REVIEW: James, Live In 2024, Leeds First Direct Arena, June 8 *****

James: “Still refulgent with fresh ideas, still adventurous both musically and artistically after 41 years”. Picture: Paul Dixon

JAMES once gave a live album – recorded in lonesome pre-Sit Down success days at Bath’s Moles Club – the acerbic moniker of One Man Clapping.

Amid much lamenting, touring circuit institution Moles closed last December, declared insolvent, but Johnny Yen from that November 1988 set list lives on. Now jauntily opening James’s Live In 2024 show, the band on the crest of the crest of a second wave after re-forming in 2007 and topping the charts with a studio album for the first time with Yummy, their 18th, in April. Rather more than one man clapping now.

They may be a Manchester band – first championed by fellow Mancunian Morrissey, sporting a James T-shirt in their early, mutually vegetarian days – but Tim Booth is a son of Clifford, Boston Spa, and Leeds is always a homecoming gig for the Yorkshire frontman now resident in Costa Rica, Central America.

He even commented on Leeds needing “cheering up”, without directly mentioning yet more Wembley woe that had befallen his ever-damned Leeds United a fortnight earlier.

Yet if you could choose one band to blow away those blues, while addressing themes of AI technology, the fragile climate and tinderbox American politics on their latest album, all the while cherishing the abiding wonder of love, flowers and butterflies, then James would be that band. Still refulgent with fresh ideas, still adventurous both musically and artistically after 41 years.

Under normal band parlance, you might call them “veterans” or a “heritage act”, but James keep reinventing themselves, reinvigorating their ever-expanding catalogue. Last year, for example, their James Lasted Orchestral Tour rolled into York Barbican with a 22-piece orchestra, Orca 22, and the eight-strong Manchester Inspirational Voices gospel choir.

A year on in Leeds, four of those choir members complemented the nine-piece line-up of James, wherein vocalist Chloe Alper, once part of Riot grrrl punk band Period Pains, and second drummer Debbie Knox-Hewson have settled in so thrillingly.

Studio Fury’s cover design for James’s 18th studio album, the chart-topping Yummy

In the only concession to ageing, Booth apologised that he and trumpet player Andy Diagram, as dandy as ever in black skirt, would not be clambering up the rafters to perform from the gods, as had long been their custom.

Nevertheless, now he’s 64, Booth still revelled in dancing as if in a loose-limbed trance, and still went crowd surfing too, burly lads at the front quick to give him a helping hand to set him on his way. His megaphone made its customary rallying appearance too, in the polemical Mobile God.

Like the band line-up, a James gig is built around a free-flowing fusion of old and new. On the one hand, Booth, Diagram, drummer David Baynton-Power, bassist Jim Glennie, multi-instrumentalist Saul Davies and seasoned keyboardist Mark Hunter and guitarist Adrian Oxaal, together with the surfing and dancing, the anthems and the crowd singalongs.

On the other, Alper’s sublime singing and Knox-Hewson’s percussive exuberance, eight out of the 12 new songs on Yummy being road-tested, and crucially, the ever-changing, ever-prescient images on the three screens that matched each song’s theme, whether with butterfly beauty, futuristic foreboding, warped psychedelics or AI manipulation.

Every last detail had significance: not least the pile of junked TV sets that accompanied Booth’s lambasting of our destructive age “f***ing up the world for the generations still to come” in his intro to Our World.

In advance, the audience had been asked to “kindly refrain from using your phones during the show”, and Booth later warned that if he faced a bank of cameras, it would hinder his performance.

These days, such a request is akin to King Canute seeking to turn back the tide, but for those who desisted, the reward came with his advice, “This is the one to film”, before the extraordinary X-ray/robot/AI graphics for Mobile God, a sandwich-board warning of a future-rock song about the perils of mobile technology.

The poster for James’s Live In 2024 tour

Over a two-hour set of 20 songs, a James gig carries the promise of the familiar – Booth’s innate sense of theatre from student drama days, a steady stream of hits, such as Just Like Fred Astaire, Tomorrow and Come Home, and the audience taking over the singing as all the band gathers in line on the stage apron for the set-closing Sometimes (Lester Piggott) – peppered with the unexpected.

