Morten Kohl’s Last Show has two obvious inspirations. The first was John Barrowman’s 2009 Music Music Music tour of Great Britain. He didn’t actually do football stadiums, but he did some of the biggest concert venues in the country and when I looked at the schedule I found it astonishing that a performer and his entourage of roadies and musicians, lighting people etc. could cope with the travelling from one end of the country and back again, sometimes on consecutive nights. It is a gruelling way to make a living even for somebody who enjoys performing.

John Barrowman IS somebody who enjoys performing and he seems to have had a good time on his tour by all accounts and judging by some of the pictures I’ve seen of his concerts. Morten Kohl, aka Morlen Kohbran, or Kohb, as he used to be known in the Theta Sigma stories takes after him in that respect, and has a very similar repertoire of old rock and pop standards sung in a new way. That’s a complete coincidence. When I wrote Teen Dream, I had never seen any of John’s concerts. Kohb as the pop sensation Morten Kohl is not based on him. Honest, he isn’t.

Originally, the first part of the story was going to be set somewhere like the M.E.N. arena in Manchester. While I was planning the story, though, the words ‘Stadium of Light’ wandered into my head and refused to leave. As it happens, Sunderland’s home ground has been used for concerts by the likes of Oasis and Robbie Williams, so it is totally conceivable. I’ve never actually been there, I’m afraid. I was winging it with a seating plan of the ground much of the time. But I have a sentimental fondness for Sunderland. They were the opposition in the very first football match I ever went to at Anfield. It was a 1-1 draw, a far from sparkling game on either side, and when I got home I found out that a very good friend had died. So a day that stands out for bittersweet reasons and it clinched the decision to set the first part of the story at the Stadium of Light.

The Davy Lamp memorial outside the stadium was a perfect disguise for the TARDIS. Chrístõ gives an accurate explanation of what it represents. His lamentation for the death of the mining industry is a heartfelt one from a man whose family got rich on mining interests on his own planet.

“It’s to remind people who come to this modern place that it was built on the site of a long defunct coal mine. Coal was the lifeblood of this city until a rather heartless kind of politics combined with a global recession closed it all down…. It was the industry that died, not the people. It’s not a memorial in that sense. Just a reminder that the modern stadium has a long tradition behind it.”

The executive boxes at the Stadium of light are very well described and depicted on Sunderland’s official website. They proved an ideal place to set much of the dialogue between Chrístõ and Cam and much of what occurred afterwards.

The Stadium of Light is actually built. New Anfield is another matter. I am only GUESSING that it will be completed by 2015. It is supposed to be built by the 2012 season, but there are a hundred and one reasons why it might not happen. Assuming it is, then the statue of Bill Shankley that became another TARDIS disguise, the Shankley Gates and the Hillsborough Memorial are likely to be moved to the new stadium. These three features of the existing stadium all came into focus as Julia and Cal spilled out with the other fans onto the street after the memorial concert.

“They were by a set of ornamental gates with the football club’s crest in red and gold above it. Nearby was a living flame memorial that commemorated another sad time connected with this place. Julia remembered reading about it in twentieth century history.”

I was deliberately vague about the reason for the living flame memorial. This story wasn’t the time or the place to mention Hillsborough. It would have trivialised something so tragically important that I very much hope it would be in Julia’s twentieth century history books.

The Stadium of Light and New Anfield thus form the setting for most of what happens in this story. The beach at Seaburn plays a very small role as a place where Kohb and Camilla could get away from it all for a while. Taking them back to before Kohb was famous might have been interesting, but then again it might cause a paradox. Whereas simply transporting them a few miles to a beach where nobody expected to see them works perfectly well.

The reality bubble owes its inspiration to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. In his story Mort, a bubble is created when an assassination is prevented. Reality slowly catches up with the characters and only the intervention of Death stops disaster from happening. It is, actually, a total coincidence that Kohb’s road manager calls him ‘Mort’ as short for Morten, but it’s a nice coincidence, and I let it stand.

The two songs Kohb sings in his encore, one is very well known, the Highlander Theme by Queen. The other, a little less well known, I think. I know it because the aforementioned John Barrowman did a cover of it. The original, I think, is by an American country singer called Tim McGraw. When I was looking for a ballad that would serve as a ‘farewell’ from Kohb to his fans this song refused to leave my head.

Just as a final note, I wrote this story in April 2009, during John’s Music, Music, Music tour. I’m writing the ‘confidential’ on June 26th, 2009. We woke up this morning with the news that Michael Jackson was dead and throughout the day we’ve seen news reports of people gathering for tributes not unlike the one that took place in New Anfield in this story. So, I think this might stand as an unofficial tribute to somebody who certainly could have filled both those stadiums with fans, no matter what else can be said about him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunderland_AFC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_of_light
http://www.safc.com/index.php

http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_F.C.
http://www.newanfield.co.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfield
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Park_Stadium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_of_light

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI5yKIJE4cw