Blue Lace, Broadway and Pennine Radio: Jay Croot's book delves into Bradford nostalgia

That decade forms only part of Bradford, Eh? However, it is when Jay came of age, so he knows exactly where he would have been.

“On weekends, with my ripped bleached jeans, gelled home perm and Hai Karate on, I’d head off to either Time and Place or Dollars and Dimes junior disco on Manningham Lane; these were the places to be,” he writes.

“I’d strut around the edge of the dance floor like a turkey, hoping to impress the big-haired girls clothed in neon and bold dangling jewellery. Looking back, the only person I could’ve impressed was Bernard Matthews.”

Bradford, Eh? is a nostalgic look back at life in the West Yorkshire city during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.

It is where Jay, an actor now based just outside of London, was born in 1971 and where his grandparents, Eileen and William Banks, raised him until the age of five.

“My granddad was a fruit and veg hawker and often he would take me down to Wakefield Road market with him,” says Jay, now in his 50s. “My grandma worked in a mill and so when we came home, she'd have all the food ready, the Yorkshire puds, the stew and the apple pie. It was a wonderful childhood.”

Later, he moved over to Allerton and attended St Matthew's Catholic Primary School.

He recalls a childhood when the smell of the Seabrooks crisps factory filled the air, and he would tune into Pennine Radio in anticipation of school closing for snow days.

As a teenager, Jay would be wandering Broadway, Darley Street or the Arndale trying to acquire the latest clobber or buying records from Bostock’s for 49p.

His Uncle Terry ran The Black Horse in Thornton, his Uncle Peter had the Bedford Arms on Wakefield Road and he remembers the “prawn man” who would sell baskets of seafood in Bradford pubs.

When he was a boy it was plates of chips in cafes like El Greco or Baxendall, but when he came of age there were the nightclubs, too: Dukes, Silks, Cloud Nine, Lingards, and Blue Lace.

It is not just about Bradford, however, as he writes about “Factory Fortnight” in Bridlington, when industrial workers would go to the seaside on holiday.

“I used to be a donkey boy,” says Jay, recalling what was his childhood summer job - until he got sacked.

“Some boy said that despite what people think, donkeys can run really fast, and I overheard them talking and he said that if you drop a pebble in a tin can, the donkey will bolt off.”

Sure enough, he tried it, and it did.

“The lad stayed on, fortunately, but of course his mum complained, and then the owner, Albert, said to my parents, ‘I don't think your lad can walk donkeys again’. And my brother resigned.”

Meanwhile, it was a production at Bradford’s most famous venue that gave Jay an early indication that he wanted to be on stage himself.

“When I was four years old, when I was almost five, I went to watch Goldilocks and the Three Bears with my mum at the Alhambra. The actress, her name was Anne Aston, and she said, ‘Is it anyone's birthday?’ I put my hand up, even though it wasn't my birthday, because I wanted to be on stage. But my mum, being a strict Catholic, she put it down, but I kept putting up. I still remember crying buckets.”

It was actually appearing on Blind Date back in 1996, well into his 20s, that made him want to pursue acting properly. He didn’t get the girl - hard to compete with the fireman who was chosen out of the three - but says “as soon as I got on stage and the live audience was there, I knew that I'd found what I wanted to do in my life”.

That led to a move down to London, but he continues to miss Bradford, particularly the convivial nature of its inhabitants.

“The people are just more friendly, more warm. You get the bus and they'll talk to you. They don't know you from Adam, but they'll have a conversation with you,” he says.

“When I went down to London, I got on a night bus. I'd been on a night out, there was this lad and I started talking to him, and he looked at me, and he got up and he walked away.

“I got back, my flatmate was from London, and I told him. He said, ‘No, no, no, you can't do that in London. You shouldn't even look at people in London’. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘No, they think you're crazy. Don't speak to anyone’. But I couldn't understand that difference,” he says.

“Going back to Bradford recently, yeah, they've made a lot of changes there, but the people, they've still got that spirit of going that extra mile to help you, even if they don't know you to speak to.”

The book includes a foreword by Tasmin Archer, the Bradford-born singer who had a number one hit with Sleeping Satellite in 1992, and an afterword by Bradford City FC legend Stuart McCall, who spent six seasons at Valley Parade as a player and was later manager over four stints.

The idea to write Bradford, Eh? came after publishing his memoirs, My Ego Screwed My Acting Career. He misses the city, and although his father, Dennis, has died, he gets back to see his mother, Alice, who still attends St Peter’s Church.

“When you get older, this sense of nostalgia kind of washes over you,” says Jay, “and because Bradford has given me so much, I wanted to put something back. I wanted to make it positive. I wanted to make it not (just) about my life, but looking at the journey. People remember the shops I went to, the cafes that I mentioned, and the pubs and the clubs.

"I'm proud to be a Bradfordian, and being away, I kind of missed it.”

Bradford, Eh? Journey through Bradford’s 70s, 80s and 90s, by Jason M Croot, is out now.