Consuming Bremner
Ronnie Hilton’s ‘Ballad of Billy Bremner’
Yorkshire born singer Ronnie Hilton is most famous for his hit single “A Windmill in Old Amsterdam” which spent thirteen weeks in the UK singles charts in 1965. Hilton was a Leeds United fan having moved to the city from Hull aged 14 in the 1940s. He had fifteen top thirty hits between 1954 and 1959.
Hilton’s first musical link to Leeds United came in 1964 to celebrate the club’s promotion back Division One with the Leeds United Calypso. This release was followed by Hilton’s second recording with the players called Glory Glory Leeds United, to celebrate Leeds’s League Cup and Inter-Cities Fairs Cup successes which included the lyrics Little Billy Bremner is the captain of the crew. For the sake of Leeds United he would break himself in two. His hair is red and fuzzy and his body’s black and blue. As Leeds go marching on…”. This was followed up with The Lads of Leeds released in 1971. In the same year Hilton also released a homage to his hero Billy Bremner with his song The Ballad of Billy Bremner.
Bremner Bubblegum Cards
Football Trading Cards became one of the main ways in which young fans could capture an image of their heroes, building annual collections of cards which could be traded, or ‘swapped’, with friends. Early forms of cards were distributed by cigarette manufacturers from the early 20th century Bremner’s career occurred at the heyday of the trading card phenomenon before trading stickers collected in albums began to take over this aspect of popular fandom in the UK. The cards were manufactured by a couple of dominant international companies: American company Topps founded in 1938; and including Italian firm Panini who started in 1961. Assembled together the cards give a sense of how Leeds United’s kit changed over time, and how Bremner himself aged as an individual.
Bremner in Football Magazines
Weekly and monthly football magazines were incredibly popular during the post-war period. Leading titles such as Charles Buchan’s Monthly launched in 1951, World Soccer launched in 1960, Jimmy Hill’s Football Weekly launched in 1967, Goal magazine launched in 1968, Shoot launched in 1969. Bremner appeared on the front of all of these magazines.
Books on Bremner
Bremner published two books of football and his autobiography You Get Nowt For Being Second during his career. There have subsequently been five books on Bremners career. Bremner also features prominently in books on Leeds United, including the annual Leeds United Books of Football published in the late-1960s and early-1970s. they remain invaluable sources of information on Bremner’s career, but the detail of his early life in Raploch or his games for Scotland Schoolboys has been fairly cursory.
Billy Memorabilia
There is a wealth of football memorabilia connected to Leeds United and Billy Bremner. Here are a few of our favourites.
