Showbiz soccer – The inside story of Hull’s first celebrity charity football match
ILLUSTRIOUS LINE-UP: Far left, David ‘Dai’ Bradley, star of the classic film Kes, and right, Hull City player-manager Terry Neill with Hull actress Margot Bryant, who played Minnie Caldwell in Coronation Street, stepping out onto Craven Park
Now & Then, a column by Angus Young
Celebrity football, Hull-style: The star-studded 1970 game billed as ‘Match of the Decayed’
The single column newspaper advert didn’t say much – “Showbiz soccer tomorrow, 3pm. Craven Park. See the stars.”
The first paragraph in a small accompanying article previewing the occasion on the same page in the Hull Daily Mail’s Sports Green was equally abrupt.
“You would not find any soccer club telling its prospective fans before a match that it would not be very good but the organisers of a game in Hull tomorrow are doing just that.”
Instead, readers were promised an afternoon of fun for a good cause, raising funds to keep the newly-opened Hull Arts Centre afloat.
The venue, which eventually became Spring Street Theatre, had been acquired earlier that year after a dogged campaign led by Hull-based playwright Alan Plater finally paid off. He had spent several years in the late 1960s drumming up support for the idea.
TEAM CAPTAIN: Sir Tom Courtenay, pictured in 1970 with the pet Dalmation he named ‘Waggy’ after his footballing hero
“I discovered a group of like-minded people, all equally concerned that a city with a quarter of a million people didn’t have a theatre capable of generating its own drama,” he would recall later. “Between 1965 and 1970 we raised the money and, courtesy of a friendly vicar, found a building.”
The building in question was a dilapidated former church room and parish hall in Spring Street which had been declared surplus to requirements. Plater described its location as “being in a twilight zone – behind the bus station and handy for the morgue”.
The centre opened in early 1970 with Plater’s play Don’t Build a Bridge, Drain the River! with a young Barrie Rutter, who would later found the Northern Broadsides theatre company, in the leading role. Music from The Watersons and Michael Chapman added to the occasion.
Without any council funding, the tiny 150-seat theatre space operated on a shoestring, so football-mad Plater came up with the idea of a charity match pitting Hull’s finest against a team of emerging national actors who also loved playing the game.
Fifty-seven years before the launch of Soccer Aid, Hull was about to stage its first-ever showbiz charity football match in a game between Tom Courtenay’s Hull XI and the Youth Theatre Casuals.
BILLING: The programme cover for the now legendary match
The fixture took place in October 1970 at the old Craven Park in Holderness Road with a line-up of players which still boggles the mind today.
Courtenay’s team included Rodney Bewes from TV’s The Likely Lads, Michael Parkinson (described in the match programme as a “famous writer from Barnsley – part of West Hull for the purposes of today’s game”), David ‘Dai’ Bradley who had been the child star of hit film Kes, a clutch of former Hull City players including Andy Davison and Ian McKechnie, Hull Kingston Rovers’ then manager and coach Colin Hutton and Johnny Whiteley, Alan Plater and comedian Marty Feldman – billed as appearing “as himself” without explaining what – if any – connection he had with Hull at all.
The Youth Theatre Casuals included future James Bond star Timothy Dalton, Leonard Rossiter, Ian McShane, Randall and Hopkirk star Kenneth Cope, future Harry Potter wizarding professor Michael Gambon, theatrical impresario Bill Kenwright and TV and film script writer Ian La Frenais.
As the team captain and now knight of realm, Sir Tom Courtenay recalls having to shake off the memory of watching his beloved Hull City going down to a 1-0 defeat at home to Birmingham City the previous day.
“City were all over them but just couldn’t score. We had asked Terry Neill (then City’s player-manager) to referee our game and I remember he was still very put out about the result at Boothferry Park when he arrived. He took his refereeing duties very seriously that day.”
HULL LEGENDS: Ken Wagstaff, left, for many the greatest ever Hull City player, with his lifelong friend Sir Tom Courtenay, pictured when the Tigers played in their first FA Cup Final in 2014
Running the line were City’s two legendary strikers Chris Chilton and Ken Wagstaff. It was the first time Sir Tom had properly met his footballing heroes having already named his pet Dalmatian ‘Waggy’ in honour of the Tigers’ Number 10. The two men would become lifelong friends.
“I took my Waggy to the game and he got one of the biggest cheers of the day when he was announced on the tannoy. Afterwards, Chillo joked: ‘I don’t know which Waggy has got more spots – the dog or the footballer.’
