One Night In Turin

*ONE NIGHT IN TURIN, out at UK cinemas now. Out on DVD on 31 May*

For anyone old enough to remember the Italia '90 World Cup, snazzy new 'feature film' documentary One Night In Turin will be more nostalgic than discovering your first teddy in the loft.

Based on Pete Davies' book All Played Out, film-maker James Erskine has used archive footage and Gary Oldman's voice to re-live all the drama, emotion and rage of that 'fabulous' tournament, which we nearly won. But didn't.

We spoke to him about it...

Did you know that Turin is a magical city, and that there's a gateway to Hell in the centre?

Pardon?

It's true. It's apparently got the largest population of satanists and wizards, and there's a gateway beneath this large church in the centre.

All I know is that there's apparently a place in Kansas where William Burroughs used to live which has a 'gateway', and that I made a film in Turin once and the city has the best Christmas decorations. This is the first time I've had a question about satanism. I wonder if it was some magic satanic ritual that caused Germany to beat us on penalties?

A Cameroon witch doctor said Cameroon would beat us 2-1.

He got it wrong though.

He was almost right. It was 2-1 for a bit.

Hmmm.

Anyway, do you remember watching the 1990 World Cup?

Yes, I was 16 at the time. I was working in a factory making airline meals, and we used to listen to the first half of most games on the radio, then we'd watch the second half at home.

Did you cry when we lost on penalties to Germany? I did. But then I was a bit younger than 16.

I can't remember if I cried or not. But I might cry tonight if Manchester City get beaten by Tottenham in the race for fourth place in the Champion's League. [Spurs won 1-0 and apparently Mr Erskine shed many tear].

What was truly shocking about your film were the anti-Bobby Robson headlines at the start of the tournament and how much vitroil there was towards him.

Yeah, it’s incredible. The amount of shit he had to put up with. He was the first England manager to experience that and possibly to a greater degree than anyone else has since. I know Graham Taylor got a lot of issues, but then he never qualified for anything. Whereas Bobby Robson had already taken us to the Quarter Finals in '86. Newspapers were really, really powerful then, because it was before the internet.

At the end of the tournie, they were hailing Robson a Messiah!

Yeah, well they say yesterday’s papers are today’s chip wrappers.

How close was our own government to pulling our team out of the WC due to the apparent hooligan issues?

There was rioting against Sweden in qualifiers in '89, started when they went out on a ferry, some kid took acid and fell over the side, and people left off some fire extinguishers. There were also problems on streets of Stockholm, not major ones, but papers reported it as hooliganism. Yet some of the shops they said got smashed up were actually untouched, so a lot of it was scaremongering by tabloids. Our Holland friendly in '89 was cancelled due to government pressure. There was a real and present fear among politicans that our presence at Italia '90 would be a horrible mess and the government was seriously considering banning English teams from international matches.

So which England team is better, 1990 or our 2010 WC squad?

Hard one to say. The professionalism and athleticism of today’s footballers mean it’s a stronger squad in the sense that you can drill them better. But we haven’t got a goalie as accomplished as Shilton.

If you could pick a first XI of England Italia '90 and South Africa 2010 players, what would your team be?

GK: Shilton

RB: Parker

LB: Pearce

CB: Rio

CB: Butcher

RM: Gerrard

LM: Waddle

CM: Barry (I'm a Man City fan!)

CM: Gazza

CF: Rooney

CF: Lineker

So you clearly think the '90 team is better than our 2010 one then?

*silence*

*ONE NIGHT IN TURIN, out at UK cinemas now. Out on DVD on 31 May*