THEY NEVER LISTEN. THEY NEVER LEARN.

If you've noticed the police and charities tweeting a lot about domestic violence lately it's because they know from experience that this kind of violence escalates sharply during the world cup, especially if England loses. Of course they've lost and so comes the chilling consequence for lots of women. The artist Debbie Elvis Sharp is staging a hard hitting (literally) art flash mob across three cities to dramatise this horrendous state of affairs. Read the description of the event and if you can please attend, support, share or send to people who you think would like to take part. The cities are Manchester, Leeds and Bradford. Link here. Make some noise. 

Away From Home, re:play festival 2014

This relentlessly energetic one-man play is less My Beautiful Launderette meets the Premier League, more Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads on speed.

The subject is homosexuality and football, a topic dramatised by Kyle (Rob Ward) who leads a peculiar but normalised life as an out-of-the-closet football devotee and secret gay sex worker. When a famous opponent player turns out to be a new client, Kyle’s carefully controlled life begins to tilt out of his control.

Theatre on social ‘issues’ is too often toe-curlingly earnest but Ward carries Away From Home with enormous presence, Scouse charm, unapologetic language and a dose of well-observed humour. Don’t let the ‘one man’ performance fool you, the stage is peopled with secondary characters that are brought to life only through Ward’s dynamic telling.

If the script is occasionally a little baggy it doesn’t hamper the performance and there are genuinely exhilarating moments. When Kyle sees his lover in a nightclub draped over an attractive would-be WAG he drunkenly hurls a well-known chant from the stands in his direction, now riddled with convoluted meaning: Who are ya? Who are ya? It’s a terrific moment and should have been the title of the play.

Ward misses neither a beat nor a line, devouring the set as he relays his unlikely tale to an unseen lover and by proxy to us.

No spoilers, but as in life there are no neat resolutions, and still no footballers out of the closet. Let’s hope when the real thing happens there’s a lot less drama.


There are two performances tomorrow,Saturday 1st of February, tickets here.

Having the Blues

On my travels abroad I often find myself chatting drunkenly with the natives. When they ask where I’m from I need never worry that they won’t have heard of either my hometown Blackpool (‘Aha! The rollah coastah, ey?’) or my adopted hometown of Manchester (‘Aha! Manchistah Oonited, ey?’) Particularly with the latter they are wont to shake my hand and sometimes to cheer and one time to put their arms about me and make me bounce up and down on the spot in a sort of a jig. After they’ve bought me a drink I cautiously explain that I don’t really do football and I watch them wondering why else anyone would live here. In fact, it’s perfectly possible to live a football-free life in this football-obsessed city, most of my friends do it with ease, and I do it too. I am after all the man who found himself in a crowded pub one Derby Day wondering when horse-racing got so popular.

Needless to say I was not prepared for the round-the-clock chanting that began outside my window Tuesday night followed by a sea of royal blue man-made fibres and more colours of puke than I’ve ever witnessed on our fair streets. Imagine my horror when I discovered this was the day before the match! One hundred thousand fans in the city filled every pub, bar and public space from here to Salford and back. That’s a whole lot of bladders. In truth, lack of sleep and traffic jams aside, I loved the drama of it all!

‘I saw one doing a poo in the middle of the pavement! In daylight!’

‘One of them climbed up the front of the Town Hall!’

‘The girls have painted their tits blue!’

‘The trams are cancelled, the motorway’s closed, there’s a police helicopter landing in Sackville Park!’

I think that last one was untrue. But it’s all so exciting! Sirens all night, people hanging out of windows, the singing, the sunshine, the News, the helicopters going round and round and round …

And then it’s morning, and there actually is vomit all over your doorstep and human excrement in the park and a bloke knifed, in the back for God’s sake, and a thousand thousand Spar bags clogging up the trees, gutters and doorways and you realise that football will always find you in the end.