“There was a lot of silliness going on in between the football. I wasn’t any good. I never played as a child. It was too physical for me but I loved watching it.
“To be honest, I can’t remember much about the game itself. I knew all of the Youth Theatre team, they came up from London on a coach just for the match and then drove back afterwards.”
Despite the modest pre-publicity for the game, it attracted a crowd of 4,500 spectators with Craven Park hosting the match courtesy of a Courtenay family link.
MEMENTO: Some of the autographs from those who played in the match given to Alan Plater’s son, Steve
“Rovers’ chairman at the time was Wilf Spaven, a fish merchant, who was my Aunt Agnes’ husband,” said Sir Tom. “I told him the crowd would be much bigger than the ones Rovers usually got and I wasn’t far wrong.”
A match report in the Hull Daily Mail under the headline: ‘Trouble froths up at match of the decayed’ suggests there were several attempts to switch the play to rugby league, including Hull actress Margot Bryant reprising her Coronation Street character Minnie Caldwell striding onto the pitch to perform the kick-off with an oval-shaped ball.
The match programme had advertised “York-based actress and leading member of the Royal Shakespeare Company Judi Dench” as the star due to perform the kick-off, and Sir Tom believes she was there although cannot be 100 per cent certain more than five decades later.
“If it says she was doing the kick-off then she probably did and I’m sure she did it very well. I think we had several kick-offs.”
I run through the names in the programme. Sir Tom admits he can’t accurately recall if they all actually appeared. “Marty Feldman? He was a Chelsea fan so I’m not sure what he was doing in my team.”
FAMOUS NAMES: The line-ups for the Ken Wagstaff testimonial cricket match played in 1974
What is on record is a surprise appearance by Hull actress Maureen Lipman who managed to get booked twice by referee Neill. Rather unkindly, the Mail’s tongue-in-cheek match report also describes Courtenay XI team member Graham Haberfield – then starring in TV comedy series The Dustbinmen – as “one of the many players who did not seem completely fit”.
Barrie Rutter chuckles at his memories of the game. “It was Alan’s idea to stage a charity football match to raise money for the arts centre which had just opened. Just about everyone who played that day either knew each other or, through Tom and Alan, was from the professional sports scene in Hull.
“Luckily, we had a few ex-Hull City and Spurs players in our side because the Youth Theatre team had some very good players like Len Rossiter, who regularly played for the Chelsea Casuals amateur actors’ side in London, and Ian McShane, whose father had played for Manchester United.
“I remember the day being full of laughs with lots of buckets of water and magic sponges being thrown around.
“In particular, I remember Ian McKechnie doing some quite outrageous things. Keckers was a real character.
MEMORIES: Hull City great Ken Wagstaff celebrating his 80th birthday last year
“Because we had three or four lads who could really play football, when they showed their skills they could actually make all the jokey stuff seem even funnier because there was a lot of daftness going on.
“Over the years, Alan would organise several fund-raisers. One of them was a celebrity cricket match at The Circle which I played in. They were always great fun.”
The Craven Park game helped raise the not inconsiderable sum of £700 which was split between the petrol costs incurred by the visitors and the arts centre, helping to keep it afloat in its early days before ultimately becoming – in a very different purpose-built venue – the Hull Truck Theatre we know today.
Plater’s son Steve, who now runs the Dinostar visitor attraction in Humber Street, recalls being taken to watch the match as a child.
“I was too young to remember much about it but Dad organised most of it and he even wrote the famous programme which has been doing the rounds on social media recently. Some of the lines in it definitely reflect his sense of humour and writing style.”
WRITE-UPS: The two teams with a brief introduction to each player
The question of who actually appeared that day is partly answered in Steve’s own autograph book from his youth.
“Apart from Margot Bryant (she signed it and then put Minnie Cladwell in brackets), there is a page which clearly relates to the match. There are clear autographs from Chris Chilton, Ken Wagstaff, Graham Haberfield and Jimmy Binks on one page; on the other there are Alf Stokes, Michael Parkinson, Ian McKechnie and Dai Bradley. On other pages there are autographs of Timothy Dalton, Kenneth Farrington, Andy Davison and Terry Neill. It’s not conclusive but it is pretty good evidence that they were there!”
Steve also has a teamsheet from the Ken Wagstaff testimonial cricket match played in 1974 with a line-up which includes Norman Hunter, Kevin Keegan, Freddie Trueman and Tommy Docherty.
“Dad was on the committee for Waggy’s testimonial – it’s a whole new list of stars to go at!”
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