Frank Sidebottom / Christopher Sievey (25th August 1955 to 21st June 2010)

 

The comedian and musician Frank Sidebottom was so unfunny that he was often hilarious. Oddly he made a living from wearing a giant papier-mache head over his real head. I can remember this eccentric figure appearing regularly on local television through the eighties and nineties. Here I am at the crematorium where the journey ended. He died nearly penniless but he was so well-loved a social network website raised £6,500 in a matter of hours to cover funeral costs.

 

His real name was Christopher Sievey and in the seventies he headed a band called The Freshies. The band split up but he continued experimenting with music. Aged 29 the Frank Sidebottom character appeared - with a huge fibreglass head, whiney voice and wimpy jokes. Surely this was preposterous madcap man wouldn’t last. He did though (must be a northern thing.) His sunny disposition, enthusiasm, harmless humour and obliviousness to his own failings made him difficult to dislike. Though he continued making music (fairly terrible) he attracted a cult following. His appearances - buttressed by his band 'The Oh Blimey Band'  - combined stand-up comedy with bizarre novelty components. He got his own comic strip in the children's weekly comic Oink!

 

This loveable novelty released a spoken word cassette, albums, appeared on local radio stations and television, did solo-performance tours. However aged 40 Chris seemed to retire the Frank Sidebottom character and there were fewer public appearances. He became a regular writer for the animations Bob the Builder and Pingu. Aged 50 there was a comeback and Frank reappeared on local television with his own show on Channel M.

 

It all crashed to an end quickly: aged 54 he was diagnosed with cancer and died a month later in Wythenshawe Hospital following a collapse at home. He left a daughter and two sons but little money. A council-funded pauper's funeral looked probable but a crowd-funding website was created to raise money for a more uplifting goodbye. Money gushed in - a whopping £21,631 from 1,632 separate donators. The website had to be closed down before more money poured in.

 

About two hundred family and friends gathered here at Altrincham Crematorium for a private service. In July 2010 over 5,000 Frank Sidebottom fans held a party at the Castlefield Arena in Manchester to celebrate Chris’s life. In October 2013 a life-size bronze Frank Sidebottom statue was unveiled in his hometown of Timperley. The documentary-make Jon Ronson wrote a book about the comedian and there's a film.

 

I found the crematorium in flat Cheshire countryside; I strolled round the graves at the rear and a woman in a short dress too short for modesty when bending over reading graves was on the phone to her mum. "You must know where he's buried, you hated him enough to get him here," she said. Had she murdered him? She sounded a little potty. "Mum...mum...no!" she continued angrily, "this is the closest I'm ever going to get to him. It's not my fault I didn't come to the funeral......no, you're just pretending you don't know where he is.....no, it's not up to you!" After the phone call ended abruptly I helped her look for her dad's grave and left.

 

Some tame rabbits pottered about around the crematorium and gardens on remembrance. White ashes were strewn across the lawns. Were Frank Sidebottom ashes here or in an urn on a mantelpiece? The world needs more eccentrics like him. I did a salute and left.