Joe Dempsie has been a staple in some of the best shows of the last 20 years - Skins, Game of Thrones, This Is England ’86, This Is England ’90, and the criminally underrated Get Millie Black, to name a few. Meanwhile, Showboat have been staples in some of the best London boozers over the past two decades. So we sent our editor, Lee Kelleher, to sit down with Joe to talk Nottingham Forest, classic shirts, and to hammer the company card at The Ship. It went as you’d expect.
You’re a Forest fan who was born in Liverpool and a Scotland fan who was born in England…do you have a penchant for pain?
[Laughs] Yeah yeah, I’m a real masochist. So, I'm not Nottingham-born, but I am Nottingham-bred. My dad wanted to take me to watch my local team and you could walk to the City Ground from our house. So it was always Forest. And he’s also a Scotsman and, you know, I guess you want to be like your dad growing up. But by some bizarre twist of fate, the group of friends I had in primary school pretty much all had one, if not two, parents who were Scottish. This was in suburban Nottingham and so supporting Scotland didn’t feel rebellious. It wasn’t a conscious choice I made. It felt normal. I was lucky to have these mates who also supported Scotland, so it became our thing.
What was it like growing up in the mid-90s supporting those teams?
It’s interesting because you look back on it now with hindsight and go “God, if we knew then the sort of wilderness that was on the horizon.” Scotland were at Euro ’96 and France ’98. It was normal for me to see Scotland qualify for major tournaments, and it was normal for me to see Forest in the Premier League and riding pretty high. We finished third that season under Frank Clark, with Stan Collymore and everyone. You didn't know you were necessarily signing yourself up for a load of pain and heartache. I’ve never been religious, or raised in a religious household, but I remember standing on the playground praying that Stan Collymore didn’t go to Liverpool.
And now Forest are, suddenly, back?
There’s no Forest fan that will say they thought last season was going to go the way it did. Every season since we got promoted back to the Premier League has been about survival and progress has to be incremental. I didn’t necessarily think I’d ever see Forest in a European city, watching them in a competitive fixture, in my lifetime.
What’s the dream away day this season?
Seville in September was pretty good! Before we had our whole thing with Crystal Palace, I was looking at the Conference League and sort of renamed it the “Ryanair Tournament” because every team you Google where they are and you’re like, “Oh, that’s sort of an hour outside of such-and-such.” And I sort of think, well, that’s kind of what it’s all about rather than getting to some prestigious European city. The randomness.
Who would you want from the old days in the current team?
I think Psycho would be great but it’s got to be Roy Keane. Then again, we could probably do with Collymore up top sticking them in, to be fair.
Has there ever been a good football film?
Hmm. The Damned United?
Good shout.
Kind of a football film?
Feels like more of a…
And I was in it! [erupts with laughter]
Oh fucking hell. Were you actually?
[Laughs] Yes! Not much to be fair. I got to watch Michael Sheen do some great acting. I played a footballer called Duncan McKenzie.
What are you into lately?
I saw a film called The Man in My Basement with Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins which my mate Nadia Latif directed. It was her debut feature. A really atmospheric film that sort of feels like it’s revealing itself to you as it goes but then you come out of the cinema and feel like it’s about everything. It stays with you for quite a long time. And I’m watching Blue Lights which I think is the best drama on television at the moment.
Right, let’s get down to it and talk about football shirts. Were you always into them?
The first football shirt I ever remember wanting was Brazil 1994. I remember being allowed to watch the final, because it went all the way to penalties and past my bedtime. I remember Baggio ballooning it over, and I wanted the Brazil shirt - I was just seduced by that kit. And from that point on, I think the majority of my conscious childhood was spent wanting football shirts I couldn’t have because they were so expensive. So it was pretty much what I asked for for every birthday and Christmas. So, Scotland and Forest shirts were pretty much what I got. And there was a place in it called Sports Warehousein Sneinton Market that sold - and to this day, I don’t think anyone in Nottingham knows where the stock came from - but it was discount sports gear. You could get boots, shirts, footballs, all kinds of stuff. I don’t know if it was off the back of a lorry or what.
So when did you get into collecting as an adult?
