Why Carrying David is about so much more than boxing
Actor Micky Cochrane on his singular challenge
One of sport’s most moving and inspiring stories is about to unfold on the big stage and may yet find its way to the big screen.
That’s according to Micky Cochrane, sole performer in Carrying David which tells of boxer Glenn McCrory and the adoptive brother who spurred him to a world title – in a Stanley leisure centre of all places.
“There are still bits of funding to be found but it’s in a good place,” says Micky.
“It’s been close to being made several times. Glenn took it to Cannes in the early 2000s. Hopefully we’ll go from seeing it at the Theatre Royal to seeing it in the cinema because it’s one of those stories that has everything.
“There are so many emotions involved.”
First, though, there’s the big Grey Street theatre where a slot has been found for this compelling local – but also universal – story of a special friendship that led to triumph before being cruelly cut short.
It was told in Glenn’s autobiography, also called Carrying David.
David was the boy adopted by Glenn’s parents, unaware of the rare inherited disease that would ultimately claim his life. Friedreich’s ataxia damages the central nervous system and affects mobility.
As Glenn aspired to a peak of fitness, David’s body was going in the opposite direction.
As Micky recalls: “Glenn didn’t like him at first but because they were the closest in age (Glenn already had five other siblings) he had to spend time with him.
“The reason it’s called Carrying David is that he had this affliction which meant he dragged his foot.
“As a result, Glenn got into trouble at school because he was late all the time, so one day he put David on his back and ran with him.
“That was the start of the bond between them. They became best mates and a team. The boxing story is seen through both their eyes because they had a shared dream of Glenn becoming a champion.
“It was David who inspired Glenn’s comeback after being badly mismanaged and pushed into the ring as a heavyweight when he wasn’t big enough.
“He was going to give up. It was the example set by David that inspired him to come back.”
Micky says he knows a boxing coach who can vouch for that, having met the pair at the gym.
“He said David was the nicest, most inspirational kid you’d ever meet – always had a smile on his face, never wanted or needed everything.
“He wasn’t down about what was happening to him. As we say in the play, that frustrated Glenn sometimes because he didn’t understand why it was happening.
“But because David was trying everything just to exist, Glenn reckoned if he could do that then he was coming back. David’s a huge part of the story.”
The boxing annals tell us that on June 3, 1989 Glenn McCrory, of Annfield Plain, England, beat Patrick Lumumba, of USA and Kenya, on points to claim the International Boxing Federation cruiserweight title.
To tap into the excitement of that momentous night, you’d better see the play.
As Micky explains, whereas Lumumba flew in, McCrory had only yards to travel to the Louisa Centre which was rocking to noisy partisan support.
And David was there at the end to bask in his big brother’s victory.
But back to the play, which Micky says Glenn asked Ed Waugh to write after seeing Hadaway Harry, his treatment of another North East champion, Victorian oarsman Harry Clasper.
Micky had been in a couple of plays written by Ed and one-time collaborator Trevor Wood and also been impressed by Hadaway Harry when seeing it at the Theatre Royal.
In 2018 he met up with Ed and Glenn for a pint and a chat.
“I’ve always been interested in sport and fascinated by boxing, the theatre that comes with it and the build-up. So much energy’s used just getting in the ring.
“I used to do boxing training when I was a kid, although my mother wouldn’t let me get into it, for which I don’t blame her.
“I knew a bit about Glenn but had no idea about his family or David. They told me the story and I thought it was fantastic. I said I wanted in.”
Smiling, he reckons Glenn must have been sizing him up.
“At the end, he said, ‘Great to have you on board, Micky’, but then he poked me in the belly and said, ‘But you’ll have to get rid of that’.”
The other challenge was how to tell a story involving more than one person when it’s just you on stage.
Micky recalls his first response on getting the script. “How the hell am I going to do this? One scene is fighting for the world title. I said, ‘Will there be someone in the corner with the water?’ and Ed said, ‘No, it’s all down to you, son.’
“We had seven days to put it on the first time at the Tyneside Irish Centre. There was karaoke downstairs and I could hear someone singing Neil Diamond songs. But everyone loved the show.”
It has since been performed around the North East (including in Stanley, a stone’s throw from the Louisa Centre) and in Northern Ireland, but this time, with the Theatre Royal the icing on the cake, Micky is both performing and co-producing.
We’re speaking at Gateshead College where he has been talking to drama students, hoping they’ll see the play and equipped with flyers to offer all and sundry.
A little groggy after a bout of food poisoning, he’s dwelling on the positives, smiling at Glenn’s response - that it would shrink the midriff.
For both men, this is a big step. It sees Carrying David take a considerable step up and gets Micky on the Theatre Royal stage where he’s dreamt of performing.
Telling his own story, it’s clear it hasn’t been entirely straightforward.
Growing up in Dunston, he liked performing – in a school play he once played Harry Clasper – but took a bit of a ribbing for it. “Performing arts wasn’t a thing we did.”
He was good at football but those dreams evaporated after he left school and found himself drifting, working in cafes, a factory, an office and “getting nowhere”.
His former drama teacher would sometimes urge him to start acting again but it was his mother, finally, who persuaded him to try for something he’d always enjoyed.
Graduating a few years later from a performing arts course at Northumbria University, Micky was the only one snapped up by an agent.
Now, as well as acting, he works as a personal trainer and boxercise coach and is a great advocate of exercise for mental and physical wellbeing.
Glenn has had well-documented mental health issues and Micky, too, confesses to ups and downs.
His wife, a psychologist, helps to keep him grounded.
Once, he says, a boxing coach told him he was the “best showbusiness person” he’d ever coached and suggested a charity bout.
Taken with the idea and “feeling 10 feet tall”, he told his wife – and laughs now at her reaction. “Are you stupid? You do realise you’ll get hit in the face? It’s not like you’ll walk in there and do what you’re doing now. You’re an actor playing a boxer. So don’t be stupid.”
On that one, Micky conceded defeat.
But the play goes on. See Carrying David, directed by Russell Floyd, at the Theatre Royal where it has three performances, on Friday, June 21 (2.30pm and 7.30pm) and Sunday, June 22 (4pm). Tickets from the Theatre Royal website or call 0191 2327010.