The summer of 1968 could have been like any other for 14-year-old David Bradley. Growing up in a Barnsley pit community, he would soon be expected to follow his father down the mine – but director Ken Loach had other plans.
Life changed for the schoolboy when he was picked to play the lead role in Loach’s film Kes, adapted from Barry Hines’s novel, A Kestrel For A Knave.
Despite no previous acting experience, the teenager – now known as Dai – gave a stirring performance as Billy Casper, the lonely boy who finds hope through training a baby kestrel.
Moving, brutal, funny and truthful, the film remains a classic more than 40 years on.
Now Dai has shot a film he says has parallels with Kes. Called Ratzilla, it was partly filmed in Bradford, where it will be premiered this weekend.
Written and directed by Bradford-born film-maker Rad Miller, it was inspired by a ‘giant rat’ said to have been seen on Ravenscliffe estate in 2010.
Reports in the Telegraph & Argus gave Rad the idea for a story about a teenage boy who discovers a ‘monster rat’. The cast includes Bradford schoolchildren and locations included Goit Stock beauty spot near Haworth.
Dai plays ‘the Catman’, an eccentric loner. I meet him in a subway in Bradford city centre, where he’s shooting a scene involving a cat, waiting in its basket. Now 59, slightly built and with familiar striking features, Dai was “intruiged” by the script. “It’s a quirky tale about the rehabilitation of a boy. It looks at the way children are stigmatised, as Kes did,” he says. “Kes highlighted the way children were pigeon-holed at school, harnessed in terms of life choices. When Billy finds the bird, a door opens for him.”
Supported by Bradford UNESCO City of Film, Ratzilla is produced by youth media production company Pocket Projects, run by Rad, who recruited graduates. “It’s a short film which we’ll be pitching to the film industry. I contacted Dai through his website and was honoured when he agreed to do it,” says Rad.
Dai’s last visit to Bradford was the city’s film festival in 2006 when he was reunited with Kes director Ken Loach, actor Colin Welland, producer Tony Garnett and writer Barry Hines.
While he knows it’s the role he’ll be remembered for, Dai reveals he finds Kes “too brutal” to watch. “Whenever I do a question-and-answer session and they show the film, I make my excuses,” he says. “I have fond memories though. I’d do my paper round before school and do a few hours filming afterwards. Like Billy, I was the son of a coal miner and I knew it was a job I couldn’t do.”
Dai worked with three birds, learning how to handle them between scenes. “When you see me with the bird on screen it was what I’d been learning 20 minutes earlier.”
Like most of the young cast, he was plucked from obscurity. “Ken auditioned 200 kids then whittled them down to two dozen. The closest I’d come to to acting was school pantomimes,” says Dai. "We had no idea how big the film would be. I remember walking down Oxford Street when I was 17 and passing eight cinemas, all showing Kes."
In 1969 he won a best newcomer Bafta and later moved to London to work at the National Theatre. His films include All Quiet On The Western Front, Zulu Dawn and Asylum.
“As an actor you accept your physical limitations – I'm never going to be Arnold Schwarzenegger or Hugh Grant!" he laughs.
“It's difficult to move on after a movie has made an impact, but I’ve always looked for productions that make the audience think.”
Ratzilla has its premiere at The Gumption Centre, Glyde House, Glydegate, on Sunday from 1.30pm.