Jesse Armstrong, Britain’s finest screenwriter and the creator of ‘Succession’, sometimes gets invited to “The Cottage” at Fulham’s stadium.
It is where some of the VIPs, celebrities and non-playing players sit. Armstrong appreciates being asked but is more comfortable in the stands where he has his season ticket and where he can get lost in the game.
“I prefer the fan experience of just going and not having any responsibility,” Armstrong says, before adding: “I am more star-struck seeing football players than any actor. I find them much more foreign and maybe it’s because I don’t know what to say to them!
“With an actor I have a number of things to talk about because that’s my world. But there’s also a lot of just respect for their (footballers’) athleticism and their talent. It’s a very different talent from the ones I am used to coming across. So, seeing Kenny Tete, I felt like ‘oh God, I hope they don’t introduce me to him because I feel…’”
So is he actually more in awe of the 28-year-old Dutch full-back than any Hollywood star? “Yeah, yeah,” Armstrong adds, laughing.
“Occasionally you see someone who was a childhood… I saw Steve Martin at an awards’ do and it was like ‘f—— hell, it’s Steve Martin!’ So, there are some people who make me go a bit wobbly.”
Armstrong is relieved to be told that Tete is a ‘lovely bloke’. “Is he? He looked lovely! He’s a really good player,” he says. “I do find sports people and especially footballers very… intimidating, impressive.”
Maybe, given his achievements, it is Armstrong who people should find intimidating. The 53-year-old has been extraordinarily successful and his credits include co-creating, with Sam Bain, the sit-com Peep Show, which began a glittering rush of awards and then Fresh Meat. He has written for Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of It and its American cousin Veep and helped write Chris Morris’ film Four Lions.
And then there is Succession, the brilliantly scripted and crafted story of a ruthless media mogul – Logan Roy – and the battle of his children to take his place. The scathing satirical drama – with some of the most cutting, memorable and downright obscene lines – reached its conclusion last year. Armstrong devoted seven years of his life to making the most critically acclaimed show of the past decade. It received no fewer than 75 Emmy nominations; winning 19 times.
‘There’s the s— Jamie Carragher’: When TV and football collide
This interview with Telegraph Sport is to discuss Armstrong’s love of football – and how he became a Fulham fan. But, first, a little scoop.
Will there be any more Succession? “No, that’s it. Definitely. Definitely,” Armstrong says emphatically having spent the last year “doing not much” apart from accepting invitations he had previously turned down for “talks and film festivals”. He adds: “It’s almost a year since the show wrapped and now I am ready to start writing again. It’s nice. It’s taken me almost that long to feel hungry for it.”
His two worlds met as he, the crew and actors were looking for somewhere to toast the end of Succession. With Armstrong was Jamie Carragher – no, not that one but a fellow Scouser with the same name – who was a writer on the show.
“He’s brilliant,” Armstrong says. “So, a couple of stories. One, when he is at home in the Wirral, there are kids in the street who shout ‘there’s the s— Jamie Carragher!’
“I think they (the two Carraghers) have had some Twitter relationship and we were going out for a drink at the end of, actually the whole end of the show, with a few of the actors like Alexander Skarsgard, Nick Braun and Sarah Snook and we were trying to find a bar to go to and Jamie knew this bar connected to Jamie Carragher. A New York sports bar and he ended up covering our tab! Nice bloke! Very kind.”
‘Watching Man Utd lose 1979 final hit me emotionally’
Armstrong does not usually discuss football in interviews. “I have got used to talking about the show and the media and that sort of thing but I have never really talked about football although I do notice it is on my Wikipedia page,” he says.
So he checks his Wikipedia page?
“I’m afraid so, from time to time,” Armstrong admits. “Although I have never touched it myself. Honestly, no. Once you start doing that it never ends.”
On that page he is listed as a Fulham supporter. But it is more complicated than that. “I would probably say I am a Man United fan who is a Fulham season-ticket holder and who has more affection for Fulham,” he explains. “Man United are a difficult club to like and have been for the last few years. I would take my son there and it’s not a nice experience going to the ground and they have had their on-field difficulties and unfortunately that does also affect some of the feelings – that’s the dishonourable bit.”
Armstrong grew up in Shropshire. “I could have been a Wolves’ fan, I could have a Stoke fan, I could have been a Shrewsbury fan, I could have been a Wrexham fan,” he says. “But I saw Man United on the TV against Arsenal in 1979 losing the FA Cup final and for some reason it hit me emotionally as well. It wasn’t a geographical thing. It was a TV story. And also they had a forward called Stuart Pearson and that was my mother’s maiden name and I felt some connection!”
Given his career, mention of TV is interesting. “I guess it (football) is the first form of celebrity that you realise they are real human beings,” Armstrong explains. “With people on TV you don’t know if they are living or dead. You don’t know much difference between cartoons and movies whereas the first football match I ever went to was Wrexham against Spurs. It was in the FA Cup and it was the era of Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa.
