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.