Catch - Issue One - Summer 2011

Issue 1 | Summer 2011 - £5 RRP with bag and badge | Free to read on thisiscatch.co.uk and Catch for iPhone

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A quarterly independent publication.

Yes We Camp: The #spanish and #catalanrevolutions: 6-7.“A Gibbless fantasy world”: Re-visiting the Bee Gees: 4.The Ghosts of Manchester Mayfield: 8-9.The Death of Craft in Recording?: 3..Gamers Just Wanna Have Fun?: 9-10.The Jukebox of Adam Curtis: 5..Adventures in Talentland: 10.Touts on Wembley Way: 12..CatchBet: 11.

Pages 6-7

. . . . .

What Do the Coloured Dots Mean?

As you may have noticed, we like usingdifferent coloured full-stops. While they lookgood (well, we think so) and bring a bit ofcolour, they do try and serve a purpose.

Each coloured full-stop corresponds to acategory in Catch:

Current Affairs.Arts.Music.Tech.Sport.

By doing this, we hope to present a quick vi-sual snapshot of the variety of content in-side.

You may also notice that some pieces havetwo coloured full-stops.

When this is the case, this tries to showhow an article crosses into different cate-gories. This is something Catch wants toencourage: as mentioned earlier, we wantthere to be at least one article for everyoneto enjoy. If it means having a technology ar-ticle that also branches into music, then thisis great. Sport and current affairs, wonderful.And so on.

And we know, the coloured full-stops area bit Damien Hirst. But we have got colourincluded in the printing cost, so why not tryto make the most of it?

This is Catchand thanks for picking it up. Whether that be online, through Catch for iPhone or you’vegot one of our limited edition newspapers, your interest is hugely appreciated.

Getting this first issue finished has been quite a whirlwind. I came up with the idea inApril when I realised there wasn’t a publication that satisfied my varied interests in currentaffairs, arts, culture, technology and sport.

I have also been a long-time supporter of the independent press through contributing toand producing zines. I wondered whether producing an independent publication with thesedifferent interests could work, and whether others would be interested. Well, this is an at-tempt.

Catch may come across as somewhat scatter-gun: where else would you find somethingon the Bee Gees, an analysis of the music used in Adam Curtis’ documentaries and a pageon betting almost side-by-side? But this is what I hope will set it above other independentpublications: its unpredictability but also its endeavour to try to cater for everyone – evenif it is just with one piece of writing. Catch is, to sound somewhat cheesy, a ‘catch-all’ pub-lication.

This is by no means the finished product: there is still a lot of work to be done, changesto be made, things to be tweaked, things to probably go wrong. But the first issue is hereand I would love you to get involved and join us as, I hope, it grows over the comingmonths. We’re open to all types of contributors: if you’re enthusiastic and full of ideas,Catch is here. Email us at [email protected].

By the way, you can follow our twitter page @catchzine for latest news, visit our Face-book page or go to our tumblr site at thisiscatch.tumblr.com, where there’ll be a variety ofcontent to keep you interested.

Yet for now, I hope you’ve been caught, enjoy this first issue and look forward to thenext one in October.

Many thanks

The Editor

Catch.A quarterly independent publication.

Copyright 2011 This is Catch.

EditorDavid MellerContributorsJamie BrownAlison EalesThomas FitzpatrickPaul FlieshmanMelanie GibbonsJo GoodKatie MasonDavid MellerJoe MitchellBen Murray James O’ConnorHarry Stopes

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Catch. A quarterly independent publication. Page 3

Iwant to be clear. This is nothing to do withthose eternal “analogue tape sounds betterthan digital”, “analogue film looks better than

digital”, “vinyl is better than CD” debates. I’mnot Steve Albini.

I love technology; I’ve made records on cassette fourtrack, ADAT, Macs, PCs, 8, 16 and 24 track reel-to-reeltape (professional and hobby) machines and don’t intendto trade in my ProTools PC setup for anything anytimesoon.

The equipment I own, and purchased for an extremelymodest price, has more power than the top studios of, say,the 1990s. Fantastic. The rise of the microprocessor, andcheap computer hardware, has driven the move to digitalin music. Home and hobby users can equip themselves toa level undreamed of even fifteen years ago. Yet has themusic produced improved or actually worsened?

My personal experiences have led me to conclude thatin today’s climate, the entire focus for the recordingprocess has been slanted from one end to the other. Thegreat records that we know and love from the 1950s tothe end of the millennium were made on a huge range ofwildly differing and progressing technology – just thinkabout how different cars are between those periods to giveyou an idea of a similar evolution. That means recordinghas changed in the past, too. But increasingly the entireprocess is being subverted by the last stage – mixing.

Here is a little history. Prior to the present era, theamount of editing and fixing of parts was limited. OnceLes Paul invented the multi-track tape recorder, peoplecould fix odd mistakes on individual tracks by recordingover them. These were known as “punch ins”. Mean-while, whole performances could be edited together bysection by splicing the tape.

Later, in the 1980s, out-of-tune notes - for example froma poor vocal performance - were fixed one at a time usingoutboard processing. All these were crude and time con-suming. Studio engineers required a great deal of skill tomake these seamless.

The process of recording also evolved. Initially, bandsplayed live, together, around a single microphone in aroom. As multitrack tape machines evolved and moretracks become available, bands started placing micro-phones on individual instruments and were able to record

parts at separate times: basically, to add bits afterwards.The logical conclusion for this was reached when recordswere made one player at a time, often starting with thedrummer and building up the tracks from there. The “liveband” became less common. The more channels of music,the more complicated it can be to mix them together. Spe-cialist mixers became commonplace from the 1980s.

So, what is my problem? Put simply, we’ve movedfrom trying to catch a great musical moment in a space totrying to create a great moment out of sounds. Even atthe height of the studio boom in the 1980s and 1990s, thebest sounds came from the best players and engineersusing their skills before the recording started: tuningdrums, the arcane art of microphone placement, playersmaking great performances that captured a feeling or anemotional energy. A moment. Trying to put lightning ina bottle. And it is precisely this that seems to have beenundermined by either a lack of training, knowledge, orthrough laziness.

Some music is inherently focussed on mixing by style -for example, dance and electronic music. But these pre-dominantly ARE constructed in the studio using soundsas building blocks and live performances are not relevantto their model. These forms came into being because oftechnology. I am more concerned about bands and singer-songwriters who are essentially writing music and thenrecording it.

Increasingly, when discussing recordings with workingengineers, they tell me they are routinely dealing withtrack counts of over 100 per song. This is staggering; itmeans that, potentially, they are trying to shoehorn a hun-dred elements, maybe even more, into the same stereospace we’ve had since stereo became the norm in the1960s.

I believe this stems from a fear of decision making. Inthe past, engineers had to commit, at least in part, to howthings would sound at an early stage. Broad changes couldbe made at the mixing stage, but engineers had to decidehow they were going to do things with the finished prod-uct in mind: how to tune and mic up the drums, whichguitar sound to use and whether these elements were ex-ecuted correctly. If mistakes were really bad they had tostart again.

