Why can't England learn to love the Proclaimers? By Brian Logan (original) (raw)

I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, to get to Dundee Rep this spring. And I'm not alone. "It's bizarre, the excitement this show has created," says Scottish playwright Stephen Greenhorn. "With theatre, you're normally begging people to come. But they were trying to buy tickets for this before we'd even sorted dates."

The show is Sunshine on Leith, a musical based on the work of Auchtermuchty's famously bespectacled brothers, the Proclaimers. If proof were required, 300 years after union, that Scotland and England retain their differences, it might be found in contrasting attitudes to the Proclaimers. Most Scots can't get enough of their sweaty, shouty, close-harmony, call-and-response songs. But in England, their brand of militantly Scottish folk-pop is deemed a novelty at best, grievous aural harm at worse.

Witness a recent Observer review of Dundee band the View, whose greatest quality, apparently, is that "they don't sound in any way like the Proclaimers", but the Reid brothers are relaxed about their English reception. "There was always going to be a strong novelty angle to how people perceived us," says Charlie. "But the strangeness lets you get a foot in the door."

It is almost two decades since the release of their Sunshine on Leith LP, which sold 2m worldwide, including 25,000 in the UK just last year. Proclaimers songs have graced films such as Shrek, Dumb and Dumber and Benny & Joon, the last of which propelled I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) to the summit of the US charts in 1993. It has since been covered by Homer Simpson (his is called I Would Drink 500 Beers), while Peter Kay and Matt Lucas's Comic Relief reworking is due this spring.

Mamma Mia! co-opted the Abba canon, Our House revived Madness - and now Scotland's getting in on the "jukebox musical" act, with 20 Proclaimers tracks being deployed to tell the fictional story of two Scotsmen quitting the army to return home to Leith. Greenhorn, the musical's creator, recalls the eureka moment that inspired the show. "I put on [debut album] This is the Story and thought, 'God, these songs are good', and at the same time, 'God, these songs are weird.'" The example he cites is a serenade called Don't Turn Out Like Your Mother.

Just as important, he adds, are the band's thick accents. Regional identity is now all the rage: the Arctic Monkeys are praised for their Yorkshire-isms, the Futureheads speak Sunderland and Super Furry Animals are unapologetically Welsh. Yet the Proclaimers were doing this 20 years ago, first appearing - to Paula Yates's bemusement - on Channel 4's The Tube in 1987, to belt out, in broad Scots, their chart-topping de-industrialisation lament, Letter from America.

Since then the duo have woven themselves into the texture of Scottish society. This is the Story has been voted second best Scottish album of all time, behind Primal Scream's Screamadelica. In 2003, the brothers came fifth in a poll to find the Most Scottish Person in the World (first place, worryingly, was Jimmy Krankie). They've also headlined Edinburgh's 100,000-strong Hogmanay party and played Hampden Park, to a global audience of 1 billion, before the 2002 Champions League final. So why do Scots love them so? "In Scotland," says Greenhorn, "you could play 500 Miles and an 18 year old would as happily join in as your granny." (I can verify this: my mum's already got tickets for the musical.)

In terms of nationwide affection, there's no English equivalent - and it's hard to imagine how there could be. It's one thing to unite 5m people; quite another to bring 50m together. Whereas 300 years next to a larger neighbour has forced Scotland to rally to a (reasonably) cohesive national identity, that's a process that seems only recently to have begun down south. As Charlie says: "The divide between the north of England and the south, and between working and middle class, is every bit as deep as that between England and Scotland."

For all the stramash in Scotland as Sunshine on Leith draws near, the English may never be induced to share the excitement. "I'd be amazed if this worked in London," says Sunshine's director James Brining, an Englishman. Twenty years after Craig and Charlie lamented in Throw the R Away, the gulf in Anglo-Scots understanding ("Oh what can I do / To be understood by you?"), local differences endure. That's no bad thing, says Charlie: "I like regional things. I like things that have not been completely diluted by the 21st century. And I really like the fact that we all have something a little bit different about our cultures."

· Sunshine on Leith is at the Dundee Rep from April 18. Box office: 01382 223530.