Published Date: 22 August 2005

A sports writer and a Yorkshire arts administrator tell
Nick Ahad why they work well together.

After a hard day interviewing David Beckham, Anthony Clavane used to like nothing better than a beer in the bar with his fellow journalists.
In recent years, however, he has gone straight back to his hotel room to pluck the strings of his guitar and write a few songs.
By day, Leeds-born Clavane, who attended Roundhay School, is the chief sports writer of the Sunday Mirror, but by night he writes songs, has recorded a CD, and working in collaboration with friend Stephen May, his latest project, Still Waiting for Everything, opens at the Halifax Square Chapel Centre for the Arts next week.
“I love my job and I travel around the world; one day I’m in Portugal at Euro 2004, then in Milan or Madrid doing an interview,” says Clavane.
“But it can be quite a tiring existence and lifestyle. Now I take my guitar with me everywhere I go and just write songs when the event I’m covering is over.
“I suppose it is quite unusual in the world of sports journalism to have someone playing a guitar and writing songs, but it’s something I have always loved doing. I find that with travelling around so much, I have plenty of time to write.
“I love my job, but I also want to express myself in other ways.”
Clavane and May have been friends for some years, having met through mutual friends while living in Ipswich.
May, who had been a local journalist, teacher and worked in PR, wrote his first play while in Ipswich, called Back The World. He has since moved to Hebden Bridge where he runs the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre, a retreat which runs courses for aspiring writers.
“It got some favourable reviews,” says May of his first play, before Clavane interrupts in order to add enthusiastically: “It was a really great play – it may sound like quite a trite thing to say because I’m Steve’s friend, but I thought it was a really great play, full of energy and humour.”
This personal cheerleading is reciprocated regularly from May to Clavane and back again, who have an easy and comfortable – and it turns out mutually beneficial – relationship.
Clavane adds: “I have been writing songs for years, I have about 20 or 30 that I’m proud of, but you’re scared to play them to people, worried what their reaction might be. I never really had the courage to play them, but Steve heard them and he was really supportive and encouraging and that kept me writing. I wouldn’t say he’s a mentor or a muse – he’s more of a motivator!”
May is equally complimentary about his collaborative partner’s creative skills.
“I really loved Anthony’s songs – and they seemed to be coming from the same perspective that I had been writing from,” says May.
After the success of Back The World, which explored the notion that men never let go of their childhood dreams, always believing they could be professional footballers or rock stars, May successfully applied for an Arts Council grant to fund Still Waiting for Everything.
“This time I was inspired by the pressures on young women today. My daughter is 19 years old and she and her friends feel this enormous pressure to have everything – it’s not enough to just have a career, they have to have success in everything – they have to have a steady relationship, children, homes,” says May.
“But it’s also about people from poor estates, the kind of place where I grew up, that are considered dumping grounds where no-one expects you to be able to do anything – the attitude that nothing good can come out of those places.”
“I wanted to write a story about the big hearts that populate small towns. I come from a semi on an estate, the kind of places that get dismissed as being cultural deserts – and I wanted to write a piece that would celebrate that world.
“Still Waiting is about the passions, the desires, the ideas and the intelligence that animate places often seen as dumping grounds for second rate lives.”
The play is a one-woman show with actress Sarah Lindsey playing singer-songwriter Diana Price, along with over a dozen other characters. The play charts the story of Price as she escapes her ordinary world and existence on a council sink estate through her talent – only to find the world turn its back on her.
Before the play became the fully formed piece it now is, it was a germ of an idea, something that May wanted to write.
“I had this idea, but not sure what to do with it,” says May.
Then Clavane played him one of his songs which was called Still Waiting for Everything. It seemed to encompass everything that May wanted to say.
“I started writing a script and would send bits of it to Anthony, who would write a song and send it to me and I would write around that,” says May.
“The songs and the play are
not separate entities – one
doesn’t exist without the other. It is something that grew organically.”