Shankly and Kitson

Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you’ll reach the floor.

(Bill Shankly)

I fell in love with Bill Shankly last year whilst reading David Peace’s excellent Red or Dead. The book chronicles Shankly’s tenure at Liverpool FC in painstaking, exacting detail. Peace doesn’t just write the character of Shankly, he inhabits him, describing every dugout emotion and training ground thought. Each one of Shankly’s games in charge are conveyed via first person match report, enabling the reader to live and breathe every ball. For some the narrative was a step too far: Peace has always looked beyond the headlines, revelling in minutiae, through his books on Peter Sutcliffe, The Miners Strike and Brian Clough; but never had he done it to such an extreme where his characters are shown laying the table or washing up as in the case of Red or Dead. Critics said it was in need of an edit; fans, on the other hand, can cite Atticus Finch on why sometimes the hero is in the detail: “You can never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” In Red or Dead then, we don’t just read about the life of Bill Shankly, we live it; which makes it, in my opinion, the best book about football I’ve ever read.

Shankly took Liverpool out of the Second Division and won three First Division titles.

Whenever I fall in love with something, I make it my life’s work to tell my girlfriend about it. (She has only appreciated this practice once in our relationship.)  This time though it paid off.  For the pair of us had already arranged a trip to Liverpool to see artist, thinker and prophet Daniel Kitson. I have seen the comedian Daniel Kitson more times in the last few years than I have some of my own friends and family. Every show he does I endeavour to see. Given he performs two or three different shows a year means this is quite an undertaking. I love The Smiths; I love George Orwell; I love The Office, but there’s nothing in the pantheon of culture I love more than Daniel Kitson. Therefore, noting in his recent mail-out that he was performing a new play at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre, I asked the girl if we could go. Fortunately, the last night of his show fell on the first day of our holiday. Serendipity hadn’t tasted this sweet since that snow day in April 2012. Anyway, we knew it would be a bit much to go all the way to Liverpool for the theatre, so we thought we’d make a day of it. Aware of my love for all things Shankly, the girl booked us in for a meal at The Bastion, a museum-restaurant housed within The Shankly Hotel.

In entering the restaurant it doesn’t look like much. Sepia washed prints of Shankly adorn the walls, chronologically arranged from his childhood in the remote Scottish village of Glenbuck to his retirement press conference in 1974. But nestled between pillars and centred in the concourse are some incredible artefacts that have been donated by his devoted grandson. There’s the This is Your Life book he was presented with; the 1971 Liverpool FA Cup final tracksuit he wore; letters from his friend and hero, Manchester United’s Sir Matt Busby; along with the shirts he donned as a Preston and Scotland player. Even the chairs have his wit inscribed on the back of them, “At a football club, there’s a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters Directors don't come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques."  

The dining room exhibition.

Such is the restaurant’s popularity for hosting birthday parties and baby showers, most diners are oblivious to the history they are seated with; but for those few football fans that come clutching Liverpool FC bags, this is a pilgrimage, the opportunity to visit a shrine dedicated to their great manager, a chance to say thank you to Bill, a man that blessed the city. 

So on to Kitson. I have written about Kitson before, and needless to say I will write about him again. Daniel Kitson is the comedian who had the world at his feet and kicked it into touch. In 2002 he won the Edinburgh’s main award, The Perrier, and overnight noticed his audience change from the kind that laughed at his ideas to the type that crowed at his swearing. Afraid of the mainstream diluting his voice, he took the road less taken and started performing short stories in theatres and writing stand-up shows titled, Weltanschauung. Essentially, he turned his back on the mob and embraced the people to form material that is humane, philosophical and uniquely funny. If he took the road more taken of panel shows and long tours, there’s every chance he wouldn’t have had the time to experiment with form and content in the way that he has.

It is Kitson’s prolificacy that makes him truly remarkable. Every year he somehow manages to produce a theatre show, a run of stand-up and a Christmas special. Such rapid output in the arts isn’t always regarded a good thing: take James Patterson in literature for example. However, every once in a while a maverick comes along that cannot only create great art but turn it over at a tremendous rate. While other comedians are worrying about what their ‘Edinburgh hour’ is going to be on, Kitson doesn’t have such concerns. Mohammad Ali once said, "I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark." Well, before the room gets dark, Kitson has workshopped, written and performed another piece of genre-defying comedy. To put it simply, he is a one off. There probably won’t be another one like him.