This came in the form of the debut live performance of Butterfly and tour debut of Out To Get You, and in the band’s chemistry that lets them ride on “the moment”. In this case, a free-wheeling coda from Saul Davies, James’s marrow to the Bad Seeds’ Warren Ellis, violin in excelsis in Tomorrow. His dad, equally dapper in cap and buttoned coat in the band guest seats, remarked afterwards that he had never seen Saul extend that solo for so long, as much flare as flair.

Unpredictable too was the encore, by now up against the clock to meet the regulation 10.30pm cut-off point of no return. Born Of Frustration had to be jettisoned, but mystical Yummy fan favourite Way Over Our Head swayed yummily, Beautiful Beaches was irresistibly melodious yet melancholic, an eco-warning fashioned in the devastating heat of climate change, and just when Sit Down was hitting its stride, a medical emergency brought everything to a stand.

Emergency over, Sit Down stood up to its usual singalong finale, orchestrated as ever by a wonder-struck Booth, but would extra time be permitted? Oh yes, it would, and it felt like a last-minute winning goal as Laid rushed into saucy commotion.

The best laid schemes for summer satisfaction should include heading to the East Coast on July 26 for James’s fourth outdoor outing at Scarborough Open Air Theatre, following similar seaside jaunts in 2025, 2018 and 2021, with room to sit  down or stand up (box office: ticketmaster.co.uk/event/35006049E46E32D3). No doubt the set list will be different again.

Set list, Leeds First Direct Arena, June 8

Johnny Yen; Waltzing Along; Our World; Rogue; Life’s A F***ing Miracle; Just Like Fred Astaire; Ring The Bells; Better With You; Butterfly (live debut); Getting Away With It (All Messed Up); Shadow Of A Giant; Out To Get You (tour debut); Mobile God; Tomorrow; Come Home; Sometimes (Lester Piggott).

Encore: Way Over Our Head; Beautiful Beaches; Sit Down; Laid.

Neil Warnock to give donation to York City foundation from York Barbican show

Neil Warnock: Football chat at York Barbican on May 31

FOOTBALL gaffer Neil Warnock will give a donation from every ticket sold for his Are You With Me? show at York Barbican to the York City FC Foundation.

Warnock, who left his latest post at Aberdeen in the Scottish Premiere League after only 33 days as interim manager on March 9, will be in York on May 31 for a show rearranged from June 15 2023.

The record-breaking boss – a specialist in promotion chasing and relegation fire-fighting alike – has committed to supporting the community projects of each professional club in the towns and cities he will be visiting for six shows in May and June.

“I love going around the country talking about my career and football in general, trying to make people smile along the way,” says Warnock, 75, who lives in Cornwall.

“To now also be raising funds for the very important community projects York City foundation undertake makes the night extra special. It’s a fabulous club and city, and I can’t wait to be there with a few very special guests too, including some legends of the club.”

Warnock made four appearances as a winger for York City in 1978. He worked as a chiropodist for eight years and went on to be the official Guinness World Records holder for achieving the most promotions in football – eight in total – including taking Scarborough FC into the old fourth division of the Football League as GM Vauxhall Conference champions in 1986-87. He has managed 17 different clubs over 44 years, including Sheffield United and Leeds United, overseeing more than 2,000 games.

Darren Kelly, York City’s general manager, says: “We are delighted and very grateful to Neil for this generous gesture to donate ten per cent of every ticket sold for his show in York.

“Neil is a real legend of football, and I am sure York City fans will turn out in numbers to see the show and in the process support the very important work the York City foundation does in the community.”

Tickets for June 15’s 7.30pm show are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk/whats-on/neil-warnock-are-you-with-me/

Rick Broadbent returns home to find the soul of Yorkshire then and now in Now Then

Rick Broadbent: Exiled Yorkshireman, The Times journalist and author

IT began inauspiciously in the library of the old Yorkshire Evening Press building in Coney Street, York.

