Be Good, Love Brian: Growing up with Brian Clough

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Everyone makes mistakes, most are a lot worse than yours, I suppose in their environment you do have to be picky who's in your circle. From there a relationship formed which would see Craig living with the Cloughs for nine years, where he was a first-hand witness to the many aspects of Clough's character - his gruffness, his humour, his big-heartedness. From there a relationship formed which would see Craig living with the Cloughs for nine years, where he was a first-hand witness to the many aspects of Clough’s character – his gruffness, his humour, his big-heartedness. The Clough family took him under their wing and he threw it all back in their faces with an act of greed and entitlement.

Later, we are told five people have been killed and that the club gymnasium is being turned into a morgue. Craig also witnessed Clough’s descent into alcoholism, accelerated by his experience of the Hillsborough tragedy (Forest were playing Liverpool the day dangerous overcrowding in two terrace “pens” led to 97 Liverpool fans being killed). A moving account of love, friendship, betrayal and redemption involving a young boy who was “adopted” by Brian Clough and his family.This gives an insight to the man he was at home, at the City Ground, out walking his dog by someone who he welcomed into his home after a chance meeting. The 2nd reason I wrote it (maybe selfishly because of guilt but also because it's my true charachter) is because I would love to somehow be able to help a kid or two who is in the kind of situation I was as a child, have a better life. The deaths had left him distraught; the early, confused reports that Liverpool fans have stormed the gates and triggered a catastrophe have left him furious.

Seventeen years on from Clough's death, their first meeting in Seaburn back in October 1984 looms large in Craig's life. The last time he saw him, in late 1994, Clough said he, Simon and Nigel had considered getting the police involved. No - the Blue Screen of Death - usually denotes a catastrophic failure of the laptop, its not that the screen has just changed to blue - it could be hardware could be software. A tale of two urchins, Craig only 11, asking for a penny for the Guy as Bonfire Night approached, only to stumble upon the Nottingham Forest team at their hotel preparing to face Newcastle.

Craig’s telling of some of the goings on behind the scenes and on the pitch during those years is fascinating and gives real insight to what the game was like back then, including the awful disaster at Hillsborough. Not just the AtoZ of the the timeline, but if you are of a certain vintage (I'm 40) and have certain interests (football, Forest, Brian Clough) it is a time machine to a world that now seems so long ago but also related to what we all are now as adults.