Fans of Buckie Thistle, a football club on Scotland’s north-east coast and occupying a respectable fifth place in the Highland League, were initially bewildered to discover that Stephen King had referenced their team in his latest work.
It is not immediately apparent whether this small town on the Moray Firth, its harbour crowded with fish processors and smokehouses, bears marked similarities to coastal Maine, where the legendary American horror maestro resides, or is host to any maniacal clowns, haunted cars, or other subterranean suburban horrors that so delight his readers.
“Everyone was surprised,” said Buckie Thistle’s director of football, Graeme Tallis, with admirable understatement. “We first knew about it when fans started to let us know on Facebook that we were in the book”.
As a thank you we sent to him some memorabilia as he is now a fully fledged fan of the Jags . 🇳🇬🇳🇬 @StephenKing is aware that there is an open invitation to visit Victoria park next time he is in Scotland!! pic.twitter.com/t2DM6e7Mz5
— Buckie Thistle FC (@BuckieThistle) July 4, 2020
If It Bleeds, the title story of King’s new collection of four novellas, features a recurring character, the private detective Holly Gibney, who investigates a bomb at a middle school where pupils participate in an exchange programme with a partner school in Scotland. The Scottish pupils learn about baseball and the Pittsburgh Pirates while those in the US learn about Buckie Thistle, a club King says he picked because of its “gorgeous name”.
Alerted to this unexpected exposure, Tallis continues: “I took it upon myself to send an email, not expecting a reply, but then I got a quick response. He asked how the club was doing in lockdown, and said he would send us over two signed books.”
Along with most sports clubs and venues, the pandemic has been a challenging experience for the eleven-times Highland League winners.
Jake Bugg: the rock star gave then League Two highflyers Notts County a boost with a 10 month-long kit sponsorship for the 2017-18 season. It failed to help in the long run, the team suffering relegation from the Football League for the first time in their 157-year history last year.
Daniel Day-Lewis: the cultured thespian supports ... Millwall. He reportedly said of his Greenwich upbringing: 'A house full of great books about art and literature was all well and good, but I was fascinated by the streets that were close by ... I supported Millwall with great gusto and was on the terraces every Saturday'. He even gave the Championship club, famous for their motto 'Nobody likes us - we don't care', a namecheck in a BAFTA awards speech in 2008.
Mark Dabbs: he's not famous but he enlisted an array of over 100 celebrities to show support for League One Walsall and garnered plenty of publicity for the cause back in 2017. The team were subsequently relegated and now languish in League Two.
Paul Daniels: the Doncaster Star at the time opted for the headline 'Rovers opt for a bit of magic' when the late magician bought ten square yards around the centre of the club's pitch as part of a fund-raising exercise in 1992 for the cash-strapped Division Three club. Wife Debbie McGee later said: “He got loads of publicity, saying, ‘Right well I can say to them, they can’t kick off from my square’.”
The Proclaimers: Craig and Charlie Reid are famous for being Hibs addicts and their hit 'Sunshine on Leith' has been adopted by the fans as a club anthem. They gave up lucrative US tour dates in 2012 to watch Hibs in the Scottish Cup final and were rewarded by seeing their team beaten 5-1 by arch-rivals Hearts.
“We’re a big part of the community, but like every other club, we came to a shuddering halt because of lockdown. Staff are furloughed but we still have bills to pay and we’re doing what fundraising we can. We have a big fanbase out there who are very good to the club.”
One of those fans is Jamie Watt, a metal worker from Leyland, Lancashire. He first encountered the Jags, as the club is known, on a family holiday to the Highlands seven years ago. “I told my wife I might take in a game, and the love affair started there. They are all very genuine people, very giving – during lockdown the players were dropping off food parcels – and now they treat me like one of the lads.”
Watt, who was born in Glasgow but moved south as a child, regularly travels to Buckie for matches and admits he has been missing his adopted club since travel restrictions came into force in March.
Watt’s devotion to the Jags is matched only by his daughter Lucy’s dedication to Stephen King – “she owns everything he has ever published, in hardback and paperback” – so when Tallis announced he was auctioning one of the signed copies to raise funds for the club, the only question for Watt was, how much?
The answer was £900. “I went in really aggressive with my bid because I thought even if I don’t get it, it’ll push up the price. My daughter got the book and the club got the money, so everyone was happy”.
Watt did not tell Lucy what was coming in the post until a package arrived from the north of Scotland earlier this week. “She was in tears for half an hour,” he said.
To thank King, Tallis sent him a Buckie Thistle scarf and shirt, and he has since received a photograph of the 72-year-old author happily wearing the memorabilia.
“He was over the moon when I told him how much we had raised,” Tallis confirms. “There’s an open invitation to Stephen King to visit us at [club ground] Victoria Park. He said he hadn’t been to Scotland for a few years so fingers crossed.”
The other signed copy will remain in the club’s trophy room for the time being, said Tallis.
Watt is brimming with optimism as the King novella brings the Jags to a global audience: “In an ideal world it’ll capture people’s imagination, and they might want to buy a replica shirt or go to a match. It might bring them to a new audience and put some money in their coffers, especially now. A lot of these clubs operate on a shoestring.”
Tallis is more circumspect. “It’s put us more on the map than we were already,” he muses. “I didn’t realise there were so many Stephen King fans going about.”
