel’s bridal suites already booked, we came up with an idea to decorate another room,’ says Kris. ‘I found out Kaylea’s favourite flowers were white tulips and went on mission to source them. I couldn’t get them in Amsterdam but luckily enough found 1,000 white tulips at a wholesaler in Yorkshire. We managed to get the room done just in time.’

It’s clear, there’s never a dull moment at The Shankly. ‘You have these massive highs and then sometimes it can be really challenging, too,’ agrees Kris. ‘It’s a rollercoaster ride.’

Lawrence is proud that his hotel welcomes everyone and has a strong dislike for the elitism of five-star hotels. ‘I don’t like the way they look down upon you and make you worry about what shoes you’re wearing,’ he says. ‘I’m a born and bed Scouser so I don’t believe in that. My overriding view is that whatever walk of life you come from, you’re welcome here.’

At any moment, behind one door you’ll find butlers in the buff serving prosecco to a group of women getting dolled up, and behind another a dozen blokes relaxing in a Roman bath on a stag do.

‘The hotel is a portrait of modern Great Britain,’ continues Lawrence. ‘At any one time we might be having a same-sex wedding on the roof, an Indian wedding downstairs, a tea dance and a baby shower. I’ve been in the lift with a hen party and also three old dears having a reunion. You wouldn’t get that in the Ritz or a Holiday Inn.’

The Grand Party Hotel, 8pm, Thursday 24, September, BBC1