THE DAMNED UNITED
WHAT’S THE FUSS ABOUT?
 You can’t have missed all the thousands of words and dozens of pieces written about Brian Clough these last few days. Mixed up with them all have been no end of references to one of the most talked about film premieres for an age - The Damned United. Just in case anyone has just returned home from some distant galaxy, this is a film based on a book of the same name about the 44 days Brian Clough spent at Elland Road, Leeds in 1974.
The book itself caused no end of controversy when it first appeared, even though technically and in its construction it is a masterpiece. It is gripping, emotionally draining, and an absolute tour de force. Quite simply it is ‘unputdownable’. It hooked me from the very first words and I read it in one sitting. God, I thought to myself, that’s a book I wish I had written. But the trouble is; it is a fairy tale. That’s how David Peace describes it in a kind of sub-title and this gives him licence to be very creative and fanciful. It is only part fact, and the rest is fiction, guesswork, faction, and some of it downright untrue. There are conversations between real people, they existed, but whilst the people are real, with real names, the conversations are frequently fabricated and the facts distorted. The truth of actuality comes second to the unreality of a good story line.
Clough is presented as a chain-smoking, permanent drinker. This was totally untrue of him at the particular period of the book. No one at Leeds United has any memory of him burning furniture. The players may have suffered from his tongue when he was there, but today they are all united in their opinion that the book is a total mis-portrayal of him. Johnny Giles, ‘The Irishman’ portrayed as a relentlessly nasty plotter in the book, sued him and the publishers, Faber and Faber. They quietly settled with minimal publicity and agreed to change the text in new editions. Others, Revie, Bremner and Clough himself maybe, had they been alive it is reasonable to suppose, would have followed Giles lead.
Today the Clough family are hurt and angry at the picture it presents. There are reams and reams of ‘stream-of-consciousness’ stuff delving into Clough’s supposed tortured, bitter, angry mind. The foul language and expletives in these passages are rhythmical in their repetition and emotion-sapping in their relentlessness. These passages constantly hammer the reader with an intense force and abrasive power. But again, they are fiction. No way did David Peace have any real idea what was going on in Clough’s head. But the trouble is, way down the line in years to come, all this misrepresentation might well be how Clough is remembered in some peoples’ minds.
And yet despite all the glaring inaccuracies and fabrications it is seen as the greatest football novel ever written (not that there are many), if not one of the greatest sports novels ever written. And that is how it must be seen, as a novel, as fiction; but it is so cleverly written, that by the end you can be forgiven for thinking it is fact.
I’ve lived in Leeds now for over 40 years and when Clough began his 44 days at Leeds United I was working in a primary school in the city. One of the staff there knew the Madeley family well and Paul Madeley was one of the great Revie team. Snippets of gossip would trickle into the staff room… the things that Clough had said when he first met the players… “You were all cheats… chuck your medals in the bin…” The little tricks they played on him… Clough arrived one morning to find the manager label pulled off the door and lying on the floor. His stay there was doomed as soon as he opened his mouth. Until that fateful moment, the players were wary and cautious, but not entirely anti-Clough. They had seen what he had done at Derby. But this time he was without his right hand man, Peter Taylor.
What I still remember all these years later, as if it were only yesterday, is the night he departed having been sacked. I was there. I was deputy-head at the school, ran a school team, and me and some of the dads took the team down for a tour of the ground that evening. We arrived to find lights, BBC and ITV vans, an absolute scrum of reporters and photographers, and wondered not unreasonably, what the hell was going on. Somehow we still found somewhere to park and as we attempted to get into the main entrance saw Clough come out under the full glare of all the spotlights and flashing cameras, get into his car as reporters shouted questions at him, then somehow reverse his car and drive away.
I honestly can’t remember if our tour carried on or not. But, I can say I was there; the night Brian Clough was sacked at Leeds United… fancy that. It’s something that not many people can say and the hullabaloo now surrounding book and film takes me back to that theatrical night, for that is what we all said it was, pure theatre and absolute drama.
It’s interesting that a new book by Colin Schindler is out, (or due), written on similar lines to The Damned United, about the relationship between Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison at Manchester City in the 1970s. I suspect there may be more similar ‘faction’ books in the pipeline. There’s plenty to go on… the short, tempestuous relationship between Terry Venables and Alan Sugar at Tottenham would be a beauty.
As someone who has written two football biographies I hugely admire The Damned United and the power of the writing. I read it and spent a few days thinking that maybe here is a way to write about the relationship between Bob Lord and Harry Potts at Burnley, and then a third person coming into it – Jimmy Adamson. Herein would be a book about relationships and their sad decline. There is a basic story here worth the telling but what a disservice it would be to all three of them to fill it full of inaccuracies and fictionalised make-believe. I can well imagine some of the conversations that might have existed; the promises made, and the promises broken. In the two years that Harry Potts was General Manager, or whatever his title was, he was a marginalised, lonely man, unwanted at Gawthorpe. When did Bob Lord first decide to replace him with Adamson, and why? How long did Jimmy Adamson spend persuading Lord that he should take over? Where did money come into all this and their Masonic relationship? What a story you could weave of plotting, manipulation and backstabbing. But how much of it would be true? When you use real people and real names and select the events, where does fact end and fiction begin? Using imagination is easy. Prefacing it all by saying that this is a ‘fairy story’ gives licence to fabricate. Finding the truth is far more difficult.
And then, into the mix of Potts and Lord comes Jimmy McIlroy. Why was he sold in 1963? It was a huge story then when it broke, and it rumbled round the national Press for weeks with even Matt Busby and Tom Finney writing about it. Maybe Danny Blanchflower got nearest to it. It’s the biography I’m working on now and I’ve delved into the background to the sale till I’ve gone dizzy. And yet, I’m no more certain now than when I started as to what it was all about. I’ve found no end of possible reasons, stories and rumours, some of them plausible, others quite shattering. But there isn’t one I can say with utter certainty that this or that is the correct reason. What fun I could have writing a David Peace type novel about it all. But how many people would I hurt and upset along the way?
Meanwhile, the film of The Damned United is said to give a much more sympathetic rounded view of Brian Clough. I haven’t seen it but will certainly do so. And if you want a wonderfully entertaining picture of the man then read Provided You Don’t Kiss Me by Duncan Hamilton (Twenty Years with Brian Clough).
“Look Duncan you’re a journalist. One day you’ll write a book about this club, or, more to the point, about me. So you may as well know what I’m thinking and save it up for later when it won’t do any harm to anyone.”
Those are the words that appear on the back of the first edition of Hamilton’s book. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Hamilton put them there as a deliberate antidote to the Peace book. Hamilton did know what Clough was thinking and Hamilton’s book does no harm to anyone. It’s the story of Hamilton (a young awe-struck but determined rookie reporter) and Clough (the successful, established, brash, huge, provocative personality) and their personal relationship as much as anything else. David Peace never knew what Clough was thinking and his book (tour-de-force though it is) does immeasurable harm.
Hamilton was a journalist at the Nottingham Evening Post for twenty years (hence the title) and now works in Leeds for the Yorkshire Post. His book and the Peace book need to be read together. Then, you make your own comparisons and reach your own conclusions. But what you cannot escape is that one is fact, one is fiction.
If you want a damned good story, ‘a good read’, then read Peace’s book. But it was Hamilton’s that won the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year award. It is his book you need to read to understand the real Brian Clough.
Dave Thomas March 2009
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