Today’s engineers think nothing of using 20 micro-phones on a drum kit, four microphones on a guitar amp

and more. With no practical limits to track counts theycan record endless takes or variations of a part and keepthem all.

Once recorded, they can fix poor tuning using softwarelike AutoTune or Melodyne, edit poor timing on an indi-vidual part down to almost a 100,000th of a second andreplace individual drum sounds with samples using soft-ware like Drumagog or Sound Replacer.

Therefore, if these things are trivial to fix, what incen-tive is there to learn how to do these things properly? Allthese processes are subsumed into mixing. Even the finalmix is not absolute – they can save any number of varia-tions and recall them instantly.

Painters have to make the first brush stroke on theirvirgin canvas. They plan, sketch, make some pencil marksbut eventually they have to pony up and commit. Artneeds commitment. The learning that comes from makinga mistake, working with it and around it is important.Recording music in a multitrack situation is a complex col-lection of processes; like cinema, it is part illusion, partcheating and part fakery.

But the ability to prolong and put off decision makingindefinitely skews the process all to the end and the artand skill of capturing an emotional moment in time andspace, as opposed to some sounds, is being lost. This is animportant thing: it is the tradecraft.

The technology is just a tool. The engineers at AbbeyRoad could have recorded With The Beatles on my Pro-Tools setup in much the same way they did back in 1963;it does not force them to tune up things and correct mis-takes with fine edits.

I do not object to these software tools; they can be usedto save inspired performances. But if fixing everything af-terwards becomes the norm, who can be bothered to makethings sound good in the first place? With that in mind,this writer hopes that more recordists wake up to the re-alisation that the great records of yesteryear, on whoseshoulders we all stand, were made by artists and engineerswho showed commitment to capturing inspiration ratherthan trying to mix it in afterwards. Technology is not theenemy. Apathy is.

Paul has been playing in bands, recording them and doing live soundin venues across Manchester since 1997. Illustration: Katie Mason.

..The Death ofCraft inRecording?Paul Flieshman loves music technology - buthe feels its abundance could be having adetrimental effect on the craft of recording.

Catch. A quarterly independent publication. Page 4.

Ihave long given up hope of anyone regardingmy music collection as anything other than ap-palling. The less obscure luminaries of the

indie canon – The Velvet Underground, TheMagnetic Fields, Joanna Newsom – nestle apolo-getically alongside all manner of aural mediocrity,predominantly from the 1970s and 1980s.

The education of my musical palate did not get off toa wonderful start. Whilst my parents were both giftedfolk musicians, I had to make a special effort to find thereal gems in their record collection (I’m looking adoringlyat Tom Paxton here). The music which would be rou-tinely heard in our house and car was likely to be some-what more banal: Cliff Richard, Dire Straits, BarbaraDickson and/or Elaine Paige. And now these three re-main: Chas and Dave, The Carpenters, and Abba. Butthe greatest of these is Abba.

I routinely risk ridicule by leaping to the defence of myfavourite Swedes. Granted, their lyrics are often unfor-givably awful (‘Bang-a-Boomerang’) but I maintain that,for many people, the biggest obstacle to enjoying Abba istheir overexposure. Frida Lyngstad claims that when shefirst heard the backing track to ‘Dancing Queen’ she foundit so beautiful she was moved to tears. For many people,it’s hard not only to remember the first time they heardthe song, but also to imagine hearing it for the first time.Yet that’s what I encourage sceptics to do: pretend youhave never heard the song before. Pay attention to thebold piano chords, the subtle wacka-wacka guitar, the im-peccably arranged strings. I’m not asking you to pretendpunk never happened; I’m just asking you to put punk intoperspective. This is all well and good.

The problem is, I’m a massive hypocrite. Amongst theacts to whom I have never extended such courtesy is theBee Gees. They have always seemed just too easy to dis-miss. Unfortunately, having elected to undertake a re-search project on the mythology of songwriting, and using‘Jive Talkin’’ as a case study, I can ignore them no longer.It’s time to re-evaluate the output of a career which haslasted over fifty years; it’s time to give the Brothers Gibb

a fair hearing. Hipsters everywhere will be reading this and huffing

something about Horizontal, or Odessa, or even SingSlowly Sisters, Robin Gibb’s rather wonderful ‘lost’ soloalbum from 1970. Yes yes yes, these are all are lovelyrecords, but I’m not letting myself off that lightly. I’mtalking about trying to take the Bee Gees seriously rightat the point when they start making it really difficult todo so: the Saturday Night Fever era.

To listen to ‘Stayin’ Alive’ in the same way I insist peo-ple listen to ‘Dancing Queen’ requires an imaginative leapinto a Gibbless fantasy world. First comes the famous gui-tar riff, strutting all over its shivering rhythmic subordi-nates. In its shadow, over to the right of the stereo image,a gorgeous, Rhodesy keyboard obliviously ba-ba-bas to it-self. The strings are comforting and yet somehow sleazy.Then there’s that opening line: did he just sing “the wayI use my walk”? It’s a striking phrase, even without tak-ing into account that voice.

‘Stayin’ Alive’ is remarkable. As the Bee Gees’ man-ager, Robert Stigwood, ostensibly remarked when heheard it, it sounds like nothing else; its alienness is nowmassively diminished by its ubiquitousness, but it remainsa decent song and a stunningly produced record. So whyis it so open to ridicule?

It undoubtedly suffers from being labelled sneeringlyas disco, a genre which is subject to every kind of recall,from affectionate parody to utter derision. So loathed wasdisco by some that it inspired the baseball-hijacking, vinyl-melting Disco Sucks campaign in 1979.

It is peculiar that the Bee Gees found themselves soclosely identified with disco. The band themselves claimthat they never set out to write for particular musical gen-res or trends – according to Robin Gibb, Stigwood advisedthem early in their career to write “for the future” (al-though he would go on to produce the movie SaturdayNight Fever, associating them firmly and forever withdisco).

Since 1974, the Bee Gees had been working with pro-ducer Arif Mardin at Criteria Studio in North Miami.Both Mardin and Criteria were, at that point, associated

strongly with R&B, and it appears from more recent in-terviews with the band that they viewed themselves asbeing part of that tradition, rather than a new vogue;Barry Gibb’s use of his falsetto range, with encouragementfrom Mardin, was a direct attempt to emulate the vocalsof The Stylistics’ Russell Thompkins Jr.

Indie gospels portray disco as cynical, soulless and pop-ulist, credited only with catalysing the emergence of punk;even if Saturday Night Fever era Bee Gees can be appro-priately described as ‘disco’, there are good reasons to besuspicious of the genre’s character assassination.

Richard Dyer, writing in Gay Left in the summer of1979, pointed out that while disco is certainly a productof capitalism, it is no more commercial than contemporaryfolk or rock. Additionally, disco, arguably more than anymusical genre or scene before it, accommodated an openlygay and bisexual audience contingent. In a 1979 articleentitled ‘Disco: four critics address the musical issue’, TomSmucker credits disco with mobilising its audience to po-litical activism through fostering feelings of “public ec-stasy”. Smucker also comments on disco’s multiracialappeal, and suggests that no music had had such a mixedaudience since Elvis. Bruce Dancis, in the same article,comments on the racism and homophobia found in anti-disco discourse.