“I was in the Wrexham end and I got my programme passed forward to get signatures from the players and lots of them stopped. But I was a bit broken-hearted when it came back because there had been Wrexham fans at the front and they had only got Wrexham signatures! So we missed Ricky Villa and Glenn Hoddle! They did seem very glamorous.”
The writer in Armstrong is also intrigued by players stories – and also the language of football. “I love it when everyone decides, if you know anything it is that Tim Ream can’t cut it the Premier League. He just can’t. Too slow, too old, everyone loves Tim but he can’t do it,” he says. “And then he did an amazing job last season and he can do it. I love seeing those certainties over-turned. Like Willian – ‘oh, he was s— at Arsenal, he’s going come here and do nothing’. And he is so wonderful to watch. They are a different team without him.
“Occasionally I have brought an American screen-writer here and there was a lot of disputation about refereeing calls and they started chanting ‘you’re not fit to referee!’ and he’s asking ‘what are they chanting? You – are – not – fit – to – referee?’ He thought it sounded very Dickensian. You wouldn’t use that in every day speech. I used to like the Man United calypso which they used to have at Old Trafford and we can’t shift the Mohamed Al Fayed chant that we use here. We need a Shahid Khan chant.”
The moment that got Armstrong hooked on Fulham
Armstrong started going to Fulham when Roy Hodgson was manager. He wanted to take his son to football and a tipping point was reached in the run to the Europa League final in 2010 – and that remarkable last-16 comeback against Juventus having lost the first leg in Turin 3-1.
“It was an early kick-off (6pm) and, in fact, me and my son were coming to it and we heard what sounded like an away end cheer as we got there,” Armstrong says.
“He was young and I was still telling him things about football and they were an Italian side and Fulham were 3-1 down from the first leg. They scored and I said ‘I’m sorry, son, maybe we should just go and have fish and chips. It’s all over’.”
But they did go as Fulham turned it around to win 4-1 (and 5-4 on aggregate). The Armstrongs were hooked.
“The next season I got a ticket in the Johnny Haynes Stand and slowly, slowly you get to know the players,” he says. “Man United is such a big club it’s hard to feel you know the players, whereas seeing Damien Duff going down the wing at closer quarters, the club’s a bit smaller and you form more of a relationship. Or you feel you do. It’s a one-way relationship but you feel it and it’s grown and grown. I watch Man United games, they are my childhood team, I went to university there and saw them a lot during the Cantona, Giggs, Sharpe era.”
And when they play each other?
“Once you know Tom Cairney, you want him to score!” Armstrong says. “Some of the players who come through the youth system at Manchester United, like Marcus Rashford, you feel a bit for but if it is Ibrahimovic then there isn’t much sense of kinship.”
Armstrong tends to remember “the pantomime moments” rather than specific matches. (Luis) Suarez coming off and giving everyone the finger; the booing of the ref; you are screaming for something and then turn to the person next to you and say ‘well, it was never a penalty’. You are playing a role,” he says.
“I am always interested when the fabric breaks. I remember when (former Spurs defender) Jan Vertonghen went down and the rhythm of the game meant it looked like he was playing for time. Everyone was shouting for him to get up and being quite rude and vocal about it – and then that moment when you see them call for a stretcher and you realise ‘f—— hell I have just been taunting another human being who might have broken his leg!’ He’s probably wondering if he will play again but you are in the crowd and been part of this mob mocking’. The atmosphere in a crowd changes quite quickly. I like all that. I like the pantomime.”
His favourite player was Aleksandar Mitrovic who left him “heartbroken” when he moved to Saudi Arabia last summer. “But then (Rodrigo) Muniz comes in and you are like ‘who’s Mitro’?” Armstrong says.
And manager?
“You are very biased towards the present and I like Marco Silva. I really hope he doesn’t go,” he says. “He never smiles, he looks so unhappy, I like seeing him miserable as it makes me think he always wants more. He’s a fantastic manager. I would be very intimidated to meet him. I have never actually met a football manager. Roy is a bit of a reader, isn’t he? He’s probably the most likely to have seen Succession!”
‘It would be foolish to mix football and work’
Which brings us back to what next for Armstrong and whether he has ever considered writing about football?
“I have occasionally taken Jon Brown who writes on the show (Succession) and is writing a big show about the movie business, actually, ‘The Franchise’ for HBO. He’s a big Spurs fan and Tony (Roche, another writer) is a big Liverpool fan. Occasionally we talk about what a good arena (football) is,” he says.
“Lots of people have tried and a nice bloke called James Payne wrote a good show about agents (‘The Window’). There have been a number of attempts.
“Maybe one day… At one time I did think that especially that area would be interesting to do a show but also there is a bit of a thing of ‘don’t mix the stuff you love’. And I so love turning up, coming through and seeing the flash of green and the pitch and it’s so relaxing for me, to be totally different to anything related to my work. I think it would be a foolish.
“But I do remember Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse doing ‘Gone Fishing’ and Paul Whitehouse saying fishing was his real love and he would never mix the streams by doing a fishing show. Maybe they manage to keep the magic to themselves but I would be wary about a nice part of life that would maybe become less so.”
Source Agencies
