Be Good, Love Brian: Growing up with Brian Clough

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For him to have saved my life, to have welcomed me into his heart and home, and given me open access to everything, and then for me to do that. What kind of person am I?” He answers his own question. “No kind, no decent person would do that.” Be Good, Love Brian has got everything – love, friendship, laugh-out-loud comedy, football, and a heart-breaking betrayal. Craig Bromfield's feel-good story about Brian Clough's life changing generosity ends up something akin to a modern-day Shakespearian tragedy” – Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian I broke down in the office and could not stop crying for 10 to 15 minutes. I was angry with myself for not fixing it. It left me with such a hole. I have had a fantastic life since meeting Brian but nothing can follow that. It is heart-breaking that he has gone. I was crushed."

It was the start of the relationship. The book tells stories of Clough saving Craig and Aaron from bullies and even allowing him to sit on the Forest bench. Perhaps intuitively aware of their difficult homelife, the boys were invited to come down and stay with Clough.I do hope the humour of the book comes across as well. It is dark but it is funny. I don't want the negative side to be the overriding side. I want it to be the beautiful act that they did. Just because I am negative about it, does not mean that the story is." For anyone growing up in the North East in the 80s it’s an incredible reminder of the time and landscape through a story of love, kindness, poverty and a chance life changing encounter on a Seaburn beach that you struggle to believe at times. This is a beautiful, inspirational story, which has never before been told, about Clough’s gentleness and capacity for generosity. Discover a very different side to this iconic man, one away from the cameras and the football, which shows him for the person he really was.

To do that I had to be honest about the life I had before I met them. If I then went on to hide what I did the whole book would be a lie. This isn't about what people think of me. It'a about what people think of them. Whatever consequences or criticism I face, I deserve. Or maybe it will come when he can see how the money raised from this book is helping others. Children just like him whose lives were transformed with an act of kindness.Franz Carr taps me on the shoulder and says: “Hang on a second, son. Sit down and shut up, this is something different.” It is easy to see why Clough would feel empathy with the waifs who turned up that day in Seaburn but it does not explain everything that followed. Why did he do it? In simple terms, it seems that Clough, a North East native, just enjoyed their company. An amazingly told true story about the amazing life of Craig Bromfield, a scally from Sunderland who is given a better life by the worlds best ever manager, Brian Clough following a chance encounter as Craig raises money through ‘penny for the guy’

He would send newspaper cuttings of his success in Poland to the Clough family, perhaps in the hope that they would feel some pride and vindication in their decision. He was not so much proving them wrong but proving them right for giving him that chance. If you know a Forest fan aged 30 or older, buy them it for Xmas. If you know a football fan, buy them it for Xmas. If you know someone who thinks they are in a rut and life will never change for 'someone like them' buy them it for Xmas.....you get the idea..... Craig Bromfield was just 13 years old when Brian Clough, on a whim, took him and his older brother, Aaron, in. And with Covid having disrupted so much of life, last year at this time rather than the usual >1000 books usually coming out at this time, there were only around 250 books published.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). “I saw someone I loved deeply start to decline. But if anything he became even more protective with me.” In 1993 Forest were relegated and Clough retired. He was only 58 but he looked like an old man, his eyes dulled and distant, his cheeks reddened and blotched by alcohol. The media publicity is in the hands of the publisher. I've had lots of offers/requests but haven't been able to commit yet. Usually, words tumbled out of Brian. One-liners, quotes from Sinatra, exchanges with Michael Parkinson or David Frost that could captivate a television audience. Speeches that inspired footballers to win European Cups and dark threats that would chill your blood.

But before all that this is a story of hope where there had seemed to be none. 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. When discovered by the Clough family, it was handled delicately. The authorities were not involved, there was even severance pay. The Clough's did nothing wrong and nothing to deserve what I did. But what rhey did for me should be known. It's being published by Mudlark (Harper Collins) who are one of the worlds major publishing houses. Apologies for the huge delay in publication but it really was out of my control. I walk up the drive and tell Brian, who marches out, looking for the man. For the next three days, there are journalists and photographers in the garden.The tale itself is a fascinating one, his rough upbringing to a chance encounter that opens up a life so many young kids would dream of, but it's also just as much a story about simple human kindness given what the Clough family do for Craig. This book will tell you more about the real Brian Clough (and his family, both immediate and extended) than you'll find in any other biopic and it certainly reinforced my growing admiration of the man, as I read and watched more about him over the years since my initial ‘encounter’. Craig tells the story with real passion and pride without missing out any of the imperfections in Brian's character. He was, after all, only human...wasn't he? I'd like to say he's not the Messiah, but the more I read about him… Oh, but most of all, you will fall in love with the family behind the man you all thought you knew. It's a love letter, an IOU for emotional kindness given and an apology all in one. The reason I wrote the book is 2 fold. One, up until the point I turned into a shit, it was a beautiful story and one I felt should be told to show exactly what an incredible person BC was and what a beautiful family the Clough'a are.