Upcoming Talks
2025/26 Season
All talks commence at Noon, The Record Cafe, North Parade, Bradford, BD1 3JH
Following Bradford City’s dramatic promotion on the final day of last season, scheduling talks at the Record Cafe has been made difficult for the welcome reason that matchdays are now often too busy, even at midday.
However, we have targeted a number of games where we are expected things to be a little less frantic and so here are the talks for 2026.
14 February
Lee Hanson
Priestley’s Magnificent Magical Game
To Bradford’s most famous son, J. B. Priestley, football was a magical and magnificent sport - a game of art and conflict. After falling in love with it in childhood, it featured in his best-selling books and in various news articles. He became a powerful advocate for the professional game and saw it as a sport that conquered the world.
Lee Hanson is a lifelong Bradford City fan, a former chair of the J. B. Priestley Society, an editor of Priestley’s works and the Head of English at Bradford Grammar School.
Lee Hanson is the chairman of the J.B. Priestley Society and Head of English at Bradford Grammar School.
Saturday 7 March 2026
Mike Harrison and David Pendleton
50 Years On: When the Saints Went Marching On – The 1976 FA Cup Quarter-Final
Almost fifty years to the day since the dramatic FA Cup quarter-final at Valley Parade, when Fourth Division Bradford City were controversially beaten 1–0 by eventual Cup winners Southampton. A packed Valley Parade saw a free-kick scooped up and volleyed home for the game’s only goal. It was later deemed to be illegal, as the ball had not turned on its circumference. It was a bitter pill to swallow for City, who had caught the hearts of the nation as they romped to the quarter-final.
Two City Gent editors, who were there on that unforgettable day, chat through the dramatic cup run and THAT free kick. And yes, we still hold the grudge, fifty years on!
Saturday 11 April
Mike Harrison
Hold the Front Page: The Art of The City Gent
Mike Harrison, the long-standing editor of The City Gent, speaks about the pop-up exhibition of City Gent covers currently showing at The Record Cafe. A City of Culture inspired exhibition, the covers echo the recent travails of the football club and its long-suffering fans.
The front cover of any publication should be something eye catching, to draw in the potential purchaser of any print media. The buyer might already be loyal to a particular periodical, such as The City Gent, but that can never be taken for granted. The front cover might be in both ways be the most important part of the fanzine or the least. Because, maybe for the casual buyer, a striking front cover might well indeed lure them in to buy a copy, well that’s the hope. But it’s just a device to say that what is inside this publication is worth reading and worth parting with some hard-earned cash to buy it.
The City Gent started off with a simple, yet certain style, from the issue one cover of The City Gent character that those of us of a certain age grew up with when buying our now treasured Bradford City programmes from the mid-60s to the mid-70s. The covers that followed were a fairly simple design, sometimes an uncomplicated hand down cartoon or mainly a photograph sent in by a reader.
This format developed on this theme for the first half of the long life of this much-loved fanzine. However, after 18 months of editing, I felt that I’d like to make my mark and produce a front cover using the skills of When Saturday Comes cartoonist Dave Robinson. I had long admired Dave’s humorous cartoons in WSC, and especially his wallchart posters for the Euro’s and World Cup that would arrive as a supplement with the magazine. So, I contacted Andy Lyon’s the editor of WSC for Dave’s contact details thinking that I might receive an email address, but no, just his home address as in 2006 Dave didn’t do emails! Thankfully he wrote back to my request for him to produce a front cover cartoon for The City Gent and 15 years on he is still producing them for the fanzine, though we do converse by email now.
The process for a front cover is that I send Dave a germ of an idea which I feel is topical and has some potential humour and within a few days, Dave always produces something that is always better than I could have imagined. The man is a genius.
This exhibition, in the year when Bradford has its year of culture, it is only right that in our small way, we celebrate the Art of The City Gent front covers from the past 15 years which also coincides with the 41st anniversary since issue one first went on sale at Valley Parade.
28 March 2026
Matt Tiller
Jack Leslie: The Lion Who Never Roared
Imagine being told you’ve been picked to represent your country? You’ve striven to play the sport you love professionally and established yourself in the first team. You’ve even toured South America, played and beaten the Argentina and Uruguay national teams. Achievements to be proud of, for sure, but to be so talented and to have worked so hard that the national team wants you – well, that would be something to tell the grandchildren. And you’re not some “fancy dan” playing in the First Division for Manchester United or Liverpool.
You play for Plymouth Argyle in the Third Division South.
The Lion Who Never Roared is the heart-breaking yet inspiring story of Jack Leslie, who was selected for England in 1925. He was denied the chance due to his skin colour, but bounced back scoring 137 goals in 400 games for Plymouth Argyle and became the first black captain in the Football League.
Matt Tiller co-founded The Jack Leslie Campaign, which successfully fundraised for a statue and continues to tell this pioneering black footballer’s story. Matt is a radio and TV writer/producer for the BBC, Sky and Channel 4. His first job as a radio reporter covered Leslie’s club, Plymouth Argyle. Matt studied history at Oxford and through research, campaigning and working with Jack’s family this book came to fruition.
