Meet the Humbugs, also known as the Humbuggers, a football team from a Halifax sweet factory. Tim Power reports.

He did warn me about them, did the young Leeds publisher who agreed to put their comedy novel Humbugs into print.

“Craig Bradley and David Gill are quite a double act”, said Bob Endeacott. “When I first read their manuscript I nearly choked on my tea with laughter. That’s why I chose it to launch the Relish Books imprint”.

He was right enough. When the duo came into the Evening Courier office for a chat I could hardly get a word in. The humorous patter was pretty much non-stop as they explained who they were.

So who are they then? Two 40-something family men, lecturers, poets and literary types, from Huddersfield and Shipley. They met at Huddersfield University as mature students doing English degrees. That was six years ago. Humbugs is their first collaboration.

It came about when David saw the potential in Craig’s toffee factory stories, based on his own experiences at a Halifax sweet factory. Never mind the name of the factory. It did actually exist and some of the rumbustious cast of Humbugs must, I suspect, be based on Craig’s former workmates. Heavily disguised no doubt.

Crowthers - Purveyors of Fine Confectionery since 1892 – is a hell hole of boiling toffee as hot as lava. The team comes from the dregs of the Minto floor at Crowthers. There is Pincher, a foul-mouthed sort who does stand up in his spare time and tells about being abducted, and doctored by aliens. And there’sBig O, Elvis (real name Tariq), Robbo from the sales office and forklift driver Tommy Cooper (his real name) in goal. And then there’s the ladies from the firm, using the word loosely.

Spooner is the manager of Crowther works footie team. He’s an odd one, a university drop-out who was in the Forces in the Falklands and in the Force, breaking miners heads during the strike. A follower of the way of Bushido, a martial arts fanatic, Spooner tells his team: “When you can’t play for toffee, you must play for something else”. Something else means booze and a bit of aggro.

Punchily written, earthy and pulsing with the rhythms of Halifax vernacular, and plenty of Anglo Saxon too, Humbugs has an authentic ring to both the dialogue and the sometimes absurdist action.

Craig Bradley’s stories, which underpin the novel, come out of a peripatetic life which he says: “Meant I’d had 33 different jobs by the time I was 33”. At our meeting he started to list them: “Butlins chef, putter of stripes into humbugs, grave digger, window cleaner, gardener … it’s easier to say what jobs I haven’t done”, he laughed.

And what about his collaborator, David Gill? Not quite such a job butterfly. Before university he had nine years managing Ikes Bistro in Leeds. But he had always been into jazz, as singer and performer.

“We decided to do the novel after we graduated. Neither of us had jobs but Craig had written some short stories about the toffee factory. I came up with the plot and we first adapted it as a screenplay”.

David’s involvement in theatre and football brought a narrative arc to the madcap element of the stories. He says the whole book looks at the way football and life mirror each other.

And, without giving the plot away, I can confirm that Humbugs has some cracking twists and turns which graft darker elements of satire and subtler elements of allegory onto what is truly a funny read.

Article courtesy of Tim Power and the Halifax Evening Courier. First published: Monday 31st May 2004.