Tom McRae, Leadmill, Sheffield.

As you may have guessed, we did manage to get to see the wonderfully bitter egomaniac that is Tom McRae. It took a great deal of effort, time, planning and money and ultimately was worth every single flipping penny. Starting fairly early on with the announcement of a ‘loss of internet, I didn’t do anything to it – honest….’ text, from home, pretty much as we settled down on our outward bound train journey,…. after all, it could only improve after that particularly annoying piece of information, couldn’t it?
We tumbled off the train, high on excitement, waiting to see what Sheffield could throw at us.. we began our journey towards our B & B…

I saw a fabulous building on the Sheffield skyline – the skyline, that is from the tram lines… and was fascinated with this building, enough to take more of it on our way back home, with a different light and angle…. It's a car park. Allies & Morrison’s St Paul’s Place car park, Sheffield, to be precise.





"Anodised aluminium became the favourite because of its performance, low maintenance and durability, but it still cost £254 per sq m. (The overall cladding package came in at £1.4 million). Once the decision had been taken to use anodised aluminium in 1.2sq m square modules, Allies & Morrison found that by tilting the panels forward by 24 degrees, the right amount of ventilation could be achieved. Unusually, instead of tilting all the panels in the same direction, the architect rotated them randomly in four different directions.
The result is a powerful facade for a relatively humble building type, and one that achieves the ventilation requirement in an ingenious and original way."

And this. This. This.

Food however was high on our list of priorities and we stumbled upon some pub serving generic ‘wholesome but pub like’ food. It worked a treat, we ate like two soldiers back on home leave after some placement to another planet, a pint each and unabashed excitement to our onward journey to our place of sleep. I asked the guy behind the bar for a taxi and how far were we from said establishment..? He nearly came with excitement as he led me to the front door and proudly pointed towards our final destination… fcuk, I could almost read the signage above the front door from where we were standing, the guy became more excited, ‘I know, I know, me and my mate got a taxi to it one night, from here, wow, the taxi driver was soooo pissed off with us’…. (No shit Sherlock) So we walked the final 500 yards and entered our stop over joint. The Harley.




The ear plugs, they said in the literature, were required due to excessive noise during the night hours… we were ready. One of our major decisions was what to do about ‘Strictly’. So we watched it, that handy bottle of wine, stowed between our party clothes came in handy… Tuffers went, we weren’t nearly as upset as we would have been at home… and onwards to the Leadmill. We decided to leave our gaff through the side entrance, which led us to where the leprosy sufferers were offending the rest of mankind and, as we walked towards the main road, shouted up to the brave smokers… ‘How do you get a taxi around here?’ The guy shouted back, ‘like this’, and raised his arm and bellowed at the taxi ‘Oi!’ and the bastard stopped. We couldn’t believe it, and neither could the James Bond guy up on the smokers walk way… let alone his friends, who stood, open mouthed and silently impressed… Shouting our thanks to him, we jumped in the cab and asked for the Leadmill…. Finally we were off….
The taxi driver was impeccable, informative, courteous and friendly, chatted with us all the way to the Leadmill. It was a real treat to be treated so pleasantly. Sheffield taxi drivers are A OK. We had a pleasant 5 minutes inhaling the leprosy and then headed for the front door, were directed through turnstiles (what match was I going to see…?) and we were in like Flynn. Dark, echo-y and very moody, we could hear someone singing to the guitar, checked him out, it wasn’t Tom, so we went on the hunt for beer. A hint of black current with a Guinness, and a ‘straight’ Guinness for me… the bar tender was chatty and we started to quiz him on times of appearances, beer only poured in this room, so no-one could hear the annoying clinking and clanging that the bar makes, no throwing of bottles into the bottle bin, some lovely precautions and high forward thinking by obvious music lovers and people who give a shit about how to make their guest sound as good as possible. One hour! He was going to be on for one poxy hour? Unbelievable, unacceptable and several ‘un’s’ later we were gob smacked, Tom was only appearing for an hour. It was a bit of a shock, I have to be honest, I was expecting a 2 hour show, after all the man had let his hardcore fan base down, we had already bought tickets to two of his (cancelled) gigs, this was a ‘make up’ show, one poxy hour….
We needed leprosy. We had to get our hands stamped with some kind of proof that we’d already paid for entrance, before we left the building, so the doorman drew his initial on my hand, a sure sign to be able to re-enter the building after a nicotine intake. Done. My friend went for more beer, I headed towards the stage and on Tom came. Exquisite, he opened with Alphabet of Hurricanes and just kept throwing his words at us… I was annoying people on the left, my camera tries not to be intrusive, I keep my head down and yet, I find I am still in the way. The guy with the fcuk off camera was intensely annoying, with his whirring and clicking, I carried on like the good soldier I am, and just kept filming. The rapport between Tom and his fans in immense, he has a bitter and twisted moment for every comment made, his self-deprecation shows no bounds and his fans support this bitterness sweetly. We revel in it, he’s one of ‘us’, he is just more able to tell the world how it is we see life… Sadly it is incredibly funny and the crowd never know whether to laugh or cry. I think Tom particularly enjoys this cusp. The Ukulele song was sublime and Vampire Heart was also one to be pleased to know I ‘was there’ for. The entire gig was supreme, our heckle for more, paid off as he went well over time, we eventually got about one hour and twenty minutes of the great man. I want to thank him. A lot. It was just fantastic.
We met him in the bar a few minutes later. We’d been hoping he’d come and say high, people had come from all over the place to see him, dedicated fans. From the Isle of Man came Lisa and Adam, people came over from Ireland and France to see him. We make a special effort to see him because he is a special man. I don’t want to share him with ‘the world’. I don’t want to see him, along with 49, 999 other people, I want to keep him to myself, the best kept secret in the UK, he wants more, I wish him well and still hope he never makes it. I never pretended to want to share him with the general public. He’s all mine, I will share him though, just, not with many.




After we left the Leadmill....