How Leeds Changed The World
By John Wheelhouse, November 2010
How Leeds Changed the World is Mick McCann’s third book. It’s a ‘funky encyclopaedia of Leeds and its achievements. A compendium of remarkable facts about Leeds.’ Arranged like a traditional encyclopaedia, it covers all sorts of Leeds-related topics from the present day, all the way back to the 6th Century.
It’s different to other reference books as it’s full of facts and info, but also Mick’s opinions, anecdotes and chatty, jokey asides. It feels like a new sort of book and is hard to sum up.There’s a review on Amazon that says: ‘Mick McCann's humour infuses what is a very intelligent, thoughtful, interesting and utterly readable book. ….. Ultimately, it is his quirky, insightful and mischievous writing style that lifts the book above a mere compendium of facts.’ That sums it up very well for me. I spoke to him.
”So Mick, it’s quite a bold title, what’s behind it?”
“Yeh, it’s not a very Leeds title, is it? I think as a city we don’t like to show off or say ‘look what we’ve done.’ We keep our feet on the ground, don’t get ideas above our station or let stuff go to our head. Take comedians from Leeds like Julian Barratt from the The Mighty Boosh or Steve Delaney on Radio 4 with his brilliantly funny Count Arthur Strong character - they don’t plug themselves, like to keep their head down and avoid the glitzy, showbiz stuff. I don’t think you’ll often see Leigh Francis (Bo' Selecta, Avid Merrion, Keith Lemon etc.) appear anywhere as himself. Same with artists, take actor Bob Peck, who Sir Ian McKellen described as the actor he ‘learned the most from,’ or singer Jake Thackray. They’d avoid doing publicity like the plague. Look at Paul Ryan retiring from the stage and keeping his head down before he was even 20.
So in a funny way, I was going against this ‘Leedsness’ and saying ‘the city of Leeds is a fantastic, important, world city; look at all the things it’s done’, and not ‘Leeds, it int bad n’that’. I’m bigging up Leeds in a way that someone from Leeds wouldn’t normally do. Not that we’re not proud of our city, we are, we just don’t like to show off. Look at all the students who come to Leeds, fall in love with it and want to stay, we didn’t tell them, they discovered it for themselves. Something that annoys me is that Leeds people are often described in the national press as ‘Yorkshire’ man or woman like when the great Leeds writer Keith Waterhouse died, it was covered nationally as ‘Yorkshire writer Keith Waterhouse’. You’d never get that in the national press about a Liverpudlian, for example, they’re always described as ‘Liverpool writer, band, comedian’ etc. So I wanted to say, 'This is Leeds, a great city and this is what it's done.'
Also I wanted to challenge people and the title basically says, ‘Leeds has changed the world and this is how.’ And Leeds has changed the world. Big things have been done here like bringing the world films - Le Prince and Donisthorpe, or the invention of the pericardial heart valve that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives, or helping shape modern medicine. Take publishing - the first ever Lads’ Mag (Ex Magazine) was conceived, written and produced here. And a Leeds lad did Loaded. Morley’s Helen Fielding brought us Bridget Jones and with it created the Chick Lit genre. There are so many things the people of Leeds have achieved. Leeds was central to the development of modern cement or concrete, which accounts for between a half and two thirds of the world’s infrastructure, or the discovery of photosynthesis, and the worldwide obsession with replica football shirts was launched from Leeds.
Ten years after Joseph Priestley invented carbonated water in 1767, some guy used it to produce the world’s first mass produced, fizzy soft drinks....Mr Schweppes made a few bob. All the pop fizzy in the world is rooted in Leeds. The list is endless and the book is crammed full of stuff, big and small, given to the world by Leeds.”
“How did you come up with the idea?”
“On holiday, a few years ago, we were going to visit Granada, a major Spanish city with a rich history. The house we were staying in had bookshelves stuffed full of books on the region, with large sections on the city, so I started flicking through them. After a while I stopped cos they all had pretty much the same information in them and all presented in this dry, dull language like someone describing a stuffed animal in a museum. There was no passion, the authors didn’t care a jot about the city, they were just churning out the same old boring info, in the same tedious way – you could tell the only reason they were doing it was because they were getting paid for it. No need to do any proper research or dig out interesting material, just rearrange the info in the 40 other books and pick up an easy pay cheque.
Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to know about the Alhambra but only needed to read the same info once and thumbing through the books there was nothing that felt alive or interesting: dead writing about a dead city. Such an incredible city must have a hundred interesting facts, stories and achievements. In some books there’d be a rare and brief mention about how the city influenced flamenco, for example, but no detail. The writers didn’t care enough to dig about: just a brief mention. They’d read it somewhere, so they could chuck it in and pretend they’d done some research. I found flamenco interesting, I wanted to know more about the women, the new dances and styles they started or the top guitarists who helped shape the music. I realised that I wanted to know about the hidden corners and history of the people and the city, the real city. What was invented there? Who were the great writers or artists? At Christmas that year I was looking at all the same old tat that people have to buy me and thought, I want that book I was imagining in Granada but I want it on Leeds. Leeds is at least 2 or 3 times as big as Granada there must be loads of info, daft stories and big things to do with Leeds. I wasn’t wrong, there is. I love our city and in my book I wanted to dig about.”
“Your writing style is quite unusual for this kind of book, what.....?”
“Well first, I’d like to see another book like mine, cos I don’t think there is one. I’m a Leeds lad born and raised in East Leeds, so I talk like a Leeds lad and I write like a Leeds lad. OK so most people know me as one of the most talented, intelligent, bestest looking, witty lads to come out of Leeds, unbeaten at noughts and crosses in over 40 years, with the best kids and eye-lashes. But this city has helped shape me and I think I’ve got a knowledge of the city that’s deeper than just facts and dates. For me, that’s the problem with a lot of local history books, just the same as the tourist books for Granada, companies churning out the same book for Leeds, Norwich, Bristol etc and the ‘authors’ are only half-interested in what they are writing, they’re waiting for the pay cheque and to move on to ‘do’ Nottingham and you can tell. They can be very dull. What’s the point in me writing a book on Leeds that’s too dull to read? I didn’t want it to be dry and formal I wanted it chatty, moist and full of life. It’s shouldn’t be a dull list but a lively celebration of a great city. I don’t want to do the factory, churn it out writing. I want to write about Leeds with passion, life, humour or sadness, I wanted to dig about and sort out confusions, find amazing Leeds people I’d never heard of, who had done some remarkable things, and that’s what I hope I’ve done.
How Leeds Changed the World is available from Amazon, Waterstones, HMV
And Tourist Info at Leeds Train Station
ISBN 978-0-9554699-3-0
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