This sweet, sad documentary – which a bit of Googling, however, reveals to be rather contrived – is a study of Dene Michael, a middle-aged man from Leeds who once upon a time was part of the 1980s novelty band Black Lace, known and feared for their earworm hit single, Agadoo, with its weird lyrics about pushing pineapples and shaking trees. The band’s lineup changed about as often as that of the Fall, and Michael was once one of the guys singing backing vocals while dressed as a pineapple.
But when frontman Colin Gibb was forced out after an underage sex scandal, and the other frontman, Alan Barton, left to join the band Smokie, Michael was taken out of the pineapple costume, promoted to singer and effectively left in sole charge of the band. Since the 1980s, he has been endlessly touring the sad disco circuit from Blackpool to Benidorm, belting out Black Lace hits to dwindling drunk crowds as if in some Alan Partridge nightmare.
We watch as Dene, along with his girlfriend Hayley and his sweet, gentle, elderly mum Anne, hit the road. But then poor Dene is fired by his manager, who evidently has the legal rights to the trademarked band name and its songs, and some other, younger singer gets to tour under the Black Lace banner. So Dene faces a very uncertain future in the cruel world of showbusiness.
The movie presents Dene as a nice guy who loves his mum. That’s probably exactly what he is, but it misses out a more troubled part of his life – a jail sentence in 2016 for benefit fraud. Perhaps the jokey scenes of Dene rolling around on a mobility scooter are an allusion to this. There is always redemption and sympathy, but it would have been better (and more interesting) to talk about this more frankly. In any case, the film has a kind of melancholy that Martin Parr might have wanted to photograph.
• Still Pushing Pineapples is in UK cinemas from 28 November.
