For a while, Frank Sidebottom – aka Chris Sievey, the hardest-working man in a papier-mache head and a nose clip – was ubiquitous. Timperley’s most famous son cropped up everywhere from the Reading festival to a Bros gig at Wembley stadium to children’s television, gently weirding out audiences of all ages.
This affectionate, frequently amusing documentary portrait explores the complex, symbiotic relationship between the late Sievey and the creation that threatened to swallow his whole identity. Interviewees include Jon Ronson and Mark Radcliffe (both former members of Sievey’s Oh Blimey Big Band), Johnny Vegas, Ross Noble and various luminaries of the second tier of the Manchester music scene. But what makes it particularly engaging is the contribution of Sievey’s ex-wife, Paula, who talks with warmth and an admirable lack of rancour about the realities of sharing a life with what one contributor describes as “a man on a mission of rank insanity”.
