Former Dire Straits legend Mark Knopfler honed his guitar skills playing in a famed Leeds music pub at lunchtime while plotting ways to abandon his stuttering journalistic career on the city’s evening paper.

And whilst the The Grove remains a popular venue for upcoming bands, 38 years later the new Geordie’s ‘local hero’ Sam Fender was packing-out the cavernous Leeds Arena on the opening night of the UK leg of a whistle-stop pre-Christmas tour.

But the powerful songs of this down-to-earth…