I think we need to define what we mean by "grief". To me it means a deep sense of personal loss, the departure of someone who I'd known and loved, which incidentally is something that I have experienced on more than one occasion. To me, the idea of experiencing a similar emotion towards someone who I never knew or met at all is rather bizarre. I think what happened to Ken Bigley is monstrous, and I can understand the public feeling anger and disgust, as well as demanding that something should be done to ensure that the like doesn't happen again, but to claim that, for example, that you're too grief-stricken to go to work because someone who happens to live in the same city, county or country as you has died is preposterous.

As far as Liverpudlians and "mass grief" go, I can't see that they're any more prone to it than anyone else. Getting away from the Ken Bigley situation which is slightly different, I was stewarding at Diana's funeral in 1997, and found the whole experience frankly rather frightening - line upon line of people in floods of tears for someone who they never knew and who, as far as I could see, had made no meaningful difference to their lives at all.