Legends of Leeds

I love a good story.

The yarns our grandfathers spun us; the tales we tell ourselves; the stories we begin to weave for our children and leave for them to pick up the thread: these are what the entire world is built upon.

Stories are in our blood: from the Anglo-Saxon alehouse to the first modern newspapers all the way to the 21^st-century social networks, we have always loved to listen to a good story and to pass it on.

The stories we tell make up our religions, our politics, our art, our culture; they echo in every word of our daily conversations over the breakfast table, our chit-chat at the counter, our banter at the pub – in everything we do.

Of course, Leeds is a city with whole volumes written about its own stories – stories which have been written about more and more in recent years, such that we know them almost like the lines on our palms.

The story of a young football manager who arrives at a second-tier outfit in a provincial rugby league city, armed with nothing but high ambitions and sheer determination, and goes on to make Leeds a brand name heard on lips across Europe and beyond.

The story of a set of playwrights and poets born and raised in the terraced streets of Leeds who wrote about ambitious northerners desperately seeking out the bright lights and new opportunities open to them in the other world down south, only to be inevitably either frustrated or disappointed.

Even the story of a local pitman who made a name for himself in the Leeds dance halls, finding fame on the radio and as a television star “fixing it” for kids all over, before returning home to give his time and his fortune to vulnerable people in the city where he is treasured most – in death just as in life.

My own story of Leeds is a little different. I’ve long entertained an idea of Leeds as a city which is dedicated to the everyday life of ordinary people. Leeds: the home of ASDA and M&S, of Cluedo, of Pudsey bear and Sooty, the birthplace of moving film, the bastion of social realism in 20^th century literature. Leeds, so my narrative runs, has produced more for the world that values and exalts the ordinary humble man than anywhere else. We write books and plays like Billy Liar and This Sporting Life, about ordinary folk and their lives and passions. We play songs like ‘I Predict A Riot’, about a few normal blokes out on the lash and birds on the pull. We remember the glory days of a football team made of players who relaxed not with a string of movie star mistresses in the VIP section of a nightclub but with a game or two of bingo and a spot of carpet bowls.

And so in that spirit I want to set off on another Culture Vulture project. Over the coming months I want to head out across Leeds and beyond to find the unsung heroes of our city, the ordinary people who do extraordinary things. I want to tell the stories of all those people about whom no biography has been published nor any film made, but who have made an indelible mark on the life of this city and everything that it’s about. I want to find people who have something to say, a tale worth telling.

I want to share the stories of the ordinary, extraordinary people of Leeds wherever I find them: the old butcher who has been serving customers at the Kirkgate Market day after day for decades; the young student who left not just their home but their country to come and study in Leeds; the teacher who has watched her pupils grow and mature and flourish all her life; the theatre volunteer who has seen entire constellations of stars gracing the stage where he has worked for years. Anyone and everyone with a story to tell.

This is an ambitious project. I want to make a book bringing together all the life stories of the people I find: albeit a book with no overarching narrative and no moral other than the sheer beauty and wonder of mankind, of the inherent connection that we have with every stranger we pass by in the street, and the power of a great tale. And in building the book, I will share a little bit of every story I uncover through regular posts here on The Culture Vulture.

But to do any of this, first of all I need your help. I want readers to think about the people in their local community, or the people in their social circle, the people who have made an impact in their lives who themselves have a tale worth telling. So please share your thoughts with me: tweet me, comment me, stop me if you see me in the street and say hello to me, anything at all! I’ll be heading out and meeting the “legends of Leeds”, and sharing the great stories they have to tell. I hope you’ll join me on the journey…

Tweet me @mw_obrien — and let’s see where this takes us!