It could be argued that the Bee Gees are at the veryheart of disco and, in some ways, that this negates its de-fence: they’re white, they’re straight, and (largely thanksto disco) they’re rich. In the context of the rest of theirwork, however, it seems inappropriate to identify themso strongly with disco. Their earlier work is often braveand sometimes beautiful, and even a track like ‘You WinAgain’ – which is ageing about as well as Robin Gibb –still sounds brilliantly alien.

But even without the absolution of this other work,‘Stayin’ Alive’ might just deserve a fresh pair of ears.

As well as dedicating her time to an MLitt in Popular Music Studiesat the University of Glasgow, Alison is a member of Glaswegian indiepop band Butcher Boy. Illustration: Katie Mason.

“A Gibbless fantasy world”: Re-visiting the Bee Gees

During her research project, Alison Eales reluctantly re-visited disco-era Bee Gees. It soon becameapparent that this was rather more enjoyable than she imagined it would be.

Catch. A quarterly independent publication. .. Page 5

The Jukebox of Adam Curtis

Adam Curtis is acclaimed forhis films that blur the linesbetween documentary, pop-

ular culture, political theory andvideo art.

His most recent series, All WatchedOver by Machines of Loving Grace, is anexample of this - bringing together seem-ingly unconnected events into a compellingnarrative.

Unsurprisingly, his films often divideopinion. But one element of Curtis’ film-making that brings consistent praise is his

use of music. I wanted to examine this inmore detail.

Firstly, I researched the music Curtisused and made it into a Spotify playlist. Ini-tially, what I found was how eclectic (andbloody good!) it is in terms of genre and pe-riod: from the French national anthem allthe way to the soundtrack from the 2009film Moon.

But then, in a Curtisesque fashion, I de-cided to look at the historical context sur-rounding each piece of music. This makesfor some particularly interesting juxtaposi-

tions; for example, in 1954 Ruth Brown’s‘Oh What A Dream’ soundtracked the ar-rival of the TV dinner into Americanhouseholds. What a dream indeed!

Meanwhile, in 2006, Burial’s ‘Forgive’eerily co-incided with Saddam Hussein’s ex-ecution.

As with Curtis’ films, historical eventscan be given surprising new meaning whenalongside the right music. While some maybe far-fetched, you may find there are someuncanny links.Thomas is an artist and writer based in Manchester.

Scan the QR code below to

access the Spotify playlist

on your phone.

Thomas Fitzpatrick

You don’t expect the build-up to a late-nightset by Minnesota slowcorers Low at thisyear’s Primavera Sound to become a politi-

cal protest. Earlier that day, Barcelona’s Plaça de Catalunya, where

the Gotic and the 19th century Eixample districts meet, wasstormed by Catalan riot police firing rubber bullets.

For days, the square had been occupied by demonstrators- or ‘Indignados’ - denouncing the recklessness of bankers andthe Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) led by PrimeMinister Jose Luis Zapatero. Meanwhile, banners surround-ing the square pleaded for political and economic reform andproclaimed it as an equivalent of Egypt’s Tahrir Square.

It is believed FC Barcelona’s encounter against Manches-ter United in the Champions League final the day afterprompted the attempted clearance: the square is synony-mous with celebrating Barca supporters. However, Catalanauthorities dismissed this by saying it was due to somedemonstrators possessing “dangerous items” and organisedgangs in the square threatening violence.

Still, this made demonstrators more determined. #span-ishrevolution became even more vociferous on the revolu-tionary’s weapon of choice, twitter, and hours later thesquare became even more populated. The protest then creptinto a music festival.

On the steps to the right of the stage, three men in theirmid-twenties suddenly leapt up, clutching sheets of A4 papersellotaped together. “Y-E-S.” “W-E.” “C-A-M-P.” Thecrowd roared into action.

Later on, another banner was carried through hundredsof people during Pulp’s first major set since their reunion,containing the words “#spanishrevolution: Sing Along withthe Common People.” Jarvis Cocker later dedicated ‘Com-mon People’ to those occupying Plaça de Catalunya.

These were my first experiences of #spanishrevolution –or the 15M movement, so called because all this began onSunday 15th May in Puerta del Sol Square, Madrid. And

since then, the protests have been just as fast-moving andunpredictable.

The Shitty System

What prompted the protests has been the culmination ofyears of misery for many Spaniards since the financial crisisand Zapatero’s struggle to control Spain’s 9% public deficit.Austerity is biting many Spaniards hard.

“Unemployment and taxes have gone up, so poverty isincreasing,” says Catalan journalist Agusti Mas. “People arelosing their apartments and houses because they can’t affordtheir mortgages anymore. In Barcelona, you can find threeroom flats occupied by 12 people.

“There are also a lot of young people with high qualifica-tions and degrees who can’t find a suitable job: they can’teven find a job in fast food restaurants or supermarkets. Peo-ple feel so disappointed because they’ve been working hardin their studies for no results.” According to statistics,around 20% of Spain is unemployed, with a massive percent-age of this is made up of those under 25, where around 45%are unemployed.

Many Spaniards also feel they are being treated unfairlyand are being punished for other people’s recklessness - andthis extends beyond the bankers. Pedro Gonzalez has livedin Britain for 10 years but has been keeping in touch withfriends close to the protests back home. He empathises withthem, the demonstrators and “the shitty system” he and theyhave had to put up with for too long.

“The protests are also a big ‘no’ against an economy basedon construction and money laundering,” he says. The moneylaundering claim may sound outlandish, but in 2009 the USState Department found that 20% of the €500 notes in cir-culation were in Spanish hands and linked to money laun-dering activities involving property.

“The current system is condemning generations of youngpeople to move away from the country. At the same time,the black economy - one of the biggest wealth creators, even

if a corrupt one - is exploiting the immigrants with less thanminimum wage. Ironically, universities in Spain are not pass-ports to employment, but the other way round.”

Gonzalez also comments on the successive failures of thePeople’s Party and the PSOE. Indeed, the 15M movementhas arguably already had an impact on the political land-scape. Days after the occupations in Madrid and Barcelonabegan, the PSOE suffered heavy defeats in local and regionalelections to the right-wing People’s Party.

Maria Serrano, who attended Plaça de Catalunya regu-larly to participate in debates and camped with demonstra-tors, says this is because those on the left can no longer trustthe PSOE.

“People in the left can't trust the PSOE anymore afterthese last years,” she says, “and those on the right keep vot-ing for the People’s Party. So those are the results.”

“But couldn’t things be worse under the People’s Party?”I ask. “I panic if I think about having the People’s Party ingovernment,” she says. While the PSOE is linked withSpain’s economic turmoil, the People’s Party is still recover-ing from the corruption scandal involving Francisco Correa,who greased the palms of top People’s Party officials withmoney and sports cars to gain lucrative contracts from or-ganisations controlled by the party. Former Prime MinisterJosé María Aznar’s support of the Iraq War also continuesto linger.

