Bill Kenwright: The son of the stage turning Goodison into his very own theatre of dreams

Today the team he loves and is patiently rebuilding meet their greatest rivals - and he can't wait. Nick Townsend talks to him

Just another frantic, occasionally fraught morning in the top-floor Maida Vale office of Mr Theatreland, Bill Kenwright. His production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, with the lead taken by the Irish Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, has just opened for a Christmas run at the Liverpool Empire. Word has come through that the star has walked into a prop and cut his head. Fortunately, there is no serious damage.

Then he receives first reaction to Edward III, one of a five-play season by the Royal Shakespeare Company which had opened the night before at the Gielgud Theatre in the West End. One of his staff delivers a review from the London Evening Standard. It is not a propitious notice. "History has rarely seemed as dead as it does in this lacklustre production..." it begins. There is a slight grimace, followed by a shrug. "If you get one that's sniffy, well, not everything is good in life," he says. "And we've had enough rave reviews over the last few days."

And so the messages continue to arrive for the prolific producer whose first commandment is that he is kept fully informed of every development on his worldwide stage. Somewhere among the missives is a reminder from his long-time partner, the actress Jenny Seagrove, that he must not forget to take his tablets. The following day, Kenwright is due to go into hospital for investigations into stomach pains he has suffered. "It's probably an Everton tummy," says the club's vice-chairman and majority shareholder. "Do you know, I can have problems with shows all over the world, but it's only the football club which really gives me stress."

It is tempting to suggest that an ideal restorative after the hospital trip would be triumph in the Merseyside derby at Anfield this afternoon. Few can recall when Everton were above Liverpool at Christmas, a position which victory today would confirm, and who can remember when the blue element of the city were eulogising their manager while the red contingent were casting doubts over theirs?

Certainly not two-and-a-half years ago when, after protracted negotiations, the one-time Coronation Street actor, born in war-ravaged Liverpool in 1945, bought out Peter Johnson to acquire the troubled club. Yet suddenly Everton have emerged from, seemingly, an eternity in darkness. And you gain the impression they are still blinking in the strong light, taking everything in, enjoying the wonderment of it all, and wondering whether they will ultimately reclaim the prestigious status they enjoyed back in the Eighties under Howard Kendall.

"We've been away too long," says Kenwright. "And yet, as I say that to you, there is a fear about it as well, that it might all end. We all know how quickly it can change. As any Evertonian will remind you, it was one back-pass by Oxford United's Kevin Brock which was seized by Adrian Heath that changed the whole of Everton's 1980s football culture."

This time the catalyst has been the appointment of David Moyes, a 39-year-old Glaswegian, in March. It followed four years in which his compatriot Walter Smith had struggled to raise the club from the post-Eighties slough. "Walter brought a stability and dignity to Everton that it needed at that time," reflects Kenwright. "And though it was a difficult moment, he made it [Smith's dismissal] as dignified and as easy as he could. He even discussed his successor. It was Walter who recommended David Moyes."

The club had 29 points when Moyes arrived, and Evertonians were starting to panic about relegation. Moyes was unfazed. In his first game Everton scored in the first minute against Fulham, won that and another three and eventually finished 15th. This season, they have already amassed 32 points. "Whenever I interview anybody to work for me I say, 'Listen, this isn't a job. This is your life'," says Kenwright. "And that's the attitude David has. He's driven.

"And yet, you know, there's driven at all costs, with no humanity, and there's driven with a kind of destiny about it. That's what David's got. Quite simply, he impressed me straight away as a winner. He told me, 'I'm not going to sleep unless my team win. If they lose, it will keep me awake.' In show business the dream is to hire directors who I know can look after everything: cast, sound, lighting, music, everything. David is football's equivalent."

Still, the question of Moyes's transfer budget will persist, particularly if Europe becomes a plausible target. Will the club speculate to accumulate? And, more pertinently, could refusal of sufficient funds offer Moyes an excuse should a better-endowed club covet him? "It wouldn't be an out-of-the-blue kind of conversation," says Kenwright. "We have the sort of relationship where we'd be talking every step of the way. If it even looks like Europe, then we'll plan for it. I just believe he's there for the long term. I don't believe that this is just a stepping stone for him. I believe that David Moyes will be one of the world's, not just the Premier League's, great managers, if he's not that already. And it will be with Everton."

He adds: "I know we've got no money at the moment, but David and I will try and work a way round it. I've spent a lifetime in show business, where you don't particularly have the money in the bank to do a deal with, say, Jessica Lange, but you look at the success that might bring. In football that's dangerous because you can't spend money you haven't got in the hope of success. But you can be creative with finances without being dangerously creative."

What Kenwright has promised is that plans to relocate to the Kings' Dock site, with capacity increasing from the 40,000 at Goodison to 55,000, will not jeopardise Moyes's plans. Kenwright is at present in discussion with two consortia with the aim of raising £65m towards the stadium, which would also be part-funded by the city council and the North West Development Agency. He is confident of success, but adds: "If it was going to affect Everton and David Moyes, and the progress he's making, then we should not do it."

