The following piece appeared in the third issue of View From The Allotment End (@VFTAE) the North Ferriby United independent fanzine. Issue four of VFTAE will be on sale from 22 April 2017. Order details can be found on its Twitter page.
I’ve always thought that sport and the Silver Screen make
uncomfortable bedfellows. Seemingly just
about every day, sport provides us with a diet of drama and pathos, excitement
and despair which somehow never translates convincingly to film. Probably the best sporting films are those on
boxing like Raging Bull. Back in 1963
David Storey’s excellent book ‘This Sporting Life’, centring on the life of a
rugby league player, was made into a great albeit grim film starring Richard
Harris, but even this was let down by the action scenes. Has there ever been a decent football
film? At this point someone is bound to
pipe up with ‘Escape to Victory’ which is very much a well loved film but the
football match was ridiculous. Add to
this Sylvester Stallone playing an American in goal,
well for me this is marked down in the category of guilty pleasure. I will keep trying to find a decent realistic
football film, but I doubt there is one, the natural fluidity of the game is so
difficult to capture convincingly. That
is not to say football cannot provide a great cameo in a movie.
At various times someone gets the idea to make a big screen
spin off of some successful comedy show.
These have proved to be hit and miss affairs over the years raging from
downright awful (On the Buses) to fairly decent (Porridge). In the film version of Porridge a football
game provides the central spine of the plot.
Bill Oakes is half way through a 12 stretch for armed
robbery and wants out before his stash is spent by friends outside. The man to get him out, of course, is the Mr
Big of HMP Slade, Genial Harry Grout.
The cover for the break out is to be a football match between the lags
and a team of celebrities organised by Grouty but of course that would be
suspicious so he decrees that Norman Stanley Fletcher should plant the
idea. An offer he can’t refuse. This he does by chatting to the new screw Mr
Beal whilst they are watching the prisoners play a match amongst themselves. Football is good for the lads “it teaches
them about life; give and take, fair play, let the best man win and…put the
boot in E wing!” Real Sunday League
touchline stuff. He tells Beal that the
lads could do with a morale boost and that 20 years of supporting Orient had
left him disenchanted with football. (In
the series Fletcher goes to see Spurs which provides an odd anomaly). Beal passes the idea to Mackay who then
passes it to the Governor and the wheels are in motion.
Fletch is appointed the lags team coach and then follows
training scenes on a heavy snow covered pitch with big boots, heavy cotton
rugby style shirts and big shorts. It
looks bloody cold and hands are withdrawn up sleeves (whereas now days some
pros are wearing gloves from September!)
Not quite jumpers for goalposts but proper old style football (the film
being made in 1979). As may be expected
the football skills are terrible with Oakes particularly bad, providing an air
kick worthy of Jamie Vardy’s recent effort against Hull City, but he must be in
the team! Fletch remarks that they are
not short of stoppers but lack creative midfield flair. Could new boy Rudge provide this? “...he had a trial for Brentford, before he
had a trial for shoplifting.”
No stars appear in the celebrity team – they were hoping for
Diddy David Hamilton, Jimmy Tarbuck and one of the Goodies. They end up with a “weatherman, 8 small parts
and a Widow Twanky.” Being short of a
man they have to borrow a player – cue Mr Beal and then you know he is going to
get a walloping off the lags. Oakes
feigns injury to leave the field and in the changing room swaps clothes with
the coach driver (played by Gordon Kaye in his pre René Artois
days) who is in on the plan. Lennie
Godber then manages to head the post at a corner and becomes concussed and is
taken to the changing room by Fletcher.
Having discovered the breakout plan Oakes forces them at gunpoint to go
with him. Being close to the end of
their sentences they don’t want to go and the remainder of the film is their
exploits to get back in prison once they are dropped off by Oakes who heads on to
Dumfries to lie low.
Oakes was played by Barrie Rutter OBE who is a son of Hull, a fellow former Greatfield High ‘inmate’ and we also share
a birthday! In the 1970s Barrie worked
with the National Youth Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company which is a
fine acting pedigree. In the 1980s he
did films and TV (does anyone remember ‘Astronauts’ on ITV?) However he is probably most well known as the
founder and creative driving force behind Northern Broadsides a theatre group
based in Halifax. The company’s aim is
to provide “Northern voices, doing classical work in non-velvet spaces” and
having seen a number of their productions my personal view is that they do this
very well. They will perform anywhere
from proscenium and in-the-round to castles, churches, cattle markets, train
sheds, post-industrial mills and riding stables across the UK. Most of all it is the language; the cast
perform in their own natural voices demonstrating the richness and muscularity of the
Northern voice.
Starting Northern
Broadsides must have been a risk, did you every have doubts or sleepless nights
over it?
