The concert in Liverpool Cathedral on the final QE2 British Isles cruise

[southfielddane]

As we assembled for the concert we were presented with images of the  QE2 on the giant video screen while the organ played.
here is some video I filmed while watching the images.

[June Ingram]

Beautiful images of our QE2 ! And the Widor Toccata - an appropriately majestic composition for a Majestic Lady !

[pete cain]

Couldn't agree more June,
 it got a lot more poignient later on when her (1 of them) paying off pennant was escourted through the Cathederal to 'in Paradesium' by Gabriel Faure, not a dry eye in the house & I wept when seeing it online, really sad.
  Never been able to find it since

[cunardqueen]

I always felt it was in every way a funeral service for QE2.

[June Ingram]

I always felt it was in every way a funeral service for QE2.

It did indeed seem that way.

[Michael Gallagher]

I thought the paying off pennant being brought in to In Paradisum would be the killer moment and it turned out to be... when I turned round to see the audience reaction there wasn't a dry eye to be seen on the immediate rows behind me...

[Lynda Bradford]

Beautiful images of our QE2 ! And the Widor Toccata - an appropriately majestic composition for a Majestic Lady !

Amazing organ music that added to the occasion.

[cunardqueen]

  I thought the paying off pennant being brought in to In Paradisum would be the killer moment and it turned out to be... when I turned round to see the audience reaction there wasn't a dry eye to be seen on the immediate rows behind me... 

Simply a brilliant master stroke of Genius  Looking back it was quite surreal we were all there to say in effect GoodBye to QE2 , most (if not all ) were passengers who were mid-way through the cruise. and already had high emotions  In the Catherdral when the Pennant  was bought down the knave no one had any idea what was coming, other than the very quiet noise from behind us, and when you did look to the isle  , for me anyway , there was the heart stopping moment l thought OMFG  its a coffin , Andew Nelder was the epitome of a look of a Funeral director.  Then l realise its not a coffin there was a brief sigh of relief and then back to the fact that your saying goodbye  For that moment in time your emotions were simply scattered to the four winds  The music was just the perfect ending for what was simply a beautiful Funeral service. 
If its any help Michael your name was discussed in glowing terms on deck that night , but you were a bit of a bastard for putting us through such hellish emotion. You were forgiven very quickly let me add .         

[Michael Gallagher]

Thank you Myles LOL

The overall aim of each concert was to make even a glass eye cry and destroy people in terms of emotion. Each was designed to take people on a reollercoaster - start off all fluffy and nice and then BOOM hit them with despair before slapping them and bringing them back with rousing traditional Last Night of the Proms stuff and have them leaving on a real high.

Works all the time - even to those who put it together, went through the rehearsals and knew what to expect!

[cunardqueen]

Out of interest do we know how many were in the Cathedral that day ?

[Michael Gallagher]

for the 2008 one we produced 2,262 tickets which was more than the 2,000 we wanted to accommodate as that would have been more comfortable for the Cathedral. But we could have gone to 2,262. We knew everyone from the ship would not go (and know for a fact that many did not bother in 2007 and 2008) but we did not keep a tally of those who actually turned up. Everyone was assigned to a block and those blocks were filled from the front to the back and we had time built in to move people forward if a certain block didn't fill so only the very back rows would remain empty.

In 2007 we produced 2,240 tickets.

In 2011 we produced 2,117 tickets.

In 2015 we produced 2,000 tickets for each of the two concerts that day.

Thanks to (interfering) management the actual ticketing process for all four concerts was different each time so it was difficult to have a system of keeping track of attendees.