Attila the Stockbroker Diary: September 25, 2026

A happy reunion takes the bard down memory strasse

Cinema / 24 September 2026 Film round-up: September 24, 2026 24 September 2026 MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Heart of the Beast, Sense and Sensibility, Babystar, and Boorman and the Devil

DAVID NICHOLSON thrills to the productions of two bruising operas

PAUL DONOVAN applauds a towering revival of a 1930s boxing drama, written by the US communist Cliff Odets

Chris Searle speaks to veteran US saxophonist GARY BARTZ

ANDY HEDGECOCK enjoys a novel for adults (by a writer of children’s fiction) that examines the fatal impact of a parent’s literary imaginings

ALISON DONNELL extols a virtuoso literary performance that primes the imagination for justice and transformation to come

I HAD a wonderful time on tour with my lifelong friends Newtown Neurotics last week for the first time since about 1992. Singer Steve and I have been best friends for 47 years and in the 1980s we performed together relentlessly: as well as supporting the great trade union struggles of the day in Britain we had some amazing experiences abroad, and we reminisced about them a lot during five days on the road.

Most memorable were the three tours of the GDR we did between 1986 and 1989, when we were invited, after a lot of discussion by the ruling SED party’s youth organisation FDJ, as the first British punks to play there. 

The difference between what we were told about the GDR in the mainstream British mainstream media and what we actually experienced was truly mind-blowing. And while we were there I was invited to perform in North Korea at the World Festival of Youth & Students in 1989.

I couldn’t go, because I was already booked to do a tour of Canada, but I persuaded them to take Steve as a solo performer, and he wowed stadiums full of curious North Koreans with acoustic covers of Newtown Neurotics songs and had an interesting time wandering around — occasionally on his own. Yes, you read that right! 

But our other trip in 1989 was the most incredible of all. That year England were drawn against Albania in a World Cup qualifying group, and renowned football fanzine When Saturday Comes organised a trip for a coachload of fans to go to the game, a real coup during the days when statues of Stalin were still in evidence.

Although he’s not interested in football, Steve came with me because he wanted to experience Albania, and on the last night we borrowed the instruments of the awful Albanian Beatles covers band who had been booked to entertain us (interesting in itself, because at the time the Party of Labour of Albania viewed all Western pop music as “bourgeois and decadent”), borrowed the Albanian drummer, and did a couple of his songs and a version of the Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop. 

Somehow, this short performance became celebrated as the first-ever punk gig in Albania, and I was invited back to Tirana in 2012 to “recreate it” at an arts festival held in a disused railway siding surrounded by huge puddles full of tadpoles. I’m not making any of this up, I promise, and there is a whole chapter devoted to it in my autobiography Arguments Yard. (A statement, not a plug.)

And as well as having a huge lot of fun, last week’s tour raised £321.40 for the RNLI. We live 400 yards from our local lifeboat station and my wife is the councillor for the ward containing it. The calumnies being spewed online against them are beneath contempt and we support them 100 per cent. 

Finally for this week, a review of Stand or Fall — The Play which has its last night tonight at the Theatre Royal in Brighton. It’s the story of the incredible fall and rise of our beloved Brighton & Hove Albion FC, seen through the eyes of one family. 

For those who don’t know (and if you read this column regularly you should by now, even if you don’t like football) 29 years ago we were bottom of the Football League with no ground, and now we’re fourth in the Premier League and about to start our second season in Europe. 

The absolute highlight of this rumbustious, tender, funny, inspiring chronicle of the last three decades of our history is the sight of our club’s nemeses, hated former “owner” Bill Archer and his nauseating sidekick David Bellotti, burning in hell. I don’t believe in hell, but if it exists, one of them is definitely burning in it and the other soon will be. 

Also utterly warranted is the bathing of the stage in red and playing of devilish music each time the word “Chelsea” was mentioned. 

Writer and director Mark Brailsford should be very proud of his efforts and it comes thoroughly recommended, especially if, like me, you’re not a regular theatre-goer. 

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The Bard hands out medals for his Edinburgh campaign and urges us to support The Men They Couldn’t Hang

Attila the Stockbroker Diary / 14 August 2026 Attila the Stockbroker Diary: August 14, 2026 14 August 2026 The bard confirms that the right has a humour bypass, and replays the English Revolution on period instruments

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