Last updated 09:15, Saturday, 17 May 2008

This is not a good time to talk about Leeds Utd. Not that there’s ever a good time to do that.

But if anybody’s been able to find a good way of doing it, author David Peace has shown himself to be the man. His book, The Damned Utd, chronicling the 44 days Brian Clough spent at Elland Road as manager, casts compliments at the club only if bitter insults and the public laundering of particularly dirty washing can be regarded as flattering.

Melvyn Bragg profiled the writer in his South Bank Show (ITV1 Sunday) and allowed contributors to the hour-long study their freedom to drift into thoughts on Leeds, Clough, Revie, secret deals and a less than savoury club history of arrogance.

Peace uses Clough’s voice to shoot poisoned darts towards the Yorkshire side. More faction than fiction, his grains of truth will be seen by many as Pennine sized. Cloughie wasn’t a man who knew how to pull punches, so opinions on Leeds were always bound to get scathingly personal in this book.

Needless to say, literary licence has left little room for soft soap in Peace’s novel.

So, it fell to others to be a little kinder towards Elland Road’s reputation as Bragg asked whether football too seldom got the literature it deserved.

Michael Parkinson, professional Yorkshireman and lover of all sports, could have been expected to defend the West Riding club. He didn’t.

He’d loved the book, was less fond of Leeds and in elaborating on all that, added a certain spice to an already fascinating film on football, art, literature, sports reporting and the impact of big money and notably small-minded men on the game.

Man of the match was Peace himself though. His controversial work has stirred up all kinds of ripples in footie’s pool, making the game an edgy talking-point again, for all the right reasons – perhaps most particularly because he chooses That Damned Utd as his focus.