Set visit: 'The Damned United'

Dave Calhoun gets his training kit on as he visits the set of a new film about football legend Brian Clough’s torrid spell at Leeds United in the mid-1970s

The glamour of British filmmaking never ceases to amaze. Today a make-up lady is brushing fake tan on Michael Sheen’s legs in a windy corner of Yorkshire. Sheen must be thinking that it doesn’t get any better than this. The celebrated 39-year-old Welsh actor is known for his acute portrayals of real people on screen and stage: he was Tony Blair in ‘The Queen’ and David Frost in ‘Frost/Nixon’. Now he’s playing Brian Clough – footballer, manager, big mouth – in a new film about his disastrous 44-day employment in 1974 as the manager of league champions Leeds United.

Sheen looks the part as he prepares for a scene in the shadow of Leeds United’s shabby Elland Road stadium. He’s wearing canary yellow shorts and football socks and a blue sweatshirt with a white collar poking out from underneath. But, looking at him, it’s hard not to think of Tony Blair. His hairstyle, with its tuft above the forehead, is adequately Clough-like but it has a touch of the Tony about it too. Add to this hair-do the antiquated footballing gear and Sheen’s whole appearance reminds you of those embarrassing footballing photo opps in which Blair specialised during his early days as PM.

Anyone familiar with David Peace’s brilliant novel ‘The Damned United’ – the source for this new film – will know the story of Clough’s brief flirtation with Leeds United. In July 1974, 39-year-old Clough took over from his arch rival, Don Revie, who left the club after 13 years to manage England. Clough failed to repeat the brilliance that he’d demonstrated over six years as the manager of Derby County, a team he dragged from the bottom of the second division to the top rungs of the first. Under Clough, Leeds won only two games out of ten. But this misadventure didn’t dampen his fame: interviewers, commentators and impressionists continued to lap up his dry wit and jokey, sometimes caustic tongue. He was a celebrity before football had heard of the word.

So why the fake tan, I ask Peter Morgan, the writer of the film? Forty-five-year-old Morgan is something of a regular presence in Sheen’s career: he wrote ‘The Deal’, a TV film about the early days of New Labour, ‘The Queen’, and the play ‘Frost/Nixon’, which has been turned into a film by Ron Howard to be released next year. Morgan puts my mind to rest: ‘Because at this point in the story, Clough has just been on holiday to Mallorca.That’s why he’s got the tan. In fact, we’re going to Mallorca to film at the end of the shoot.’

Sadly on this dark June afternoon we have to make do with a car park near the M1. Which is appropriate for a film about Britain and football before both received a makeover. The crew has laid out turf across a corner of the parking lot to make it look like a training ground. In the distance, a lone man is spraying green paint on the gravel. The crew, led by young director Tom Hooper, a veteran of recent TV successes ‘Longford’ and ‘Elizabeth I’, begins to shoot a key scene: Clough’s arrival at Elland Road to confront a team of moody Leeds players who, put simply, can’t stand the sight of him. In his position as manager of Derby County, Clough had repeatedly bad-mouthed the Leeds team – a contributing factor to his nickname: Old Big ’Ead. He was swimming upstream with his legs tied before the Leeds lads laid eyes on him.

‘When I was writing the script, I spoke to some of the players about Clough turning up in Leeds that day,’ Morgan remembers. ‘I think they were trying to put aside some reservations about him before he came, but then he arrived and it was, like: Okay, how do you expect us to co-operate after that?’

The camera rolls and it becomes clear what Morgan means. Sheen as Clough marches onto the pitch with coach Jimmy Gordon (Maurice Roeves) in tow. Immediately he lays down the law. ‘It’s going to be a little different round here without Don… As far as I’m concerned you can chuck all your medals and all your caps… in the biggest dustbin you can find because you’ve never won any of them fairly.’

The mention of Don Revie by captain Billy Bremner, as played by Stephen Graham (the racist Liverpudlian in ‘This is England’) has Clough fuming. ‘Anyone who mentions his name is going to spend a week cleaning my boots.’ Sheen has Clough’s ex-Middlesbrough accent down pat. Visually, audiences should enjoy the period detail. The Leeds players are wearing purple tracksuits with their names – Bremner, Cherry, Giles, Hunter, Lorimer, Madeley – branded in white letters across the back. In the stadium’s car park is a line-up of vintage cars, a Cortina here, an Austin Healey Sprite there.

It’s a long scene, with Clough’s players enduring a full few minutes of their new boss telling them what’s what. He lets loose on Irish international Johnny Giles (Peter McDonald): ‘You, Irishman, God gave you skill, intelligence and the best passing ability in the game. God did not give you six studs to wrap around another player’s legs.’ Clough finishes by boasting of his own scoring record (‘251 goals in 274 starts’) before kneeing a football, heading it a few times and volleying it into the net. ‘I’d like to see Don fucking Revie do that.’

Sheen walks away looking pleased with himself. Later, in a break between scenes, he tells me how ‘all I was thinking about during that scene was whether I was going to be able to hit the ball in the net or not.’

Morgan knows how well-regarded Peace’s book was when it was published in 2006. It was Stephen Frears, who directed Morgan’s scripts for ‘The Deal’ and ‘The Queen’, who first gave him the book and was going to direct the film until another project took over. Still, one imagines that ‘The Damned United’ will follow the same realist style as ‘The Queen’, with a similar use of archive footage and a similar daring spin on public and private lives. If the director plays it straight, Clough’s wit will give it a comic edge while his downfall at Leeds will offer its own mini-tragedy.

Like the book, Morgan’s script bounces back and forth, from the Leeds story to Clough’s earlier experiences at Derby, another job from which he was sacked after a clash with management.

Has Morgan managed to keep the dark inner voice of Peace’s novel? There’s a strong vein of paranoia, self-loathing and alcoholism that Peace attributes to Clough. ‘I think we’re a bit warmer than the book,’ Morgan suggests. ‘But I don’t think there’ll be any doubt whatsoever by the end of the film that the character you see on the screen is plagued with inner demons.’

‘The Damned United’ will be in cinemas in autumn 2009.

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