Rick Broadbent was 16/17, living in Tadcaster, twixt York and Leeds, and was on work experience. His first taste of journalism, in the mid-1980s.

“I certainly made an impression because I remember writing an obituary of someone who hadn’t died. Can’t remember the guy’s name, but relatively obscure. Jeremiah…”

Deep in the labyrinth of cuttings files, he found a Jeremiah, but the wrong one as it turned out. “It was clearly a baptism of ineptitude,” says the award-winning author and journalist for The Times for more than 20 years, recalling his cub reporter howler.

Rick would leave Yorkshire at 18 to study at Reading University – one of three northerners at a southern university, alongside a Scouser and a Geordie – but Yorkshire has never left him. So much so, his latest book is Now Then: A Biography Of Yorkshire, whose publication today is accompanied by a Meet The Author tour that visits St Peter’s School Memorial Hall, York, tomorrow, as well as South Cave, Malton, Ilkley, Sheffield, Farsley and Ripon.

As he writes in the book’s final words: “I live in Dorset, but Yorkshire is where I’m from and, more often than not, where I’m at. It’s a state of its own and a state of mind. That’ll do.”

He depicts a “remarkable county, swathed in world-stopping beauty and practical magic, stunning in positive and negative ways, but it’s like the Hotel California – you can check out, but you can never leave”.

The Leeds-born “exiled Yorkshireman” has written a humorously honest, unsparing, celebratory biographical mosaic, not a hagiography. “I loved the place but had sometimes loathed it too”, writes the outsider with the insider’s knowledge.

Broadbent acknowledges the tropes, the ee bah gums, the Stereotykes, as one chapter is headed – Boycott’s batting, ferret-leggers and folk singers without flat caps on Ilkley Moor – as he seeks the true soul of the Texas of England and ponders whether “Yorkshireness” even matters in a shrinking world.

Social history, memoir and reportage, high hills and flat vowels, are woven into the mosaic of Yorkshire now and Yorkshire then, ordinary Yorkshire and its extraordinary lives. “What I didn’t want to do was do a chronological history,” he says of his task of representing a Yorkshire “so large, multifarious and unmanageable”.

Hence the diversity of interviews, from rock stars (Richard Hawley) to rhubarb growers, ramblers to William Wilberforce’s descendants, William and Dan, the Archbishop of York, the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, to Barnsley bard Ian McMillan.

“I thought, you have to pool all this information, draw these disparate places and stories into themes and sections.” In a nutshell, Outsiders. Workers. Writers. Miners. Minstrels. Artists. Yorkists. Stereotykes. Champions. Ramblers. Chefs. Pioneers. Legends. Seasiders. Now. Then.

As a starting point, he dug up his own past, before turning to Britain’s largest county at large. Excavating his father’s remains from a Tadcaster graveyard in 2011, gathered in a coffee jar, to be scattered at sea in accordance with his wishes at Lamorna Cove, in Cornwall, where the Broadbents had always holidayed and family members had since gravitated south. “It was not so much scattering ashes as throwing rocks at seagulls,” he recalls with typical Broadbent humour.

Cornwall and Yorkshire share common ground: a belief that devolution and self-sufficiency from such natural riches would suit each county. “From that moment I started to think about the Yorkshire we had known. It felt like a severing of roots, and leaving again made me reconsider,” Rick writes. “Basically, I wanted to know if we had made a mistake by chucking Dad off the Cornish coast.”

Explaining the choice of a Yorkshire greeting with a nod to past and present for the title, he says: “It just seemed a natural title to me. Evocative of Yorkshire. If you live there, you have every right to gripe, but when you move from Yorkshire, your pride grows in exile; like the further away you are, your affection for the Knaresborough Bed Race grows in direct proportion to the likelihood of you never having to attend it.

“One of the key goals of the book is getting away from the stereotypes. Some of it is because of Yorkshire’s size; some of it is down to the stereotype Yorkshire personality. In that chapter, I mention the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but the best ones are by Harry Enfield and Hale & Pace.”

Stephen Millership’s cover illustration for Rick Broadbent’s Now Then: A Biography Of Yorkshire

That “’ear all, see all, say nowt”, stiff-necked stereotyping means Yorkshire has a defined image like no other county. Hence the tea towels, the Ey Ups, the Nora Battys.

“But when people talk of Yorkshire as ‘God’s Own Country’, they’re not talking about inner-city Sheffield, but the dales and moors and All Creatures Great And Small,” says Rick. “It’s a badge of honour, a badge of pride.”

Stephen Millership’s cover illustration depicts York Minster on fire (“I asked for the fire to be on there,” says Rick); a band stand, but with Jarvis Cocker, arms aloft, rather than a brass band; Kes’s kestrel, but no ferrets; colliery and cricket; White Rose flag and dry stone wall; farmer and sheepdog; viaduct  and verdant pastures. “The ferret is mentioned but only to show how people reduce this huge county to two or three tropes,” says Rick.

Battles of distant days, Towton and Marston Moor, feature as does the battle of Orgreave in the Miners’ Strike.  “I wanted to look at Yorkshire’s industrial heritage: when [Margaret] Thatcher was doing that to the mining communities, wrecking them with no after-plan. Or talking about the Grimethorpe Brass Band story, the Brassed Off story, but also the steel industry and shipbuilding,” says Rick.

“Looking at common themes, one of them is of Yorkshire being abandoned, now with HS2, and that feeds into the desire for devolution. Going back to being victimised in the Harrowing of the North [in William the Conqueror’s reign); the purging of the dales under Elizabeth I.

“These things come down to being abandoned and neglected, and I wanted to reflect that, rather than have some ee-bah-gum fun with the book. Johnny Giles said ‘being Leeds United [the “Dirty Leeds of Don Revie’s 1960s-’70s], we just had to defend ourselves’, and it’s the same with Yorkshire.”

Relegation-bound Leeds United were “a constant drain” on lifelong fan Broadbent’s enthusiasm throughout his writing project and feature as they “disappoint their fans week after week” in “the most controversial poem ever written”, Tony Harrison’s V, a Leeds work full of verses and versus and verbal V signs that strikes a chord with Broadbent’s own sentiments.

“I was a kid when it came out and I remember we giggled at the swear words at school. All those complaints came in when it was on TV. But reading it again, it’s all so relevant, with all that class division.”

You can allus tell a Yorkshireman, but tha’ can’t tell him much, as the saying goes, but Now Then will tell Yorkshiremen and outsiders alike plenty, from stories of industrial neglect and forgotten tragedies to the Bronte Sisters and Marks & Spencer, a lost albatross to a stuffed crocodile.

“I’m fascinated by that phrase, ‘it’s where you’re from and where you’re at’.  For me it means taking your roots with you, though others say it’s where your mind’s at. But I read it differently: you can take Yorkshire with you wherever you are. Doing this book, as the outsider from inside, that feeling is stronger than ever.”

Now Then:  A Biography Of York, by Rick Broadbent, published in hardback by Allen & Unwin/Atlantic Books on October 5.

York Literature Festival presents Rick Broadbent in conversation on Now Then: A Biography Of Yorkshire, St Peter’s School, Clifton, York, tomorrow, 7pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Rick’s Meet The Author tour of Yorkshire also takes in Festival of Words, South Cave Library, near Hull, Saturday, 1.30pm, sold out, with Yorkshire Tea and Cake. St Michael’s Church, Malton, Saturday, 7.30pm, presented by Kemps Books; box office, kempsgeneralstoreco.uk/pages/events.

Ilkley Literature Festival, Ilkley Grammar School, Hall B, Sunday, 3.45pm; ilkleyliteraturefestival-tickets.ticketsolve.com. In Conversation at La Biblioteka, Eyre Lane, Sheffield, Tuesday, 6.30pm; labiblioteka.co.

Farsley Literature Festival, Truman Books, Town Street, Farsley, near Leeds, Wednesday, 6.30pm; trumanbooks.co.uk. An Evening with Rick Broadbent, Ripon Arts Hub, Allhallowgate, Ripon, presented by The Little Ripon Bookshop, Thursday, 7pm; littleriponbookshop.co.uk/events.