Still, Serrano cannot bring herself to vote for PSOE: “Ihonestly cannot vote for the PSOE. I don't think all politi-cians are the same but elections end up being a kind ofdilemma. After the elections, someone said to me: ‘I don'texpect the parties to solve our problems, but in fact they canmake them go worse.’ This is the general feeling.”

“People do not want to be taken for granted for any po-litical party,” adds Gonzalez. “People are not votes to becounted on election day and then forgotten. Their future de-pends on the realization that they can form a lobby of pres-sure and reinvent a new model of citizenship moreparticipative.”

Catch. A quarterly independent publication. Page 6.Yes We Camp: The #spanish and #catalanrevolutionsWhile Spain is no Greece, it is in poor shape. Its deficit is high and unemployment, particulaly among its youth and graduates, is growing at an alarming rate. Its political system is also under intensepressure. Cue #spanishrevolution. Since May, it has been the buzz hash-tag for many ‘Indignados’ demonstrating across Spain. But is it inspiring change or, in the case of #catalanrevolution, splittingopinion? David Meller reports.


The major group organising 15M is ¡Democracia Real Ya!Their manifesto, helpfully published in several different lan-guages including English, includes all of the aspects describedabove and explicitly points out how it is uniting progressivesand conservatives.

Serrano touches on this: “People who were not at thesquare in previous weeks were getting curious. They ap-proached and then took the microphone and started speak-ing.”

#catalanrevolution

Yet with big movements like this, there is always the chancegroups of demonstrators will begin to disagree with one an-other or pursue additional aims. According to Mas, manyCatalan demonstrators split away from #spanishrevolution.

“Demonstrators discuss different kind of topics to im-prove the democracy and the society such as the abolitionof the Spanish Monarchy and modifying the Spanish Con-stitution,” he says. “But many occupants of Plaça deCatalunya decided to unlink themselves from #spanishrevo-lution and start talking about #catalanrevolution.

“This is because they were deciding stuff that Catalansdidn’t like, such as single electoral circumscription in Spain(essentially one whole electoral constituency compared toconstituencies based on the fifty Spanish provinces.) Cata-lans were also asking about autonomy from Madrid.”

Indeed, Catalunya does have a lot to worry about, withcredit agency Standard and Poor cutting Catalunya’s creditrating and many now accusing decision makers of financialrecklessness by setting an initial budget endangering the stategovernment’s deficit reduction plan. But Mas is adamantthat the problems lie with the government in Madrid.

“Catalunya has one of the highest GDPs in the EU butour economy has to supply Spain; Catalunya has to give 10%of its GDP to support the state and we never see this moneyagain. And since the region can't administrate its ownmoney, it can't sustain its public services.”

But #catalanrevolution has threatened to unravel. On the15th June, protestors amassed outside the Catalan Parliamentas it attempted to vote on the budget. The protest wasagreed upon by protestors at Plaça de Catalunya weeks pre-viously.

Despite many saying the initial budget was reckless, itstill included painful cuts to public services. This is whileSpanish banks begin to see large profits returning; Santanderexpects net profits of over €8 billion by the end of the year.

Perhaps inevitably, things turned nasty. Catalan Presi-dent Artur Mas (no relation to Agusti) and the Presidentof the Catalan Parliament Núria de Gispert had to be heli-coptered into parliament in order to vote, while some Cata-lan MPs - or diputats - were ensconced inside riot police vansin order to get into the parliament building.

Meanwhile, former Catalan Minister for JusticeMontserrat Tura had a black cross painted on her jacket andblind diputat Josep Maria Llop complained how protestershad tried to take his guide dog. Demonstrators in Madrid’sPlaza del Sol were furious, describing the scenes as “shame-ful”. Agusti was deeply ashamed of what happened.

“In a personal point of view, I have to tell you that I feelvery sad about what happened,” he says. “It damagesCatalunya, the country and its image. This is not suitable ina civilized country like ours: it was difficult to stop my tearswhile seeing the images live on TV. Such a pity.”

19J and the Future

Yet days later, a more positive and cohesive image of theprotests occurred. The 19J marches, organised by ¡Democ-racia Real Ya! and marking just over a month since theprotests began, saw Spain protest in unison, with reportedlyhundreds of thousands of people peacefully marching fromPlaça de Catalunya to Cuitadella Park near the Catalan Par-liament. Meanwhile, thousands demonstrated in Madrid,Seville amd Valencia.

A unity between the protests in Spain and the plight of

Greece has also been forged, with demonstrations outsidethe Greek embassy in Madrid a day before the general striketaking place across Greece. Banners on 19J could be seen sup-porting Greece, proclaiming that they were not alone.

At time of Catch going to press, protests were scalingdown inside the squares of Barcelona and Madrid. Never-theless, on 25th June hundreds of demonstrators from acrossSpain, including Barcelona, began marching towards Madridin time for a major demonstration against the austerity cutsand rising unemployment on the 24th July. Those marchingfrom Barcelona will be covering over 400 miles and goingthrough 29 towns and villages along the way.

If it is led to be believed, the Greek problem could spreadto countries like Spain very shortly. With the protests al-ready seen, it is likely they would increase dramatically insize and nature: the appetite is certainly there.

The economic problems and will to protest could theneasily spread throughout Europe. Indeed, there were soli-darity protests in the UK on the 19th June, albeit somewhatsmall in size. Nevertheless, it isn’t inconceivable that “YesWe Camp” could be the chant many shout across the UKsoon: something beyond the student occupations of lecturetheatres and public sector strikes.

The spirit of Arab Spring - and the causes of the protests,whether political or economic - is spreading. As one twitteruser @Moof put it, “is #spanishrevolution the eventual endproduct of what David Cameron is trying to do with #big-society?”

Illustrations: Thomas Fitzpatrick

Yes We Camp: The #spanish and #catalanrevolutionsWhile Spain is no Greece, it is in poor shape. Its deficit is high and unemployment, particulaly among its youth and graduates, is growing at an alarming rate. Its political system is also under intensepressure. Cue #spanishrevolution. Since May, it has been the buzz hash-tag for many ‘Indignados’ demonstrating across Spain. But is it inspiring change or, in the case of #catalanrevolution, splittingopinion? David Meller reports.

John Churm walked along Fairfield Street inthe fading August sunlight at the end of theweek. The night crawlers were already mak-

ing their rounds at the corner of Travis Street asthe sparrows were making their last.

Indistinct, broken voices drifted across from the fur-thest platforms of the nearby Piccadilly Station alongsidediscussions between taxi drivers and dispatchers. Slam-ming doors and an ambulance siren momentarily disarmedhim as he pulled his canvas bag towards his chest, steadiedhimself on the curb, and traced an arc away from the traf-fic. Glancing across at the nearby Star and Garter, Johnthought how the music on a Saturday night must playthrough the empty Mayfield Station like a haunted disco,with birds and ghosts the only visitors in the darkness. Inamongst the red bricked aperture must lay fragile, forgot-ten beauty.

Striking, familiar and imposing, Manchester Mayfieldstood before John as he looked up at the dying blue lightburning through the open windows of the dilapidated, firedamaged upper canopy, filtering through the gaping holes,particles of dust glimmering within its dying rays.

