10 top popular culture moments from Leeds United's past

But the world of sport isn’t the only place where the Whites have left their mark on the national consciousness.

They have also regularly popped up in novels, films, songs and TV shows, with all manner of writers and other creative talents using the United name to add a touch of real-life grit and glamour to their work.

And here the Yorkshire Evening Post presents a just-for-fun list of 10 great popular culture moments from Leeds’s past.

Rising Damp

Yorkshire TV sitcom Rising Damp ran for 28 episodes in the 1970s and starred Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby, the seedy landlord of a no-frills boarding house in a city that is never named but is widely assumed to be Leeds. Rigsby was certainly a Leeds fan, famously recalling United’s 1975 European Cup final defeat at the hands of Bayern Munich with this politically-incorrect line: “When they scored that second goal, I thought they were going to break out into the goose-step.”

Porridge

Elland Road had a cameo role – well, nearly – in another fabulous Seventies sitcom, the BBC’s Porridge. The episode Happy Release ends with an ex-prisoner digging up the pitch at a football stadium in search of some buried loot. One of the stands at the ground features a sign saying Leeds United AFC but the location used for the filming was, in fact, Loftus Road – home of Queens Park Rangers and handily positioned close to the BBC’s Television Centre.

Match Of The Day

No, not the TV programme, but the name given to a gig that saw a string of top bands from the Madchester music scene playing at Elland Road in the summer of 1991. Happy Mondays headlined, with support from the likes of The Farm, The La’s, The High and Northside. Farm frontman and Liverpool fan Peter Hooton added some football banter to proceedings, jokily telling the assembled music lovers that they were part of the biggest crowd Elland Road had seen in years.

The Damned United

The big screen adaptation of David Peace’s novel about Brian Clough’s disastrous 44-day stay as Leeds manager in 1974 infuriated some United fans with its unflattering depiction of the club’s Don Revie era heroes. Whatever the arguments regarding accuracy, the film is still worth a watch for Michael Sheen’s mesmerising portrayal of Clough as a man trying – and failing – to step into Revie’s shoes. There’s also plenty for nostalgia lovers to enjoy, not least the mock-up of the much-missed blue West Stand frontage at Elland Road.

Loaded

Loaded revolutionised the UK lads’ mag market in the 1990s and, with Leeds fan James Brown at the helm, it should come as little surprise that the Whites made regular appearances in its pages. One of the magazine’s first covers featured a model in a Leeds kit along with the typically up-front tagline ‘goals, girls and go on my son’, while United star Gary Kelly was among its early interviewees. Legend has it that Brown hit upon the idea for Loaded during a trip to Barcelona to see Leeds play Stuttgart in a European Cup match in 1992.

This Is Your Life

No celebrity was safe in the Seventies from Eamonn Andrews and his famous ‘big red book’ and in April 1974 it was Don Revie’s turn to be surprised by the presenter of ITV’s This Is Your Life. Andrews ambushed Revie at the Queens Hotel in Leeds, with United players such as Billy Bremner, Johnny Giles and Norman Hunter on hand for the show’s trademark retelling of its subject’s life story. Other guests included Liverpool manager Bill Shankly and former Manchester United boss Matt Busby.

Veep

Leeds supporters watching US sitcom Veep got a shock last May when lead character Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) was shown wearing a United hooded top. To add to the intrigue, the top featured the infamous ‘Leeds salute’ club crest that had been unveiled and then hurriedly scrapped following a fan backlash at the start of 2018. Asked on Twitter how the hoodie had come about, Veep costume designer Kathleen Felix-Hager‏ said: “[The character] Merman bought the Leeds United team... writers wanted Selina to wear it... it was pitched to me in the morning and we actually made it in less than 6 hours to film that same day!"

Colin Welland

The actor and writer Colin Welland might be best known for appearing in Kes and penning the Oscar-winning script for Chariots Of Fire, but his CV also includes a television play called Leeds United. First broadcast on the BBC in 1974, Welland’s play was based on the true story of a strike by textile workers – many of them women – in Leeds four years earlier. The cast was headed by Lynne Perrie, who by then had already begun playing Ivy Tilsley in Coronation Street. The closing credits thank “the clothing workers of Leeds” for their help in making the film.

Amanda Palmer

Released in 2008, American singer Amanda Palmer’s debut solo album includes a track called Leeds United alongside songs such as Guitar Hero, The Point Of It All and Astronaut: A Short History Of Nearly Nothing. Reputedly inspired by a Leeds shirt given to Palmer by Kaiser Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson, the track appears to have little to do with football but does feature the lines ‘it's so exciting, someday, someday, someday, someday, someday, someday, Leeds United’.

Panto time

One of the more unusual episodes in United’s off-pitch history saw stars such as Billy Bremner, Norman Hunter and Duncan McKenzie appearing in a club panto at Leeds’s City Varieties Music Hall in the mid-1970s. United manager Jimmy Armfield came up with the idea of staging the fundraising production of Cinderella as a way of boosting team morale after the upheaval caused by his predecessor Brian Clough’s quickfire arrival and departure. It proved a big hit, with Armfield later saying: “The script ran for about an hour but with all the cheers and the clapping, it went on for 90 minutes, like a match. It took a long time to calm it all down. The curtain calls seemed to go on forever.”

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