Each event will be a talk, followed by a question-and-answer session and a book signing.

Farewell Mark Lanegan, the burning voice of a wasted generation

Mark Lanegan RIP. Picture: Steve Gullick

TWO Big Egos In A Small Car podcasters Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson look back on the life and wild times, the bands and the books, of Seattle singer, songsmith and writer Mark Lanegan.

Under discussion too in Episode 80 are Bielsa’s Leeds legacy; Sonita Gale’s Hostile immigration documentary, plus The Wedding Present and Ukrainian music in Leeds.

To listen, head to: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/10188890

‘It’s one of those shows that people love,’ says The Damned United actor Luke Dickson as Clough’s tragedy plays York NEWSFLASH…

Not having a ball: Luke Dickson’s splenetic Brian Clough in Red Ladder Theatre Company’s The Damned United

NEWSFLASH!

THE Damned Pandemic curse strikes again as tonight’s (16/6/2021) performance of The Damned United is OFF after one of the actors had an inconclusive lateral flow test. The show has been rearranged for Thursday, July 15, kick-off 7.30pm. Tickets remain valid.

BRIAN Clough lasted all of 44 days as manager of Leeds United in the cauldron of hatred in the summer of 1974.

By comparison, Luke Dickson is in fourth tour of playing Clough in his brief, bruising, self-destructive tenure when Elland Road turns into Helland Road in The Damned United.

“It keeps coming back,” says the Leeds-born actor, whose latest fixture list sends him to York Theatre Royal in Red Ladder Theatre Company’s touring production tomorrow night.

“I think we’ll have done something in excess of the 120-show mark, with me, David Chafer and Jamie Smelt in the cast, and we just keep returning! It’s one of those shows that people love.”

Ah, love. That might explain The Damned United’s otherwise baffling inclusion in The Love Season at York Theatre Royal, given how much spite and loathing, and not one heartbeat of love, pumps through the Leeds chapters of the Clough story.

The truth is more prosaic, as explained by chief executive Tom Bird: Rod Dixon’s show was booked in already when the reopening season’s theme took shape.

The cover to the alternative “War and Peace”, David Peace’s biographical novel The Damned Utd

Enfant terrible Clough despised Don Revie’s “Dirty Leeds” and the feeling was mutual, drawing Dewsbury-born author David Peace to construct a psychodrama inside the life of Brian’s head: the biographical novel The Damned Utd, published in 2006.

Tom Hopper’s film, starring Michael Sheen, ensued in 2009 under the title The Damned United, and Leeds company Red Ladder have since presented various stage manifestations of Anders Lustgarten’s darkly humorous adaptation, built around the double act of Clough and father figure/assistant Peter Taylor.

Heading deep into the tortured mind of a flawed genius, slamming up against his limits, The Damned United brings to life the beauty and brutality of football, the working man’s ballet, in a story of sweat and booze, fury and power battles. 

The performing rights were donated by Peace to Red Ladder for all of £3.68 – a penny for each page in the novel – as a show of support for the Leeds company when it suffered a 100 per cent cut to Arts Council funding.

Red Ladder artistic director Rod Dixon says: “As a story, The Damned United has it all – passion, power struggles, tragedy and a classic anti-hero in Clough – which lends itself brilliantly to theatre.

“Anders’ adaptation captures the grit, poetry and darkness of David Peace’s writing, and by charting the fall of Brian Clough and exposing what made ‘Old Big ’Ea’ tick, audiences are given a fascinating insight into the troubled but brilliant mind of a flawed genius – who, to this day, remains one of the most controversial figures in sporting history.”

“As a story, The Damned United has it all – passion, power struggles, tragedy and a classic anti-hero in Clough,” says Red Ladder artistic director Rod Dixon

Dickson loves author Peace’s definition of his character study of Clough, a figure as divisive yet as indelibly part of British Seventies and Eighties’ life as Margaret Thatcher. “He said it isn’t a photograph; it’s a portrait; it’s interpretative, not merely biographical, but creative, trying to get inside the troubled head of Clough, quite horrifically, but poetically too,” he says.