With slow movements, John looked at the posters andadvertisements that barely covered the grime and dirt.Walking alongside the building, he took in things hehadn’t noticed before: a broken bell, a faded bollard andthe large goods entrance, now barred to the public. Heglanced up towards the ceiling through the broken glass:all skeleton ribs and hanging planks, chalked in white plas-ter. John suddenly recalled the name of a nearby street,Temperance Street. He reflected on the irony of its prox-imity to the building in which he was to spend his finalhour, with the alcohol rushing around his frame.

Approaching the city centre from Beswick, one can justsee the roof of the platforms if they look long and carefullyenough. From this distance, the platforms look menacing

and dangerous, something altogether dark, a challenge tothe fleeting sky. It was a Manchester landmark that Johnpassed twice every day on his way to work in Openshawbefore he had been made redundant over the summer, par-tially as a cost saving exercise, but also as a result of hisdeclining health in his role as a security officer.

Close to the station wall there was a mess of blue buck-ets, tyres, pipes and large plastic tubing scattered in andaround a stretch of broken slate and glass. He broke overthe wall concealing a thick length of rope in his bag along-side a bottle of whiskey and a packet of Camels. His sui-cide, or so he hoped, would not go detected in a buildingthat people left alone, just as isolated and out of place ashe felt himself to be in the landscape of modern Manches-ter.

He walked through the grounds, up a steady inclineand onto one of the old platforms. John looked on in won-der at the lonely expanse; he could almost see the place asit had been sixty years ago: teeming with commuters head-ing towards North Wales, or perhaps on the Pines Ex-press to Bournemouth. For a brief moment, porters rushedup and down the deserted platform and ghostly whistleswere heard. The smell of diesel still lingered despite thelast train having left Mayfield over fifty years ago. Johnnoted that every footstep he made was cold, clear and dis-tinct.

A rejected cargo of forsaken roadworks and signallights had been discarded on one of the other three plat-forms. Also among them were pallets, broken down levelcrossing equipment and an old rusting trolley, sat inamongst like a forgotten toy. The trolley brought to mindJohn’s old rocking horse, lost to him many years ago. Stillalive and kicking somewhere, no doubt, but not allowedto work.

One day, perhaps very soon, the walls are going tocome down. John recognised that just as it is with theselong, forgotten buildings, so the same path follows in life.

With each passing year there are more cracks and fissuresto endure like the weathered bricks of an obdurate wall.

The colossal weight of losing the familiar. First hiswife, Lena. Then his mother and father in short successionand, finally, the childhood home he held so dear. Gonewas the bed in which he slept as a boy and first kissedLena. The garden where he used to sit and play with histoy trains. Little memories, like marbles in a dustbin, hadrecently been slowly slipping out of reach.

John sat down on the platform and let his feet dragamongst the new growth underneath. To his left was apool of water, which glowed with oily rainbow colourforms. More interesting colours were found blossomingout of the impossibly large railway buffers nearby, all deepjade and slug pellet blue, flecked and peeled as an onion.

John reached into his bag and procured a cigarette,which he duly sparked up within dry claws. His hands,cracked in the palms and balmed in fisherman's oil. Mo-mentarily, he felt dizzy as he watched the first plume ofsmoke drift upwards to the broken rafters of the black-ened roof above him, illuminated by the city whichstretched out to the south. With a sorrowful heart, hecraned his neck to look out onto the city skyline beyondthe roof garden.

Light pollution from nearby Ancoats caught the as-cending smoke that lifted from his lips. It was like the ter-races giving off steam from their tumble dryers in theRusholme street where he owned his first house withLena in the late 1970s. In the distance, lights were dancingplayfully in the skies above one of the city’s universities,like some colossal solar flare erupting and blanketing thecity in stardust.

One of the last times John had seen Lena was the mid-dle of winter. The snow was falling heavily and John qui-etly assessed how beautiful the moment was: Lena, therewith her little mittens and her long blonde hair, with lipschapped from the cold and cheeks freshly appled. Her lips


The Ghosts of ManchesterMayfield

Joe Mitchell’s short stories attempt to merge city landscapes with their primary characters. Inthis short story, Manchester is used as the backdrop for the unfortunate John Churm.

pursed in that familiar permanent pout, those brilliantbrown eyes, almost permanently sad. Smiling and restingher chin on the palm of her hand as her lids drooped inexhaustion at the slumbering end of a dying relationship.

Lena was a different woman then; cradling a large glassof white wine, more tired perhaps, wiser, but markedlydifferent from the woman who looked so content with hersingle plait hooked over one shoulder, smiling in an oldholiday photograph so very long ago. John felt an over-whelming desire to touch her damp hand again and holdher on a long humid evening, much like this one, or walkin the park on a misty autumn afternoon, kicking throughthe leaf litter and lighting up a cigarette before kissing herear in a gesture of affection. John certainly couldn’t lastanother winter.

Once, many years ago, it was the autumn that hadbeen the most enjoyable time of the year; it gave him thepromise of his girl swaddled in a cuddly autumn sweater,all comfortable and homely with those same apple cheeksand a bottle of lager as she taught him how to make flak-ing orange cakes, moist sponge cakes and delicious upsidedown cakes. John always liked to bake bread himself, fill-ing the kitchen with the smell of yeast and steaming hiswindows up as he listened to the football on the radio andfelt utterly content with his lot in life.

Sharp on his face was the dry skin of his hands that

awakened him from a fleeting moment in which hewrapped his floury hands around Lena’s attractive waist.He realised his eyes had become blurred with tears andthe last lingering smoke from his cigarette. But that wasall so many years ago. John considered himself to be aslonesome as the world’s first ghost.

The bright lights turned on over the city. John thoughthow good it would be if there were a gathering storm atthis moment. Children would rush home or shelter undertrees where the weather would be decidedly worse, withlarge droplets falling from the leaves. Gates would swingin the breeze. Old trainers would be wrung out on gettingback to the old house, sitting out on the patio for days.On the platform, John looked out at the twinkling lightsof Manchester and thought back to when he was a youngchild. Back then, the sky seemed like an anvil, a uniformcolour of slate grey against the blanketed dark green earth.

Often, on foggy days, John would mistake the indis-tinct yellow streetlights as fires under the hanging domeof fog and mist descending on the village, just as he wasnow descending back into the arms of the present and thegarden beneath him. Fog infecting his lungs as the boyswould make their way out onto the playing fields, dancingjust to keep themselves warm. Of course he couldn’t bringhimself to slip away from life! He was reminded of thosedays indoors with his train and his mother, out of reach

from his arms now. He couldn’t bring himself to slip awayfrom life. He descended from the platform into thegrounds below.

Resting his hands on the cold, dry stone wall runningparallel to his eyesight, John stood on the first black binand hoisted his leg up on to the second, testing the bucketcautiously to see if the plastic would hold his weight. Itheld. John threw his bag over the wall, pushed down onthe stone to launch his frame over to the pavement onBaring Street, and his chest suddenly tore in two.