Progress in Kenwright's considered view would be top eight. Europe? "Heaven". He adds: "I talk to everyone at the club and the word I get from everyone is that this is an absolutely committed squad. You know when players aren't committed. It's like they want to be injured. 'Oh, I don't fancy that one.' This is a club where they want to play. [Mark] Pembridge has been playing like a world-beater; Unsy [David Unsworth] I know is devastated that he's got this ban. Kevin Campbell, the crowd got on his back because they felt he wasn't up for it. Now, he's super-champ."

And then there's Wayne Rooney, whose desire has yet to be questioned. Kenwright, who was first drawn to Goodison by his childhood hero, the centre-forward David Hickson, is decidedly proprietorial about the Everton prodigy, although you can scarcely blame him.

"It's a bit like the Liverpool Sound," he explains. "It was no coincidence that it all started on Merseyside in the Sixties because the merchant seamen used to bring in those great American hit records. We'd go down to the docks, Paul McCartney, and the rest of us [he went to school with McCartney and George Harrison], and buy the records. It inspired those lads. And the music they made was our own. It couldn't have happened anywhere else.

"So, when I first saw Wayne Rooney, I remember getting that same feeling. I thought, 'Jesus, he's ours. I don't want anyone else getting their hands on him.'" And dare they even contemplate the sale of Wayne And His Amazing Multi-Talented Dream Technique? Well, it has to be asked. "That would be a mad thing to do," scoffs Kenwright without hesitation.

Are you saying that as businessman or fan? "Both," he says with a guffaw. "If someone came along now, I'd say it's nothing to do with me; the manager will always have the right to make that decision. But the attitude at the club is money couldn't buy him. His first touch is like nothing I've ever seen. The nearest I can think of is Len Shackleton. When he got the ball it was like it was glued to his foot. There's a bit of Gazza, of Peter Beardsley, maybe Kenny Dalglish." If there is a niggling doubt about him, it is the comparison constantly made with Gascoigne, another of Everton's sacred sons, albeit briefly.

Sceptics are already contending that Rooney's career could suffer ultimately from similar "distractions", particularly as he hails from one of the city's more notorious areas. "Gazza to me is like a son, maybe a lapsed son, but I'm devoted to him. He made one big mistake and that was not staying at Everton last summer, because that's what David wanted him to do," says Kenwright. "But that aside, you can't compare the two as characters."

Kenwright, who nicknamed Rooney "The Kid" after a child actor with a crumpled face called Jackie Coogan, who starred in a movie by that name, stresses: "Wayne and his family are anything but rough. I'm president of a drug-dependency clinic, within walking distance from his home, so I know that area and it does have its problems. But I know he went to a good school and has a good family. Wayne is an Evertonian, he's got his feet on the ground, and he feels secure. He's anything but a typical yob or a scally. That's why the publicity about the chewing – I'm sure now he regrets that he was doing it on telly [at the Sports Personality of the Year award show], but he's a kid – is so unfortunate."

He adds: "Off the pitch, he does absolutely everything that's expected of him, and more, from hospital visits to happily signing autographs. He's just a lovely lad from a decent family. He's got two brothers, Graham and John, and they're smashing youngsters, too."

He recalls an occasion when he was outside Goodison before a match last year. "I always go outside the ground and talk for half an hour to the fans. A lad came up to me and said: 'Where's Rooney? He's not in the team.' I said: 'No' and mumbled something about it being too early for him.

"The lad persisted: 'He should be on the bench.' 'I don't pick the team. Manager's job.' 'You should be playing him.'

"I said: 'Listen, we can't play him. He's still at school. Not allowed.' 'No, he's not. He left on Friday – yesterday.'

"I said: 'How do you know?' 'I'm his brother... and have you got a spare ticket?' I gave him a ticket, too, but it did make me laugh. It was Graham, who looks just like Wayne. Both were at our academy, John still is, but Graham left because he wants to be a boxer."

The Rooney family were invited to the opening night of Joseph. They probably don't realise that, but for that show, their host would still be just a another fanatic in the stands. "You know, every morning of my life, I say, 'Thank you, God, for Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Tim Rice, Willy Russell and Joseph'," says Kenwright. "That was what brought me Everton."

And all the tribulations that go with running a football club. Yet, just try and take it off him. With Moyes around it's like football's version of Blood Brothers. Watch it run and run.

Biography

Bill Kenwright CBE

Born: 4 September 1945 in Liverpool.

Position: Everton FC vice-chairman, 1998 to present.

Career: 1964-1970: Actor: including parts in 'Coronation Street' and 'Z Cars'. 1970-present: Theatrical impresario: had the rights to 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat', before selling them back to Lord Lloyd-Webber for £1m; also produced the musical 'Blood Brothers', and the stage version of 'Shirley Valentine'. A lifelong Evertonian with a genuine feeling for the history of the club. Leader of the aborted consortium that lost out to Peter Johnson in 1994.

Also: Awarded an honorary doctorate by Liverpool John Moores University in 1994.