Shane Meadows’ Nottingham
The This is England director shows us around his home town
WORDS: DAVID SANDHU
Forthright, idiosyncratic and affable, Nottingham and Shane Meadows seem made for each other. As an adopted son of the city, the director has made its streets the backdrop to his critically acclaimed films such as This is England. Not since Albert Finney and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning have these gritty locations appeared so prominently in British cinema. And Meadows remains loyal to the city, still living and working there. “Nottingham is a very generous place because people here share their talents – it doesn’t have the competitive nature of London.”
Born in Uttoxeter (a small town in nearby Staffordshire) in 1972, Meadows moved to Nottingham after college and began making short films with a camcorder in the mid1990s. His big break was writing, directing and co-starring in Small Time, a hit at the 1996 Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Bigger things followed: Bob Hoskins starred in his first feature Twenty Four Seven (1997) and subsequent releases included A Room for Romeo Brass (1999) and Somers Town (2008). This is England won the Bafta for Best British Film 2008. Here are Shane Meadows’s four favourite Nottingham hang-outs…
MEADOW LANE
“This would have to be top of my list – the home of Notts County Football Club.
I was never a football fan until I made Twenty Four Seven, my first feature film in 1997. One of the actors was an avid Notts County fan who started taking me to their matches – and I’ve been going ever since.
It’s been more than a decade of pretty painful watching, freezing to death in the Derek Pavis stand (I sit just behind the dug-outs). But now that we have new backers [a Middle East-based consortium] and Sven-Goran Eriksson [the former England manager] as our director of football, things might be about to change! I still haven’t got my head around the Sven thing though; if he was just chasing cash, there are lots of other clubs he could have joined so I like to think it was also a football decision.
After all, the one thing that no-one can ever take away from Notts County is that we’re the oldest professional football team in the world. If Sven could help take us up into the Championship again – or even the Premiership one day – it would be amazing.
He’s worked from the bottom up with Swedish teams so you never know and, with his track record, he’ll definitely help us attract more exciting players. That’s why I’m getting a season ticket here this season. Meadow Lane is where I first got turned on to football and once that happens, you’re in it for life.”
Notts County FC, Meadow Lane. Ticket office: +44 (0)115 9557204 weekdays, +44 (0)115 9557210 matchdays. www.nottscountyfc.co.uk
BROADWAY CINEMA
“I worked at the Broadway Cinema (for a film company called Intermedia) back in 1994. I’d been chucked out of college and they took me in. The Broadway was also the first place to show my work – I’d tried to get my short films shown at film clubs around Nottingham, but no one would touch them with a bargepole because they were on video. But the Broadway helped me screen them and they’ve supported me enormously ever since. The bar at Broadway has also proved important over the years. Coming from Uttoxeter, it provided my first taste of cosmopolitan city life! It’s a place where a lot of creative, talented people come together so lots of ideas for my films originated there. Nowadays, I’m still involved with the cinema – from introducing my own films to attending events or just hanging out. Paul Schrader (writer of Taxi Driver) was there recently and I ended up getting completely hammered at the bar. Most of all, Broadway is an arts cinema that’s not pretentious or exclusive – they just encourage as many people as they can to watch interesting films. They had a trendy refurb recently with Paul Smith seats, but I’m not sure that the new seats are as comfy – I’m on the heavy side and need a lot of support!”
14-18 Broad Street, +44 (0)115 952 6611, www.broadway.org.uk
SNEINTON
“This inner-city neighbourhood means a lot to me. Centred around Sneinton Market, it’s where everything began in my career. I was living alone in one of the more impoverished areas of Sneinton during the summer of 1994 and started making these short films around the streets. In fact, all my first short films (including the breakthrough Small Time) were filmed exclusively here.
Unlike other urban areas of Nottingham, it isn’t full of students – so it’s held onto its identity and character: the people next to you in the pub are likely to have families who have been here for generations. Sneinton is also very multicultural and, as a massive fan of spicy foods, the Indian restaurants kept me going back then. I’ve got loads of happy memories of those streets, especially a pub called The Bendigo (named after a local legend William ‘Bendigo’ Thompson, a bare-knuckle world champion who was a hard-drinking fighter turned religious preacher – now buried in nearby St Mary’s Cemetery). You know you’re in a proper pub when there’s a statue of a bare-knuckle boxer on the roof – and you’d get a very lively night in there I can tell you! Bendigo was like Nottingham’s Raging Bull, so there might be a film in all that somewhere!”
YE OLDE TRIP TO JERUSALEM PUB
“This boozer is carved into the limestone cliffs under Nottingham Castle and claims to be the oldest pub in the world. I think it dates back over 800 years.
And it also happens to be just a stone’s throw from where my office is based. Now that I’m a middle class gent around town, I like a traditional ale or three and this is where I come for a good pint. During the day (especially in summer), the Trip is packed with tourists – so you get every nationality in there boozing in all those dark nooks and crannies.
Then, around 7 or 8pm, all the locals – like me – roll in. I’ve got a romantic notion about medieval times and when you’re sat in these caves, it feels fantastic. It’s the closest we’ll get to drinking in the Middle Ages!
What I really like about this place is that no-one has tried to modify or enhance it – so there’s real authenticity.
Finally, I should warn ladies not to sit in the pub’s ancient ‘fertility chair’ if they don’t want to be with child – my girlfriend did it for a laugh and the next thing we know we’ve got a one-year-old!”
Brewhouse Yard, off Castle Road, +44 (0)115 947 3171, www.triptojerusalem.com
IT’S A RAP
Shane Meadow’s latest project is a hilarious low-budget, improvised rockumentary about a Nottingham rapper.
Scor-zay-zee. Devised with and starring Paddy Considine, Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee follows rock roadie and failed musician, Le Donk (Considine) and his new sidekick (Scor-zay-zee playing himself) on a ‘journey of a lifetime’ and includes appearances from the Arctic Monkeys. Shot over five days, it’ll be the first of a series of ’5 Day Features’, a movement created by Shane Meadows and Mark Herbert for Warp films.
Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee opens in cinemas on 9 October and is available on DVD from 26 October
