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Fowler plays substitute for Giggs

Paul McCann
Friday 18 July 1997 23:02 BST
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The Liverpool footballer Robbie Fowler has replaced Manchester United's Ryan Giggs, not on the football field but on the boards of Liverpool Playhouse.

The two have swapped shirts, as it were, in a new play that was originally to have been entitled I'm Marrying Ryan Giggs.

But the curly-haired young winger has been dropped for the play's first outing because of worries about the away crowd.

The play opens at Liverpool Playhouse in two weeks and it has occurred to its producers that the entrenched Scouse antipathy towards Manchester United could affect its takings.

The comedy has been renamed I'm Marrying Robbie Fowler and all references to United have been replaced with Liverpool.

Once its run in Liverpool is finished the play will revert to its original title when it tours the rest of the country - which is where most Manchester United fans are believed to live.

The plot centres on the Ball family, where mum supports the Reds and dad is an Evertonian.

Their daughter Dixie - named after record-breaking Everton centre forward Dixie Dean - tries to keep the peace by supporting both sides. But the rift deepens and the family eventually paint one side of their house red and the other blue.

A theatre spokeswoman said: "The playwrights are Manchester United fans, but no one in Liverpool would have come to see it if it was about United.

"The real Robbie Fowler finds it all really funny and he's going to come and see it."

The play opens on 1 August.

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