Raised in Leeds, Dickson supports LUFC, albeit without the dedication of a season-ticket holder, but he knows Clough is the Hamlet of football roles on stage. “I enjoy football, like anyone, and I’m working in a show where everyone is a staunch supporter of a club, more so than me, and everyone has an opinion on Clough, saying, ‘he did this’ or ‘he did that’,” he says.

“I thought, ‘just leave it with me; I need to find my own path to his character, so I read a lot about him, particularly his childhood, his life around football, and what gave him such a big chip on his shoulder, and that aggressive, cruel tendency to lay into people.

“It’s more about the man than the manager, which is where the drama lies, the human condition, in Clough’s story.”

Dickson’s Clough, Chafer’s right-hand man Peter Taylor and Jamie Smelt’s “everyone else” last toured The Damned United two and a half years ago, and while returning to the play in part mirrors climbing back on a bike after a fall, there is more to the revival than that.

“You can definitely play with the nuances, the intonations, to keep it fresh on stage for us as actors, playing a scene a little differently,” says Luke. “David might come up with something different, and I have to react, and we also have to find a way to slow it down, to let it breathe more, when it’s so fast paced, to find the moment.

Double act: David Chafer as Peter Taylor and Luke Dickson as Brian Clough in The Damned United

“We first did it at the Edinburgh Fringe, where everything has to be under an hour, whereas the original incarnation at the West Yorkshire Playhouse was around 75 minutes.

“Our version now runs just over an hour, with no interval apropos of Covid, and the script hasn’t changed from the last tour. I have to say there’s a fun feel to it this time, and once people are in the auditorium, sitting down, all those Covid thoughts wash away, and you’re all just there to enjoy the show.”

How has Dickson dealt with performing to audiences in masks? “Do you know, the masks haven’t affected it. You can still hear people talking during the show, saying ‘I was at that match’, because you’re playing to a football crowd as much as a theatre crowd,” he says. “Funnily enough, there are always people who stand up after 45 minutes, because that’s when it’s normally half-time!

“But back to masks, they’re becoming so commonplace now, it doesn’t really have an impact on me, and even if you can’t hear a smile, you can hear the chatter.”

On a fourth tour, Dickson is still discovering “new things” within The Damned United. “There’s such a lot to this story. How many times has this play been done in Leeds? It must be well into double figures now, but we still get good audiences. I must be eight years older now than Clough was when he was at Leeds, but I’ve still got a good head of hair!”

At the core of The Damned United is the Clough and Taylor double act, with all the highs and lows, the friendship and fall-outs, that go with such partnerships, and now in turn the bond of Dickson and Chafer.

Glory, glory Leeds United…or gory, gory Leeds United? The Don Revie squad, 16 internationals et al, before the arrival of Brian Clough

“We were talking the other day about what we might feel, in a year’s time, if other people were brought into the cast, and it would feel strange now if that happened, because we really need each other on stage,” says Luke.

“Looking at Clough and Taylor, there have been numerous books written about them, and it’s like a platonic male friendship that’s really deep running with all the ups and downs that can go with that, which I recognise from my own friendships that can feel unbreakable.

“But then you’re spending less time with them or you’re not in touch, which happened with Clough and Taylor, but because they had football within their friendship, they had to mix business and pleasure. Clough demanded such loyalty but then he had no compunction in deciding to leave Brighton for Leeds.”

The Damned United has the heightened intensity of a Greek tragedy, albeit leavened by dark humour. “It’s a tragic tale and Anders’ script brilliantly captures the central chapters within that tale in only an hour, which is no mean feat – though he would say he had wonderful source material. It’s a fantastic micro-display of friendship between two men.”

The Damned United tour is playing against the counter attraction of the Euro 2020 tournament, but on the other hand that means football is uppermost in people’s chat. “I’ll have to miss live matches, but that’s a cross I’ll just have to bear,” says Luke.