Creating Northern Broadsides taught me one great lesson,
naïveté was courage! I didn't come from
nowhere asking people to back a new young kid, I was 44 years old and had a
decade of playing leading roles at the National Theatre, besides a CV that
stretched back to 1968, but I knew nothing of the process needed to excite and
incite those who could provide funds to allow me to realise my production
values! The profession knew who I was;
knew my mettle, my style, my voice, my passion and once I'd made it known, my burning
desire to gather an all Northern cast to perform a classic play. Enter my skills to cajole, to recognise and
tease funds out of the Arts Council, to receive vast support from my acting
colleagues and friends, to be forever blessed with family support,
encouragement and sacrifice and finally to land in the bosom of a timely Festival
in my home town of Hull, the 1992 celebrations to recognise the 700th
anniversary of becoming a City. Plus the
gift from Bradford Theatres of a support team and Office space in Dean Clough
Mill in Halifax and I was launched. The
title was chosen, Richard the Third by Shakespeare, the name of the company and
the emblem of the rampant white boar appropriated from the banner of the
historical King showed the right kind of pugnacity that people were experiencing
from me as I ploughed forward. My idea
was a revolutionary thought in 1991. Britain
was entering a crippling recession, what idiot would seek funds to start a new
company? Some thought I was mad, some
deluded and some even thought it was an early April Fools scam. None though, once they listened to me doubted
the passionate bloody-mindedness I displayed. I never once had a sleepless night thinking
the idea was rubbish, rather the restful slumber of steely determination and
springing up the next morning with renewed vigour to take on all-comers. Something worked, we are 25 yrs old this year!
Sweet circularity with Hull's year as
City of Culture; Hull where it all began in a repair Boatshed on the Marina.
The Porridge cast
always seem to be enjoying themselves and everyone who worked with Ronnie
Barker spoke highly of him, was it joy to work on the film?
A particular group of pals working on the film of Porridge
was Richard Beckinsale, Karl Howman, Robert Putt, 2 Derek's whose surnames I
forget, myself and the rock n roller Zoot Money. For obvious poetic reasons we
were known as the Zoo. Seven of us, a
magic number. Everything went through
us; permission to film was granted via our agreement that at any time one or
all of us would be called to the set. Mr
Ronnie Barker, Fulton McKay, the Director Mr Dick Clements, the co-creator Mr
Ian Le Frenais all played their parts and conducted their subservience in true
comic dead-pan mode. We decided when to
break for lunch; when to receive make-up calls; what exact time Mr Barker would
enter our magic circle and be invited to entertain us. I confess, I very often failed to keep a
straight face; I ached with laughter, rolled with delirium and suffered fits of
excruciating paroxysms of mirth. I was
not alone. The garb of prison costumes
and the setting of Chelmsford Prison played a great part in everyone's
acceptance of the Mafia qualities of the Zoo, and Mr Barker was eventually
voted an honorary member, though some thought that he only wanted to be in our
midst to further his career, such was our hold on proceedings.
It looked bleak
during the football scenes did games lessons with the wind blowing in off King
George Dock stand you in good stead for those?
The bitter and culling winds blowing off the Humber
throughout my youth were very good preparation for the filming of the football
match in Porridge. January in
Chelmsford, in shorts and thin soccer shirts, in a Prison with no heating
inside as the recent fire had severed many basic amenities, and though
releasing the now empty premises to the Film unit could not provide any
comforts of home we huddled round portable gas and paraffin heaters. Outside in shivering, wet conditions on a
clarted soccer pitch and with all the stop/start/delay rhythms of a film set it
was not pleasant. My Humber battered
experiences provided a modicum of protection not available to softer southern
colleagues and I was grateful for its historical conditioning of my carapace.
Oakes was hopeless as
a footballer was that down to your acting ability, surely you were better than
that?
As to the match itself.... Anyone with a sprinkling of skill,
in whatever activity, knows how difficult it is to forget all coordination and
balance, all natural responses and deliberately look like an alien landing in a
tangle of arms and legs to kick or try to the spherical object hurtling towards
you! I had a fair amount of the said
skill, but didn't need them on that day (2 days actually to film the sequence,
2 freezing days!) I needed to look a prat, viewers of the film discuss!!
One incident sticks out...... I had to run from behind the
camera to join the action at one point. I was ready, the Director shouted
"action", the game on the pitch started for me to interrupt it when
my forward movement was stopped by the burly, old Advisor, the experienced
Warder keeping his careful eyes on proceedings ready to offer any advice to the
Film. "Sorry, Mr Clements" I
heard him say, "please make an excuse to stop filming, then look along the
far touch line behind me, two yards from the halfway line, three back, the
extra with the small moustache and ginger hair, he's done time. Pay him off please. When this Prison re-opens he could have
planted something today, near the goalpost or behind the changing rooms, we
can't take a chance". A small
handful only of the Camera unit heard what was said, including me. He earned his money that day!
As a tribute back to the roots of it all Northern Broadsides
presents Richard III at Hull Truck from 4 to 27 May 2017.