So when I was a teenager and going to an acting workshop in Nottingham, my best mate was a lad called Silas, a Liverpool fan, and he started turning up in these beautiful old Liverpool shirts. No one wore old shirts in those days, this was the time when you wore the current shirts. We’re talking Crown Paints, adidas. He got them from eBay, which was still in its relative infancy. It was almost exclusively Forest and Scotland stuff initially but I was then an adult with my own money and it was a case of “I shall have that Brazil ‘94 shirt actually.” One of the things that I think has been lost with the explosion in popularity of vintage football shirts is you’d find people clearing out their lofts and selling an old shirt for a tenner. I found a Scotland 1992 shirt with McCoist and the number five printed on the back, which isn’t a particularly rare shirt. But this one had tournament detailing under the badge: Euro ‘92 Sweden. As well as the number five on the front. And I had never seen that on a replica shirt.
Tell us about the rest of your collection...
Forest and Scotland are the predominant ones but there came a point where my interest expanded to benchwear. You know you’re down the rabbit hole when you’re looking at Villarreal training bibs. But in terms of pieces? Maybe about 150. I think the ones that I like most are the shirts I found a long time ago, in the early days. There’s a Forest ‘86, crest in the middle, the trefoil on each arm, SKOL sponsor. I bought it, lost it when I was pissed and left an overnight bag at a train station, bought it again but it wasn’t in great condition, and then bought it again in mint condition but it doesn’t really fit me [laughs]. I’d love to get another one I could actually wear.
I love that 1996 turquoise Barcelona shirt. This was another weird find from eBay 20 years ago. I wanted it with Ronaldo on the back but this one also had Cup Winners Cup badges. I’m talking about embroidered hunks of badges on the arm. They say with those Kappa shirts that the way you can always tell if it’s player issue is because the name and the number are sublimated into the material and the number has the Kappa logo on the bottom. Mine doesn’t. Mine is pressed and doesn’t have the Kappa logo on the number. But if you Google images from that final, the numbers are printed and don’t have Kappa on them. This is not the shirt Ronaldo wore in the Cup Winners Cup final. Is it?!
I remember you saying you wanted to stand out when wearing an old shirt to a game. Everyone’s at it now, with reissues and snides…
It’s made me realise there was always an element of peacocking to my collection. I wanted to rock up to Hampden Park or the City Ground and people would be like “Oh, I remember that” or “God, where did you get that?” They were good icebreakers and ways to chat to people. It definitely removed that.
You’ll have seen the mad pink geometric Scotland shirt from the 1990 World Cup. It was listed on ebay for quite a lot of money and I just thought I’d watch as a casual observer and then ended up getting involved as the clock ticked down and then won the fucking thing. It was the most I’ve ever spent on a shirt. It’s still the most I’ve ever spent on a shirt.
Go on…
About four hundred quid. But it’s one of those that’s been so extensively bootlegged that I probably wouldn’t wear it now.
Do you still wear the shirts?
I always bought shirts to wear them but now it’s become part of blokecore I’ve kind of gone off wearing them and it’s why I’ve probably shifted to benchwear because I still see that as eminently wearable.
I was acquiring shirts I wanted but couldn’t have or afford as a kid. And you know nostalgia is such a big part of it for me so the shirt itself physically being from back then is important to me in a way that it’s not really about looking cool to me it’s about it being a genuine piece of nostalgic ephemera.
A literal thread to the past.
Yeah and that’s where the value in football shirts is for me.
So where are you with football shirts now?
Like anything, it’s the same if you discover a band on the way up and then they become the biggest band in the world, you feel like it’s not your thing anymore, it’s everyone’s thing and I guess I feel a little bit like that. And now the fashion industry is jumping on it and having high-end fashion houses release football shirts in their latest collection. Oh, fuck off. For me it’s not about fashion or being fashionable, it’s about something that means a lot to me. Football, football teams, the people that support them. The shirts I wanted from the 90s because I loved the look of them but mostly, I loved the teams, the players that wore them. So watching, you know, Christian Dior make some sort of facsimile of a football shirt for a runway show does nothing for me.
Favourite shirt in your collection?
One of the shirts I love the most that I’ve got is a Cork City one with the Guinness sponsor.
I know it.
No, not that one! I think it’s 93/94 shirt. That’s one that I might still wear but then again everyone is wearing Guinness shit now. Even Guinness has been ruined!
The Devonshire did that.
Everything gets ruined.
Right, let’s get out of here and go to Bradley’s.
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