Stumbling backwards, the man tripped over thesmaller of the two buckets and fell, feeling the ground giveway until it escaped him helplessly, like a lost love walkingdown a corridor for one last time. Suddenly, the mangasped in fright and slammed down hard on a large flatstone in the middle of the water.

Glassy eyes glimpsed a crane in the immediate distanceas a set of sparrows flew disturbed into the embers of thefiery day. Lying next to a broken bottle of whiskey bob-bing in the water, with flaking cakes and mittens in hiseyes, Mr. Churm gave up the ghost.

As well as writing, Joe is entrusted with some of Droylsden’s finestyoungsters as a primary school teacher. He is also cycling across theUK for The Christie in August. You can sponsor him atjustgiving.com/Joe-Mitchell2. Illustration: Melanie Gibbons.


.“Duke Nukem Forever takes gamers back to remind about how to have fun: surely that'swhy people play games?”Ben Philpott’s review of Duke Nukem Forever, Thunderboltgames.com

“If the point of a video game is to have fun, then Knights Contract can barely be describedas such.”Levi Buchanan’s review of Knights Contract, IGN.com

Videogames are frequently fun. If youstarted gaming at a young age like I did,it’s likely that you were pulled in by,

say, the enjoyment you got from jumping onGoombas, or the thrill of mashing buttons andwatching two Street Fighters pummel each otherinto submission.

These days, people are getting into gaming by hurlingWii remotes around to propel virtual bowling balls andcatapulting ugly little birds into towers full of evil pigs. Alot of games are great fun, and that’s fantastic.

But there’s a general attitude towards the concept of‘fun’ amongst videogame enthusiasts that irritates me. Alltoo many express the opinion that for a videogame to suc-ceed, or for it to be worthwhile, it needs to be ‘fun’. Read

any gaming forum with a Duke Nukem Forever threadand you’ll find sentiments along the same lines as theabove review: “ALL THE REVIEWS R FUKIN STU-PID, DUKE NUKEM IS A THROWBACK TOWHEN GAMS WERE FUN, NOW ITS ALL CODAND HALO WICH ARE GAY AND ALSO R FORFAGGTS”. My exaggeration here is unfortunately slight.It’s a fairly common attitude online.

But ‘fun’ has never been a defining quality for justabout any leisure activity. Sports can be ‘fun’ to play, butisn’t the appeal of football really more intrinsically linkedto displaying skills and excelling athletically? Do viewersof Schindler’s List say “well, that was fun” as they wipetheir tears away after the ending credits? Do scholars ded-icate themselves to writing about Thomas Pynchon be-cause Gravity’s Rainbow is a fun, breezy read? Of course

not. Why should videogames operate on a different set ofstandards, whereby ‘fun’ is a prerequisite of design ratherthan a possible adjective that some games strive for?

Consider, if you will, the immensely popular Call ofDuty 4: Modern Warfare. About two years ago, I wrotea piece for Gamerlimit.com discussing the game’s anti-warthemes and clever depictions of atrocities and horror. Isuggested that the series could go further, though, andthat I’d like to see a Modern Warfare game in which theside I was fighting on ultimately lost the war.

Two years later, I still adamantly believe that a popu-lar, mainstream videogame series like Call of Duty has anincredible opportunity to explore horrifying scenarios thatcould force the player to consider their own views on warsin more depth. The response was far more enthusiasticthan I expected (in fact, going back and reading them now,

Gamers Just Wanna Have Fun?James O’Connor knows and loves his games. But something has been bothering him: the ideathat games have to be all-out fun.


the readers were more receptive than I remembered – mybrain revised history based on my experience with articlecomments, obviously).

But Modern Warfare 2 took things in an entirely differ-ent direction, with more of a ‘fuck yeah, America!’ atti-tude and a ridiculous plot that sucked all the tragedy outof the room. Call of Duty 4’s campaign wasn’t really muchfun: it was, instead, quite sad. And yet it remains the mosthighly revered entry in the series. Its follow-up World atWar has even less ‘fun’ packed into it, especially in thebrilliant Russian half of the campaign, which focuses onhow disturbing the Russian bloodlust for the Germans is.

If you think videogames need to be fun, you’re dis-counting games like the bizarre Russian cult classic Patho-logic, most of the Silent Hill series (in fact, a lot of thesurvival horror genre in general), experimental explo-

ration games like Dear Esther and Dream:Scape, or gameslike 999 and Hotel Dusk that value story above all else.Current critical darling LA Noire is at its best whenyou’re examining dead bodies and looking for facial tics –it’s the ‘fun’ stuff (shooting, driving) that has been criti-cised the most. Hell, look at Mass Effect 2, the best re-viewed game of 2010. There are plenty of bits in that gamethat aren’t ‘fun’ – working your way through conversa-tions, making moral choices, studying your team members(let’s ignore planet mining!). And yet, what a game it .

I’m not a fun-hating monster. I’ve spent at least fivetimes as much time online with Call of Duty 4 as I’vespent in campaign mode (and the multiplayer is undoubt-edly more fun, if not quite as special as the campaign).Bayonetta blew my mind. I love Mario in all his forms.Bulletstorm and Portal 2 are two of my favourite games

of 2011 thus far. This isn’t intended so much an argument about the

virtues of designing games that aren’t fun as a simple re-quest that people stop trying to pigeon hole whatvideogames are by defining objectives that all of themmust strive to achieve. There are so many unexplored av-enues in videogames, and not all of them are going to behugely fun or entertaining when we finally get around toexploring them. This doesn’t make them any less worthexploring.

As well as writing about gaming for many Australian publicationsincluding Hyper Magazine and ign.com.au, James is a tutor and PhDstudent at Flinders University. You can follow him on twitter@Jickle.

.Gamers Just Wanna Have Fun?

.Adventures in talentland.

Iremember the first time I was referred to asThe Talent. It was at MTV in the mid-noughties. It was my first week. I had been

plucked from the faceless obscurity of local radioto front Total Request Live and interview TomCruise on a scooter.

I slipped through because the producers had realised,after many weeks of painful screen-testing, that radio girlscould hold the floor on live TV shows. We didn’t panic.We didn’t freeze. We didn’t buckle under pressure. In fact,we could stand up, look pretty, and talk - all at once. As-tonishing. Plus I reminded somebody a bit of a youngDavina McCall. Whatever. I was in. My teenage dreamhad come to pass.

So there we all are in rehearsal. The floor crew are allbrilliant and buzzing; setting up shots and practicingsweeps, and our ear pieces are bubbling with talk-backfrom the gallery. We’re musing over our queue cards -working out how to tackle the Cruise-scooter conundrumwhen, suddenly, it becomes clear that one of my co-pre-senters has vanished. He would be found, as he inevitablywas, smoking a roll-up at the bottom of the outside stair-well.

But then I heard it: through the ether of talk-back

came the immortal words, and I was hearing them for thefirst time: “Yeah, can somebody go retrieve The Talent,please? Then childlock that bloody door.”

The Talent. A notion becoming a noun. I had neverheard anything like it. It sounded so outlandish. Itsounded so vulgar. It sounded so good! I asked the nearestcameraman what it meant. A hearty laugh ensured.

