Ian Hough

Ian Hough (born 26 October, 1965, in Salford, Lancashire) is an English writer. Hough currently resides in the United States.

He has had a fascination with marginal societal groups and behaviours throughout his lifetime.

Perry Boys book

Hough's first book Perry Boys, describes the emergence in Northwest England of a previously nonexistent attitude to life and way of dressing for young working class people which in time was copied by youths the length and breadth of Great Britain and beyond. This new form of self-expression was later recognised to be the prototypical phase of what was later known as the Casuals movement, essentially the organised hooliganism associated with football in the United Kingdom (UK) since the 1980s. Hough sought in his book to clarify understanding of the factors contributing to this new form, which was centred around the attendance of football matches and expensive designer clothing, much of it sportswear. It is GeneRally believed that youths in Liverpool were the first to adopt The New styles, while those in Manchester followed suit several years later, in copycat fashion. The 1977 release of the David Bowie album Low has often been cited as a pivotal moment, as young people in Liverpool apparently began to explore new possibilities, particularly pertaining to hairstyle and MusicAL tastes. The hairstyle sported by Bowie on the cover of the album has often been described as the archetypal form of the effeminate "wedge" hairstyle adopted by these youngsters, who in Liverpool were sometimes referred to as "Scallies".

Hough contests this idea of absolute uniqueness in Liverpool, stating that there existed a small body of working-class youths in Manchester, known as Perry boys, who began styling their hair and wearing their clothes in an unusually effeminate manner sometime in the mid to late 1970s, completely independent of events in Liverpool. This body of young people were disciples of Northern Soul music, and had a reputation for using knives, a trait that guaranteed them some large degree of immunity during that turbulent decade, itself riddled with behavioural problems on the football terraces. The Perry Boys were not associated with attending football matches, but instead composed a small minority of people who enjoyed all-night, amphetamine fuelled dance club marathons, at venues such as Wigan Casino and The Twisted Wheel, where Northern Soul music was almost a religion. Some of these youths did attend football matches, but it is supposed that their chief focus was music and night-clubs. Consequently, they are not part of the history of what came to be termed the "Casual" movement. It was a younger group who did attend football matches, and who adopted a similar hairstyle and manner of dress, that were confused with the Perry Boys and were tagged with the same descriptive name. The fact that Hough's book deals with this later breed yet is titled Perry Boys is a touch of irony which reflects his Insider's view of the story.

Hough, with the help of Liverpudlian David Hewitson, describes how the Scallies of Liverpool were exposed to large-scale opportunity for shoplifting on the trusting boulevards of continental Europe following Liverpool F.C. in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These football fans are said to have discovered superior forms of designer sportswear then unavailable in the UK, and they inadvertently sparked a new fashion when they returned to England with their prizes.

While Hough does not disagree with this account, he describes how simultaneously Manchester's suddenly increasingly numerous Perry boys had taken to an extremely similar form of dressing, and how this similarity between youths in the two cities created a new kind of dynamism which drove hostilities and conflict between Manchester and Liverpool to new levels. Hough's book details the development of this dynamism, and the subsequent spread of the LifeStyle to the rest of the UK.

Bibliography

• Perrys Boys (2007)