Try to imagine Sir Laurence Olivier treading the boards in an am-dram village hall production. Or Pavarotti belting out karaoke classics in the Dog and Duck.
That’s what it was like to witness the mighty Tottenham Hotspur turn out at the Marine Travel Arena in Crosby yesterday.
And forget corporate boxes or plush hospitality suites – the lucky few locals whose semis overlook the muddy pitch managed to watch the match by perching on their potting shed roofs or straddling their garden fences.
This being one of Merseyside’s more affluent suburbs, some sipped glasses of chilled Prosecco (one young woman even had a strawberry in her glass, noted the BBC’s eagle-eyed pundit Dion Dublin).