“That’s you kid,” he said. “You’re the talent. AlthoughI prefer the term meat-puppet, or warm prop myself.”

I was? Since when? Nobody had told me? I felt prettymuch the same as I had the day before. But, now I wasTalent! When did it happen? Was it in the night? Was Iasleep? How did it work? Was I sprinkled with quick-wit,cute smile fairy dust as I slept?

I felt immediately uncomfortable, massively underpressure, and, in strange, undulating waves, totally andutterly smug. I had made it. The years of drudgery andhumiliation and the endless treading of water at the deepend of the media mega-pool had paid off. I was standingon some other fool’s head. I was heading for the shallowend, and I was going to do a handstand.

And so I entered 'Talentland', where the shepherdingof egos necessitates an entire industry of agents and man-agers, and where I have done my best to live up to the ex-pectation of that strange and sinister tag without

becoming ravaged and consumed by its very implication. My talent has never been officially measured, and

thank God such a machine could never exist. But, my fif-teen years in the business (puffs on a pipe here, wearing asilk robe and a cravat) have given me a unique perspectivewhich I now intend to use to help others out of their arm-bands; I have become the person with the pool net: I havebecome an agent.

I work for Triple A Media, representing the genius ofthe north. I'm in little red shorts on the life guard's stool,and in future issues of Catch I'm going to introduce youto my world. So, if you think you have presentation talent,drop me a line. There's free towels for everyone.

See you next time.

Jo

[email protected]

with Jo GoodBBC 6music presenter Jo Good has crossed the divide: from being considered ‘The Talent’, she isnow discovering it as a fully-fledged agent. In her introductory column for Catch, Jo re-tells themoment she was considered ‘The Talent’. Or meat-puppet, whichever you prefer.


Ialways feel inclined to hesitate before tellingpeople about my gambling, though havingsaid that I will staunchly defend the notion

that it is a hobby and not a habit. Despite the fact that over half the adults in the UK

partake in a flutter (and that is excluding the NationalLottery), an admission that you enjoy gambling is stilllikely to result in a concerned look or two. Usually thesecome from the same people who would not blink as theywatched you pop out for fourteen smoke breaks whilst inthe process of consuming seven pints.

I should make it clear that my chosen indulgence isgambling in a specific form: sports betting. Fixed odds bet-ting – the type you traditionally do on horses or football– has not yet been subjected to the social makeover en-joyed by the now ubiquitously acceptable casinos andpoker. Poker is cool these days; gone are the days of sleazyfive-card stud with fistfuls of used onecers being passedunder the table, hence becoming accessible for TV cover-age. Yet as a mostly Internet-based activity it is still hardlyhealthy.

Sports betting is most definitely not cool, at least notyet. Mind you, its failure to acquire street-cred is not forthe want of trying on the part of the bookmakers. Recent

years have seen a surge of new advertising campaigns bythe numerous new online firms, with Premier League foot-ball in particular subject to a saturating level of industrymarketing. Can anyone remember the last time theywatched a live football match on TV and not getting thelatest odds from Ray Winstone at half-time? Yet despiteRay’s best efforts, a curious situation has developed wheredespite being revolutionised by the Internet, the image ofbetting has struggled to move on from the unemployedmale tragically studying the dog card in Ladbrokes.

Nu-gambler’s failure to materialise can be explainedsimply: the vast majority who conform to conventionalwisdom still believe betting is a guaranteed loser. In fact,I am quite convinced that the vast majority who regularlybet believe they will lose, at least in the long-term. Thisbelief is not adopted out of pessimism alone; about 2% ofgamblers actually make money from betting – a stat thatought to persuade anyone to stick their spare cash in asavings account. In my case, though, hearing this figureonly made me keener to discover their secret.

The results of researching the work of this minoritywere incredibly satisfying. It turned out that far frombeing a game of chance, successful gambling is a game ofdata: the more data you have time to compile and process,the more likely you are to win. I was faced with a won-

drous realisation: gambling could be a science. Once realising that winning and losing was not deter-

mined by Lady Luck but could be calculated by logic andrational thought, I had not only found a most appealingpastime but justified to myself that there could be a placein life for some all-important risk-taking. This was veryimportant to someone far too cowardly to seek thrills fromdrugs or extreme sports.

Do not get the wrong idea; I am not saying it is easyto win or that I win all the time: far from it. Nor am Isaying that this is a one-way ticket to early retirement;there are strict rules that must be adhered to if you do notwish for your life to be made a misery.

However, with discipline, I have found this to be away of enhancing something that is already a huge passion– watching sport – while having the invaluable benefit ofpaying for a few extra luxuries here and there. In fact, youcan achieve the latter without the need for the former.There is no doubt that after two-and-a-bit years of doingthis I am definitely ‘up’, in fact comfortably so.

And the look on the concerned friends’ faces when youtell them you have paid for your gig ticket, new televisionor a weekend break out of bet winnings is truly priceless.

In Catch I will be sharing some of the secretsof beating the dastardly bookies. Here aremy first two tips to try and get you started.

QPR (+40 points) to win the Premier Leaguehandicap at 15/1 with Coral

One way of getting value for your stake money is to get abet on early: if you you need to see every bet settled onthe same day you won’t get very far.

Long-term bets on sports tournaments can be a sourceof silly odds, so this is the best time of year to start lookingat the new football season.

Trying to back the winner of the Premier League is areal fools’ errand; three teams at most have a realisticchance of winning and you won’t get value on any ofthose. However, the bookies are good enough to give ussome alternative ways to look at things. One of myfavourite markets is the Premier League Handicap.

To understand this, you have to envisage the PremierLeague as one of those staggered-start races where themost useless get to run first and the fastest have to catchup. One team, in this case Manchester United, is selectedas the most likely to win the Premier League and has to

accrue points ‘from scratch’. The rest are all given a headstart, ranging from three points for Chelsea – seen as thenext best – to 46 points for Norwich City, seen as theworst.

The team that wins is the one that has the most points,plus any handicapped points, at the end of the season. Thetheory behind this is the Premier League’s idea of hell: acompletely even race, thus every team is given the sameodds of winning.

I really like the look of Queen’s Park Rangers; theyhave been given a 40 point start, which looks way too big.The winner of these markets is generally the team thatplays above expectation and finishes around eighth orninth.

I also cannot imagine it will be long before QPR startwielding their considerable financial muscle in the transfermarket, and it could give them a big advantage in thegroup of 14 teams that inevitably bunch up behind theguaranteed top six. 50 points would have finished eighthlast season and I think that is well within QPR’s range.

AFC Wimbledon promoted at 6/1 with Bet365

League Two contains the hottest ante-post favourite youwill probably ever see in the shape of moneybags Crawley

Town, who bought their way out of the conference lastseason with spending beyond the reach of most teams inLeague One.

As a result they are odds-on to make it two promotionsin a row next year, which has to be ignored for puntingpurposes. Much more interesting are the other new teamin League Two, the fabulous AFC Wimbledon.

Their fairy-tale rise from the park leagues is somethingwe should all celebrate, and with the great Satan of theMK Dons now just one tantalising step away there willbe no team more motivated this season than AFC.

