David Lister: The Week in Arts

Keegan has scored a theatrical own goal

Kevin Keegan is normally to be found further back in the paper, on the sports pages. But the Newcastle manager now has a legitimate claim to star in an arts column, as he has spoken publicly about the theatre. In the history of the beautiful game, very few managers have spoken publicly about the beautiful art form. Even Arsenal's Arsène Wenger, so erudite that he is nicknamed "The Professor", has failed to give his views on the state of the West End. Sir Alex Ferguson has nothing to say, it seems, about the latest productions at Manchester's Royal Exchange. So Keegan it is.

Sadly, what Keegan did say didn't exactly thrill me. In a press conference, he said of Newcastle fans that "when they've worked all week, they come here to be entertained; it's like the people down south going to a theatre".

That is ostensibly a pretty harmless thing to say, but it does set up a contrast not only between north and south, but also between football and theatre. It certainly implies that people who want to be entertained in the north-east don't go to the theatre, a strange thing to say in the city that for years hosted a residency for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

One nearby playhouse, the Gala theatre in Durham, has shown initiative in jumping on Keegan's statement and offering a free ticket for their latest production to any theatregoer who brings a match-day ticket from Newcastle or any other north-east football club, thus proving they are "culturally diverse enough to enjoy both football and theatre".

Keegan is not alone in seeing them as contrasting passions, and the people who love one or the other different breeds of people. For years it has been fashionable to see sport and the arts as opposites. In school one was never meant to excel at both.

I suspect that attitudes began to change most markedly with the Nick Hornby generation, the writers who loved music, literature and football. And if he must be held responsible for the swathe of tedious autobiographies and novels by various little-known literati who assumed the world was interested in their teenage football escapades as well as their record collections, at least he helped to break down the absurd barrier between sport and the arts.

But recently this unreal and unnecessary dichotomy seems to have returned. Leaders in the arts, an awful lot of them, have been bewailing the fact that money that could have gone to the arts is going to the Olympics. Why, I wonder, do they not pick Iraq, or road-building, or Northern Rock?

It's hard not to conclude that there is some perverse pleasure among arts worthies in taking a poke at sport. Perhaps, after all, it was not such a good idea to have sport and culture handled by the same government department. It gives too much scope for shifting budgets to set up a battleground between them.

I do hope that someone at Newcastle takes Kevin Keegan to the theatre, so that he can see how you can be entertained in an auditorium as well as in a football ground. I hope that he will be convinced that in both the north and south you can find thrills, pleasure, joy and sadness at both sporting and cultural venues. And I hope that he doesn't again make the artificial contrast between the two, and perpetuate tiresome stereotypes.

I'm someone who loves football – and I also love theatre. There's room for more than one passion in life.

WhoB40?

It has been diverting to read the various statements regarding the departure of Ali Campbell, pictured, from the band UB40. First, Mr Campbell told the world why he was departing the band. I believe it had to do with his annoyance with the band's business managers. But there was a lot to take in – Mr Campbell leaving a band one had forgotten existed.

This was followed by a statement from the remaining UB40-ers taking issue with Mr Campbell's version of events. And then, this week, came a legalistic press release, this time from Mr Campbell's firm of solicitors, taking issue with those who took issue with him.

I was never a huge UB40 fan, but I do recall seeing them on TV and at festivals in the 1980s; they always struck me as a fairly cool and rather chummy outfit. The sign of a band losing any remnants of cool and entering middle age is when they employ publicists and then solicitors to batter an uninterested public with their tiffs.

Arctic Monkeys take note.

* I went this week to Cirque du Soleil's latest show at the Royal Albert Hall. It was breathtakingly good, the troupe as always mixing astonishing acrobatic skills with a sense of magic and mysticism that I have not encountered in any other circus-based outfit. But the magic was very nearly destroyed by the thoroughly irritating decision to thank the commercial sponsors from the stage 10 minutes after proceedings had begun.

Can it really be a part of the contract that their names have to be recited to an audience that has come to see a show, not applaud the funders? It's not magical; it's not artistic; and, without wishing to sound too old-fashioned, it's not very British. The sponsors, who include one well-known British bank, should have had the humility to ask that their names not be read out during the performance. But then again, even at Cirque du Soleil, pigs don't fly.