Red Ladder Theatre Company in The Damned United, The Love Season, York Theatre Royal, tomorrow (16/6/2021), kick-off 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

War and Peace as The Damned United plays out Clough’s hatred of Dirty Leeds

Not having a ball: Luke Dickson as embittered, embattled Leeds United manager Brian Clough in Red Ladder Theatre Company’s The Damned United

THERE is much hatred and not a whole lotta love in The Damned United, but nevertheless the story of Brian Clough’s splenetic 44 days as champions Leeds United’s manager in 1974 forms part of The Love Season at York Theatre Royal.

Why so? The truth, as explained by chief executive Tom Bird, is that Rod Dixon’s touring production for Red Ladder Theatre Company was booked in already when the reopening season’s theme took shape.

Enfant terrible Clough despised Don Revie’s “Dirty Leeds” and the feeling was mutual, drawing Dewsbury-born author David Peace to construct a psychodrama inside the life of Brian’s head: the biographical novel The Damned Utd, published in 2006.

Tom Hopper’s film, starring Michael Sheen, ensued in 2009 under the title The Damned United, and Leeds company Red Ladder have since presented various stage manifestations of Anders Lustgarten’s darkly humorous adaptation, built around the double act of Clough and father figure/assistant Peter Taylor.

Heading deep into the tortured mind of a flawed genius, slamming up against his limits, The Damned United brings to life the beauty and brutality of football, the working man’s ballet, in a story of sweat and booze, fury and power struggles. 

The performing rights were donated by Peace to Red Ladder for all of £3.68 – a penny for each page in the novel – as a show of support for the Leeds company when it suffered a 100 per cent cut to Arts Council funding.

Red Ladder artistic director Rod Dixon says: “As a story, The Damned United has it all – passion, power struggles, tragedy and a classic anti-hero in Clough – which lends itself brilliantly to theatre.

The book cover to David Peace’s The Damned Utd

“Anders’ adaptation captures the grit, poetry and darkness of David Peace’s writing, and by charting the fall of Brian Clough and exposing what made ‘Old Big ’Ea’ tick, audiences are given a fascinating insight into the troubled but brilliant mind of a flawed genius – who, to this day, remains one of the most controversial figures in sporting history.”

As Leeds actor Luke Dickson’s Clough and David Chafer’s Taylor head to York next Wednesday, joined by the multi role-playing Jamie Smelt, here comes a tale of War and Peace: a Q&A with author David Peace.

How did this stage adaptation of The Damned United come about?

“The original idea came up one afternoon in the Maypole pub in Ossett, back in the summer of 2014. When Red Ladder lost their Arts Council funding, the project became a bit more concrete and urgent.” 

How closely do you feel Anders Lustgarten’s stage adaptation of The Damned United captures your novel?

“Anders keeps the essential atmosphere and mood of the book, and obviously the plot itself, but he’s also made it something else, something new and something more, and which is what any great adaptation does.”

Double act: David Chafer’s Peter Taylor and Luke Dickson’s Brian Clough in The Damned United

What did you take from watching The Damned United as a stage play?

“More than anything else, for me, it was just a wonderful, humbling and exciting experience to see the original 2016 production at the West Yorkshire Playhouse [now Leeds Playhouse], to see what so many talented people had brought to the work, and then how much the audience loved and appreciated it.”

Are there things that a theatre adaptation can do that a novel or film cannot?

“Very much so, and particularly in this case; football itself, at every level, is drama, theatre and spectacle played out before a living, breathing and usually very partisan audience. This is what I feel Anders, Rod and everybody involved brought to the story which neither the original book nor the film could do.”

What makes Brian Clough such a compelling figure?

“I think we simply recognise him, in ourselves, as human beings, with all his complexities and foibles, his good side and his bad, his triumphs and his defeats.”


Why do you think The Damned United holds so much appeal with non-football audiences as it does fans of the beautiful game? 

“Well, though few of us will sadly ever win the league or the European Cup, I think many of us have found ourselves in a new job with folk who were less than welcoming, and then perhaps not handled the situation as best we might. And then there’s always the mystery: why did Brian Clough put himself in that situation; ,why do we put ourselves in these situations?”

Red Ladder Theatre Company in The Damned United, The Love Season, York Theatre Royal, June 16, kick-off at 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.