With their record of upward mobility and with play-off places going all the way down to seventh, the realDons are just begging to be backed. JB

Jamie is a lifelong Nottingham Forest fan with a hugely impressivelibrary of Rothmans Football Yearbooks.

Got your own tips? [email protected]

Betting is not all sad men praying for their horse in the 2.35 from Uttoxeter. It can a hobby,increase enjoyment of sport and - perish the thought! - even earn you money. In his first instalment,Jamie Brown reveals why he bets and offers some potentially profitable tips.

Jamie’s Tips.....


Depending on how one defines it, Lord Jus-tice Taylor wrote in his report into theHillsborough stadium disaster of April

1989 that “touting” could include selling ticketsfor the Royal Opera House just as much as forMaine Road or Old Trafford.

But nowadays it is still legal to flog your ticket forWagner at the Palace Theatre in Manchester but sincethe Criminal Justice and Public Order Act passed in 1994you cannot sell your matchday seat.

In the 1980s, Manchester City tickets were only soldat the stadium ticket office. For a match that was likelyto be in high demand there was no alternative to queuing,sometimes overnight, to wait for tickets to go on sale inthe morning.

Touts had access to a network of people who couldbuy tickets, effectively giving fans who couldn’t or would-n’t queue up the opportunity to circumvent the process.“In a way they provided a service to fans who couldn’tget tickets,” according to Dave Wallace, editor of the Cityfanzine The King of the Kippax, “because a lot of the timethe way the club organised it was a shambles.”

Sometimes ad hoc measures were adopted to try tostructure sales, as for the FA Cup final in 1981 when thenchairman, Peter Swales, guaranteed that every seasonticket holder would get the opportunity to buy a ticket.But in general there was no system beyond the principleof first come, first served.

In contrast, today almost all fans that want to attendCity matches are registered with the club and hold someform of membership card or a season ticket, and the clubhave developed a system of loyalty points based on pre-vious attendance by which they calibrate ticket sales, of-fering them first to those deemed most loyal. Most Cityfans are happy with things as they are. “It’s a reasonablyfair system,” says Wallace. “But I would say that becauseI’ve got a lot of points.”

Tickets for the FA Cup semi-final against United onthe 16th April, City’s first since 1981 and our first visitto the new Wembley Stadium, were unsurprisingly heav-ily in demand and out of reach for someone with as fewloyalty points as me. Still, these moments are special, andI decide to go to the stadium and see what happens.

As I start up the bridge from Wembley Way to thestadium itself, I come upon two men in the London geezeruniform of Hackett polo shirts, one yellow, one pink,swapping large amounts of cash. I stop and ask if they

have a City ticket for sale.“Are you Old Bill?” Pink Shirt demands, “show me

your warrant card!” He laughs. “Yes I’ve got one but it’sall the way down there,” he gestures towards the tubestation, “and it’s one and a half.”

“It’s what?” I say. I think he means £1,500 pounds andtell him this is ridiculous, but evidently he isn’t speakingthe same language as me. “No!” he laughs, “a hundredand fifty!” “Oh right, flipping heck,” I say.

“Have you got one and a half?”“One hundred and fifty? Yeah I have.”“Right, come with me then.” He sets off purposefully

down the ramp.“How far are we talking?” I ask him, as we make our

way past the large numbers of police on foot and horsewho are maintaining a physical barrier between the twosets of fans.

“We’ll go down here, cut through the McDonald’s carpark and my mate’s in the bookies, ‘cause it’s bent roundhere with the Old Bill you know what I mean?”

Pink Shirt and his friend are just runners in this oper-ation. Their job is simply to collect customers, negotiateon price, and deliver them to the point of sale. The manwho holds the tickets and handles most of the moneywaits in the relative safety of the bookmakers on the highstreet near the station, a good location in that it is out ofthe way of the police.

As we weave in and out of the City fans streamingtowards us I try to ask Pink Shirt where the tickets comefrom. “Through an agency”, he says evasively, “they’regood seats.” He turns away to call his mate and check theticket is still there. He uses this phone call to try the “ohsorry mate, he’s asking for £170 now” school of negotia-tion. I stand firm and he relents.

During our five minute walk from the stadium PinkShirt will not be drawn into conversation about his ex-pectations for the match or even the scuffles that occurredright in front of us. He is calm and does his work, walkingme down to Ticket Man. All the thousands of people,the colours and songs and the aggression seem to pass himby. It is just a backdrop in front of which he thumbsthrough portraits of Adam Smith.

In the bookies there is horse talk on the televisionscreens and football talk on everybody’s lips. Pink Shirttakes me over to a taller, thinner man. He has a smoker’svoice and you suspect that if he could, he’d conduct allhis business with a Benson hanging out of his mouth likeportrait of Albert Camus. He goes into his pocket for a

large stack of tickets. These are in an official ‘Club Wem-bley’ envelope, with a letter on headed paper, valuablesupporting documents for anyone who wants proof thatthey are genuine.

Club Wembley is a scheme introduced by the FootballAssociation to allow fans to commit to secure a seat atthe stadium for a ten year period. On payment of a oneoff licence fee of at least £4,105 and an annual fee startingat £1,777, a Club Wembley member receives a ticket forall matches at Wembley, includng the FA Cup semis, finaland England games. Some fans buy these packages be-cause they love to watch football, and especially becausethey want to watch the national side. But it is abundantlyclear that many of these seats have been bought by toutsfor the express purpose of selling them on.

The men sitting next to me at the semi-final had clearlybought their seats from a tout, and you can find hundredsof these seats being offered for sale on touting websites(based abroad but run by British criminals) ahead of anymatch at Wembley. Only around two thirds of the sta-dium capacity is filled by fans who have bought their tick-ets from the two clubs, while the rest are sold throughClub Wembley and other expensive or complimentarypackages.

I hand over seven twenties and a tenner, some ofwhich Ticket Man gives to Pink Shirt, and walk out withmy ticket. I am in and out of the bookmakers in less thantwo minutes, and no one talks any more than necessary.

Of course, thanks to a goal from Yaya Touré, Citybeat United and made it to the final of the FA Cup forthe first time in 30 years.

Clicking through the various touting websites offeringtickets for the final at hundreds of pounds was a painfulform of window shopping like walking down WembleyWay past hundreds of touts. They were all there, sellingnot just a product but an experience, a cultural moment,the chance to participate in some kind of history. Iwanted to watch the match but, I thought, it would justbe impossible.

I went to Wembley anyway: I needed to be amongmy people. But I didn’t have the points and I told myselfI didn’t have the money. Then, drinking in a pub withan old schoolmate, I got talking to another City fan, aManc exiled in Australia, who told me about his friendwho had a spare ticket...

Harry is a writer and History PhD student at University CollegeLondon. Illustration: Katie Mason.

With few loyalty points, therewas only one way Man City fanHarry Stopes was getting intoWembley for the FA Cup. Hereis his account of delving into themurky world of ticket touts.

Touts onWembleyWay

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Documents

Catch - Issue One - Summer 2011