Walking into Narnia and erectile dysfunctions: David Scott on the path to writing Mancunians, his seminal book on Manchester
A renaissance man discusses Picasso, James Joyce and being offered powders
‘…there was the revelation that today’s gang members are the grandchildren of those from the nineties; people quipped about the fear of Hacienda nostalgia becoming a noose around the city’s neck we needed to take off before we suffer the same inability to progress like Liverpool has with the Beatles.’
David Scott, Mancunians
Night & Day cafe, Manchester, gone dark, sometime in the 2020s. A warm summer’s evening on Oldham Street and David Scott is leaving the stage following another rafters-raising turn as Argh Kid, his Huckleberry Finn scally-poet creation.
As he does, Scott is offered cocaine from an enthusiastic punter who mistakes his fictional persona for the polymath lad from Longsight who reads James Joyce, loves Manchester United, and has recently began painting.
The showbiz is turned down but it crystallises Scott’s thinking regarding sending Argh Kid on a prolonged sabbatical to distant lands.
He says: ‘It became like a caricature, I was writing poetry not for the sake of writing poetry, it became more of like a stand-up act - for me it was easier slipping into the Argh Kid persona on stage - he was not like 100 million miles away from myself but he was a lot more ballsy - I hate being in crowds, but when that gobshite gets on stage he commands the crowd, he had confidence, swagger, is foul-mouthed, witty.
‘When I did gigs you’d cross that line and come alive - talking stuff about United, tearaways, growing up in south Manchester. You know, fictional accounts about drug escapades that, because I created this character, it was like, he definitely did this. Then the line started getting blurred: “Shit this is getting a bit weird, because people are actually thinking I am this person.”
‘I started getting offered powders - until the Argh Kid stuff started kicking off I’ve never been offered free cocaine in my life. It’d be: “Do you want a line, do you want a line?” And I’d be like I’m losing part of myself.
‘So I still write poetry but it is more for me.’
All of this is said with a twinkle and the self-awareness that marks the truly smart. This is Scott up close: curious, funny, talented, a father of three with a determination to live the right way.
And, too, a 42-year-old whose debut tome, Mancunians, chronicles varying tales of Manchester that swerve the usual Hacienda-Oasis centred narratives, and is a warm and hilarious ode to the parishes of his youth and, now, later life.
Scott’s home town is a cultural smorgasbord of scamps, artists, chancers, spivs, and school kids who swerve lessons and ‘borrow books from Waterstones’ and ‘ride the 192’ from Longsight, in the south of the city where he grew up, out to Hazel Grove where Greater Manchester meets Cheshire.
As Mancunians tells, his was a youth of tough moments - receiving a beating in an alley when ‘trying to get off with a girl’ - and revelations - his inner life sparked by reading a books from the world of music.
Scott says: ‘The most influential one I read, especially during that time, was Wonderland Avenue by Danny Sugarman. When he was the manager of The Doors. An amazing book - I was this this young kid and though he comes from an affluent background in LA he didn't want to fit into what his parents wanted him to do.’
Black culture too.
‘People saw hip hop and it just being this sort of gangster rap and, you know, violent thing. And part of it is that, yes. But I got into Malcolm X through Public Enemy. There’s a rapper called Common - Common Sense, back in the day, and he was very literate. He and others would make references to books in their songs and I'm like: “Alright, I'll seek them out.”
‘They were teachers in a way. I’m a Morrissey fan, too, and there’s literary references in his lyrics and with the my inquisitive nature, I’d need to know more.
‘I’ve read Virginia Woolf, James Joyce - Ulysses, two or three times, I’m always dipping into that. And I’m fascinated with how artists create - Picasso, for instance.’
Night & Day, which opened in 1991, is a true life Bohemia that fascinated. ‘It was like walking into Narnia going into places like Night and Day and seeing artists like Stan Chow in their infancy,’ Scott says of the illustrator. ‘Chasing creative dreams which at school you were told you’d never do that.’
Scott went to high school in Gorton and on leaving found job satisfaction hard to acquire, re-entering education in 2007 when attending university and graduating in 2010 as a mature student, after previously exploring Asia and the Greek islands including the Aegean Sea’s Cyclades; adventures that took in tuna fishing, ‘shagging and drinking’, and making new friends.
He says: ‘I had so many dead jobs I’d end up walking away from them - never getting sacked for them - walking away. My dad used to get pissed off when I’d lose another job and I said: “No, no, they lost an employee. That's the difference.”
‘So I was trying to find my way really - to do something in writing. Then I did English and Creative writing at Nottingham University, graduated in 2010, then was working as a copywriter and proofreader for a bit.
‘But it was for a medical company and was soul destroying because you've spent three years at Uni reading all this great literature and it being, “I want to be a writer” and then I came out naively expecting book deals and stuff.
‘None of it was forthcoming, and two months later I found myself writing about erectile dysfunction, psoriasis, and it's like, “wow”.’
Scott was a brilliant student, who stood out as a natural writer, and who possessed an X-factor spotted by the BBC when he performed as Argh Kid. Scott was called in for an interview, then offered a Radio Manchester show which he continues to present five years on.
Upload is every Saturday eve and features a two-hour celebration of art and artists, who talk music, literature, painters, sculptors, street-performance, theatre and any other forms of expression.
The second half features a Scott innovation: a round-table in which he and two other creatives talk the alchemy of creation.
Listening is similar to the experience of reading Mancunians: a certain kind of MAGIC.
Buy Mancunians: Where do we start, where do I begin?
Four tracks selected by Scott: