Almost 50 years ago I was briefly living and working in Leeds during the hey day of its then (almost) all conquering football team. I went one evening to a production of Bertolt Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Leeds Playhouse. To call that an avant-garde play for its time would be like saying that Bernie Sanders is a bit critical of Wall Street. Brecht was right on the edge in those days. As I walked back towards the car park, feeling a tad dazed by the mind-blowing experience of the past two hours, a tall lanky gentleman with a lock of dark hair brushing across his forehead and much more smartly suited and booted than myself came gently padding past me and looking over his shoulder to tell his companions that he would bring the car round to collect them. I’d know that high-stepping stride anywhere, I thought to myself, but not with such a warm, gentle smile on his face. And certainly not at a Bertolt Brecht play.
For it was indeed he, the notorious bite’yer’legs Leeds United defender, Norman Hunter. A constant and reliable presence for over a decade in Don Revie’s champion side alongside higher profile names such as Charlton and Bremner, he was renowned for his committed and uncompromising style. An icon (before the word became common parlance) for the United faithful of the virtues of the quiet hard man – team over self, efficiency over beauty, destruction over creation. But that evening he looked every inch the quiet, cultured professional man with a twinkle in his eye. And I’ll never find out what old bite’yer’legs thought of that Bertolt Brecht play back in 1972 since he has sadly just become another COVID-19 statistic. And in all the obituaries this morning, I can find no reference to his taste in radical post-war German plays.
View from the Clapham Omnibus 