How Tallulah’s got torn down

Inside the grandly turreted, former Barclay’s building on the corner of Rowson Street and Victoria Road in New Brighton, Tallulah’s Emporium is getting dismembered. Gone are the vintage bar stools and famed record player; torn down are the vintage plum curtains and ornately framed print of Boucher’s Daphnis and Chloe on the wall. Instead, a man in a bright orange baseball cap — in time to a very un-Tallulah’s kickdrum beat — thrusts his groin towards the bar, which the demolition crew and a few hangers on are emptying of its ale. 

To put it one way, Tallulah’s is getting fucked. 

This is the wake, such as it is, for Vicky Road’s most idiosyncratic space: an impromptu party called by the bar’s landlord, who hours earlier changed the locks, called in the troops and began the gutting. I’m able to view it days later, when footage of the strange and depressing-looking soirée begins to be shared by those who care about the venue, which has been operating here since 2023.

In response, Tallulah’s Facebook account drops a sorrowful message:

​“It is with an incredibly heavy heart that we share some devastating news,” the post, published on 30th June, reads. “After three long, exhausting years of tireless negotiations with our landlord, we have been unable to reach an agreement to keep our doors open.”

“This decision was entirely out of our hands,” they continued. “Despite us holding a legal charge against the building for a personal debt he owes us, the landlord has made the choice to evict us, completely disregarding the blood, sweat, and tears we have poured into building this beautiful space.”

The responses beneath the post are almost uniformly sympathetic, with customers lamenting the loss of “a breath of fresh air for the area” and “the family” regulars have built there. Some take up the original post’s invocation of “greed” and rail against their cruel landlord – none other than New Brighton stalwart and Rock Point Leisure Ltd founder, Dan Davies.

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Regular readers may recognise that name. Dan was the subject of a story of ours back in May, after positioning himself as a public critic of Birkenhead music venue Future Yard. The puppet-wielding (Dan is known to make papier-mâché effigies of his enemies, such as local councillor Sue-Powell Wilde), trash-talking entrepreneur, credited by many with almost single-handedly reviving New Brighton with pubs and bars like the James Atherton, Rock Point Records and Riptide, is a big character — so much so that it sometimes feels like Wirral isn’t big enough to accommodate anyone else. 

Judging by previous articles in the Echo, La Vida Liverpool and others Dan has usually enjoyed a good relationship with local media, even if he’s made it clear that he didn’t appreciate our previous story. But since then, hard feelings have been put aside while he works on a new, all-consuming project: taking down Tallulah’s.

Long before Vicky Road was the muraled, dive bar “quarter” it’s dignified as now, there was Talula’s [sic]. Bevelled into the old Barclays and named after the “ambisexual” American actress Tallulah Bankhead (get it?), the original 2007 bar was styled after a French Moroccan boudoir – a slice of Interzonal decadence among the town’s sea-faded Victorian splendour. If you wanted to put on a suit and feel like Bill Burroughs amidst fuchsia and black velvet furnishings, golden thrones, Persian bolster-pillows and multicoloured Moorish lamps without judgement, Talula’s was where you headed. 

Sadly for all Wirral-based Beat generation revivalists, the original Talula’s closed, founder Marion Thompson slapped by a £43,000 tax bill. But in 2023 the bar got a new lease of life. Wayne Thomas and Claire Davies (no relation to Dan), once manager of legendary gay club Garlands and the 051 in Liverpool city centre , convinced Dan, who owns the building along with many others in the area, to let them lay out their own vision.

The reborn Tallulah’s Emporium may have toned down its previous incarnation’s sensory overload, replacing threadbare Tangierian opulence with vintage knickknacks, but it was no less eccentric. Praised as “quirky” by the Echo, LBN Daily and La Vida Liverpool, it was the kind of joint where you could buy locally made cheeses, jamjars of wild garlic vinaigrette, peppercorned meat pies and cured pork alongside its limoncello spritzes, craft beer and porn star martinis.

And this idiosyncratic approach won the hearts of locals who found Dan’s Rock Point bars much of a muchness, their dingy saloon aesthetic now one big canvas for his frumious windmill-tilting against Wirral Council.

With its regular blues, jazz and Northern Soul nights and communal atmosphere, Tallulah’s was thus unique in New Brighton. Which leads us back to the start of this piece. Why is it being gutted? 

The answer depends on who you ask. According to the owners of Tallulah’s, Dan Davies is a “greedy” man who has torn their dreams to shreds despite owing them cash. That’s that reference in their Facebook statement to them “holding a legal charge against the building for a personal debt he owes us”.

Dan, as you would expect, has a very different view on things. Unfortunately, he refused to go on record about any of it, and didn't formally respond to our requests for comment.

As so often is the case, the truth lies in between both sides. According to documents filed on Companies House and the Land Registry, it is true that Tallulah’s co-owner Claire Davies lent Dan’s Rock Point Leisure Ltd a substantial sum of money in the form of a legal charge secured against 122 Victoria Road — the old Barclays building where Tallulah’s was housed. 

That charge, dated March 2022, is for a whopping £150,000. In practice, this means that Claire acted as a lender to Dan’s company, with the debt taken out on the building itself, similar to a mortgage. If that sum isn’t repaid, in principle this can give her a right to force repayment through the property, though the exact terms of what she is entitled to do isn’t set out in publicly available documents.

However this is different — and completely separate — from any rental arrangement between Tallulah’s and Dan, who has alleged Tallulah’s haven’t paid him rent in several years. In theory, Dan does have a right to demand his rent from Tallulah’s, even though he is personally indebted to its owners for such a large sum. In practice, it’s not difficult to see why the owners of Tallulah’s are feeling pretty hard done by that the man who owes them a lot of cash is gutting their venue and drinking their ale.

That dispute aside, Rock Point’s financial struggles are a matter of public record, which may provide a clue as to why Dan is acting now to re-claim the space. Last year, the Local Democracy Reporting Service reported on legal action brought by HMRC against Rock Point Leisure Ltd over unpaid taxes. To make matters worse, while the company is 44 days late filing its 2025 accounts, documents from 2024 show that Rock Point’s total debts exceeded everything it owns by over £1.18 million. The value of its assets also dropped by 82% between 2023 and 2024 — from £240,000 to a little over £40,000.

To keen Post readers, none of this will be much of a surprise. When we interviewed him for our previous piece, about his crusade against Future Yard,  Dan told The Post: “In a few days, I’ll own nothing”, declaring his intention to sell everything off. It’s clear the building Tallulah’s was housed in was part of this fire sale. 

But some personalities don’t go down without a fight. When we reached out to Dan for comment on this story at the end of last week, he came with an offer: if we dropped the story he’d give us an even bigger, juicier one.  So off Laurence went to Vicky Road one evening. 

Tallulah’s is locked shut and gutted, its once colourful walls whitewashed and a Karl Tatler “for sale” sign outside. After a quick berating in Rock Point’s fabulously decorated beer garden, Dan offers Laurence a beer and a scandal about Wirral Council’s insufficient enthusiasm for New Brighton’s Town of Culture bid. (Birkenhead, another of Dan’s bêtes noire, has just got through to the next round, while New Brighton has just been listed among the country’s worst seaside towns by Which? Guide.) 

After failing to convince us to drop the story, Dan hurried off for a powwow with “Paula”. This, it transpires when one of Dan’s crew accidentally leads Laurence to the meeting place, turns out to be Wirral council’s leader Paula Basnett. 

Where does this leave us? Tallulah’s is now gone but the bigger story here might concern the trajectory of the whole Dan Davies-led New Brighton regeneration project.

Sure, Dan’s employees and inner circle will attest to the fact he can be a fun person to be around. Spending time with him for a certain length is like hanging out with a loveable rogue with an infinite bank balance, who — for all his faults — is never anything less than entertaining. For some of his squad, such as those who danced on Tallulah’s grave in the shared video, his wealth, influence and gregarious nature has made him a walking licence to act however they please. In a place as protean as New Brighton, built almost literally on sand, nothing is ever certain, but it’s starting to feel like the party’s over for Rock Point. Tallulah’s, a place bohemians and nonconformists thought a second home and where they found a second family, might just be the first casualty.