Recently, Kitson has prioritised his theatre shows over his stand up. He still dabbles in stand up, compering charity benefits to prevent ring rust; however you get the sense that comedy is just fun for him now- unlike theatre that feels like harder work. This is not to diminish comedy: comedy is the hardest thing to do well. Anyone can make someone feel sad; not everyone can make someone laugh. But when you’re born jester like Kitson then maybe you want to find other ways of entertaining the court.

Over the past few years, one of the developments I’ve seen in Kitson’s work is his use of recordings. After The Beginning Before The End (2013), Analog.Ue (2014) and Polyphony (2015) have all benefitted –or suffered – from their use. In Analog.Ue Kitson used a series of reel to reel players to tell a story about an old man and his garage – the ambition of the project (Kitson had to walk the stage turning on the audio players at the exact right time) meant we didn’t get to hear his live voice. This I feel was to the show’s detriment as witnessing his giddy expressiveness first-hand is part of what makes him so compelling. This issue was addressed in Polyphony where he used a number of iPods to tell a story about a man putting on a show, the difference this time was that Kitson stalked the middle circle, interacting effervescently with the recordings to form a magical hour of storytelling. 

In his new show Mouse: The Persistence of an Unlikely Thought, he acts alongside a recording to share the story of William Booth, a writer, whom is struggling to finish his story about a woman’s encounter with a mouse. This writer’s block is exacerbated by a caller, Billy, who has dialled him by mistake, and instead of apologising for the slip accuses him of stealing his phone. (When did you last have your phone? About 15 minutes ago in the kitchen? And have you been out of the house? No. So how do you assume I’ve stolen your phone?) Over the course of the conversation, the two iron out their differences, leading William to tell Billy the story of the mouse. The two soon find they like one another, uniting over a shared hatred of the term ‘daddy duty’ and a shared love of pizza. By the end the question remains: is there more to their similar names and viewpoints than meets the eye?

The phone call between William and Billy is intercut with the backward chronology of William’s descent into loneliness. What with William telling Billy a story, we’re effectively looking at a triple narrative. It is a story then that demands you follow the threads in order to see the joins in this most intricate material. For all of that, it doesn’t matter if you miss a few things- I 'm sure I did. It doesn’t matter because although the structure is highfalutin, the references are universally relatable: the challenge of throwing tea bags successfully into a mug; the love of snacking and the acknowledgement that ‘shit in a soup bowl’ is a great catchphrase. The beauty of Kitson is that he wraps up existential philosophy in examples that people can understand.

Another highlight of the show is seeing Kitson pick up on what the audience is doing. Before going into William's flashback, he has the comic’s instinct to seize on audience behaviour for huge laughs: at our show one woman was stood leaning against the balcony, a position that did not go unnoticed. Her response of a bad back was ok’d by Kitson, who then added, ‘I was just worried that you might be a bold assassin.’ At another point, a man stood up to gesticulate with people above; it turned out they had accidentally spilt water on him. Kitson doesn’t let this opportunity go to waste, clearing up the incident with authoritative humour, opining, “I bet Olivier didn’t have to put up with this shit.” This is what makes Kitson so special: he has the craftsmanship of a playwright alongside the spontaneity of a comedian.

The staging of the play.

Kitson will never be Olivier. He won’t have awards named after him, nor will he be treated by history in the same way. With no physical copies of his work, there's a danger his output could disappear into the ether. Given his superhuman talent, this could be perceived a great shame. It shouldn’t because Kitson is a man that finds dignity in the work itself, not the praise that follows it. Like Shankly, he's always aiming for the sky and more often than not he's scoring a direct hit. Kitson is now in a league of his own. He isn't just at the top table of comedy, he eats with the muses. Who knows what he will come up with next.

• Mouse: The Persistence of an Unlikely Thought will probably appear at the Edinburgh festival.
• Daniel Kitson's early shows are available here: http://www.danielkitson.com/audio.html
• The Bastion restaurant is housed within The Shankly Hotel, 60 Victoria Street, Liverpool