“I always used to think that when I pegged it, all of a sudden people would buy the records, and pretend they liked us all along. But I begin to worry that what if I peg it, and they still don’t buy the records?” Robert Lloyd, quoted from the film King Rocker, mid curry.
Scuppered by lockdowns, “King Rocker,” a film written by Stewart Lee and directed by Michael Cumming, aired on Sky Arts, on Saturday 6th February 2021. It proved to be a glorious two-hours of film and television.
As a master of extracting the illusion of structure from any narrative, the warp thread of this film is an 18ft, 1960lb fibreglass replica of the famous movie ape, King Kong.
But the true hero seems to follow the arc of the fibreglass monkeyfication – his name is Robert Lloyd, and people don’t live lives like his anymore.
While reminiscing about bakeries and trudging through ice-glazed and arrogant stone circles, Lee describes Lloyd as “fast-tracked to disillusionment.”
I’m not sure I agree, because to many, disillusionment is the fuel to giving up, or at the very least compromising. Robert Lloyd, I would suggest, is not a man that you could accuse of either failing.
What lies at the centre of this life-affirming piece, is the genuine warmth between Lee, the writer, and Lloyd, the musician.
They could be any pair of fellows, supping away in the mahogany glow of the snug; indeed they often are.
As Lloyd himself remarks, when speaking of those chaps you see in alehouses, “there was a bloke who sat over there, whose name I never knew.”
But know, thanks to this film, I know the name of Robert Lloyd, singer and poet with The Prefects and The Nightingales.
The film also reveals Lloyd’s other guises of video producer, postman and record producer. This latter role allows Lee to nod to another of heroes, the marvellous comedian, Ted Chippington. I was delighted to view this entertaining segue, and it worked well, roughly speaking.
Mr Lloyd also flirted with the possibility of writing a sitcom, before a suitably poptastic ego explosion within the circle of his collaborators. Who knows how successful “Normal” would have been? The script table read, some quarter of a century late was rendered particularly delightful by the superb energy of the actor Kevin Eldon – surely a shoo-in for a role, if ever there was one.
But for me, for all his punk energy, zero-compromise, and giant stage presence, Robert Lloyd comes across as a tremendously top bloke. Just buy him a Guinness, and sit back and enjoy to good times. Mr Lee, while a star and hero in his own right, is able to sit back and allow the warmth of his subject to shine through. It comes across as one interesting mate making a film about another. And that is what makes this piece of art so very engaging.
Well, that bonhomie, aligned with a stuffed weasel, and an eighteen-foot purveyor of form.
I enjoyed this film very much, indeed, and I would urge you to give it a watch. It will make you happy, and you may even rush off and form a band. But more than that, watch it to celebrate what makes you uniquely, as Messrs Lloyd and Lee have shared what makes them uniquely them.
An easy five stars, on my somewhat ad-hoc 5-Star scale.
Simon Gary is the author of the comic novels “Gone to the Dogs” and “Thryke: The Man That Nobody Knew,” which maybe someone will make an equally good film about one day.