DAVID Hockney's A Bounce for Bradford picture, published by the T&A in March, 1987, was designed specifically in support of the Bradford's Bouncing Back campaign, which bounced along from November 1986 to September 1988.

A limited edition print of the picture, offered for sale online by the Brandler Galleries in Brentwood, Essex, could set you back £195. In 1987 copies of the print on sale at London's Royal Academy cost just a few pence and sold out.

The story of how that came about is evidence of the Bradford-born artist's refusal to take his reputation at anybody else's valuation.

Originally, Hockney designed the print to support the Bradford's Bouncing Back campaign, which was devised by Bradford Council and the T&A and supported by many businesses and organisations, as a public morale-raiser along the lines of Glasgow's Miles Better publicity campaign.

Bradford's campaign had as its living logos people dressed up in bearskins, each one wearing a big round button bearing the message Bradford's Bouncing Back! From what? cynics asked. Social and economic disaster following the recession of the late 1970s.

More than 30,000 people were on the dole, there had been long-running battles over the serving of halal meat in schools and free speech as middle school head teacher Ray Honeyford defended himself against accusations of racism. On top of all this, the Bradford City fire in May 1985, which killed 56 people and injured 200 others, seemed to seal the Bradford's fate as a premier place for bad news.

Though far away in Los Angeles, Hockney liked the idea of his hometown fighting back against its national reputation and was willing to lend his name and support. Bradford Council had already started the fight back with its successful Bradford as a Surprising Place campaign to attract weekend tourists.

The picture that Hockney designed perplexed some when it was published in the centre of a Bradford's Bouncing Back supplement on March 3,1987. It looked like a croquet ball rattling between hoops. For critics of the whole campaign it was no better than the inflatable red and white Santa Claus which broke free from its moorings at the top of City Hall's clock tower on a particularly blustery day and was last seen going west above Sunbridge Road.

Others saw the picture as symbolic of Bradford's attempt to rise above its worst modern disaster - the fire at Valley Parade. The fiery ball can be seen as an image for the sun, and the hoops a series of shadowed rainbows.

It wasn't a throw-away to Hockney, who worked hard on it in his Los Angeles studio. The sale of prints of it at the Royal Academy reportedly came about as a result of an incident the previous year when Sir Roger de Grey, then-president of the RA, took a dislike to a Hockney print that had been purchased at the Academy for a five figure sum.

Hockney got to hear of Sir Roger's views and so in 1987 entered a print of his Bounce For Bradford for the summer exhibition. The public bought the copies available. It was Hockney's way of showing the establishment that he didn't need to be told how to be successful.