Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story

The indus­tri­al action tak­en by BBC staff in 1980 might have been an unex­pect­ed Slid­ing Doors moment in British pop cul­ture. Their strike led to a num­ber of episodes of Top of the Pops being can­celled that sum­mer, includ­ing the one that Chris Sievey’s band The Freshies were sched­uled to appear on.

They had just released their most accom­plished sin­gle, the catchi­ly-titled ​‘I’m In Love With The Girl On The Man­ches­ter Vir­gin Mega­s­tore Check-out Desk’, and an appear­ance on prime­time tel­ly was seen as a break­through after years of toil. Instead, they slid back into obscu­ri­ty, and a few years lat­er Frank Side­bot­tom was born.

It was a gim­mick that some­how stuck. Orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as a Freshies super fan, the eter­nal­ly upbeat Side­bot­tom soon became a cult fig­ure in his own right, rapid­ly achiev­ing the kind of suc­cess and recog­ni­tion that Sievey had spent years dream­ing of. Frank appeared on stage at Wem­b­ley, became a reg­u­lar on TV, starred in a com­ic strip and even found­ed a foot­ball team, Tim­per­ley Big Shorts FC (aver­age atten­dance: ​“28 peo­ple, 2 dogs and 1 pup­pet”). But as Frank’s uni­verse con­tin­ued to grow, its cre­ator dis­ap­peared from view. Sievey spent much of the next 20 years inside Frank’s papier-mâché head.

Steve Sullivan’s doc­u­men­tary Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Sto­ry is an attempt to redress the bal­ance, with the first half of the film focus­ing on Sievey’s pre-Frank years, reveal­ing a man who was com­pul­sive­ly cre­ative and approached every­thing he did with the same fas­tid­i­ous atten­tion to detail.

Even as a child, Sievey’s Sub­bu­teo games with friends were absurd­ly elab­o­rate a airs, com­plete with match pro­grammes and tick­ets, and we get the sense that if he couldn’t com­mit him­self entire­ly to some­thing then it wasn’t worth doing. A friend recalls him stay­ing up all night to hand-draw Frank’s week­ly com­ic strip, despite it pay­ing a rel­a­tive pit­tance; it wasn’t about the mon­ey, it was the act of doing it that mattered.

Being Frank is con­struct­ed with an appro­pri­ate­ly scrap­py DIY aes­thet­ic. The film makes great use of the copi­ous VHS tapes, let­ters, notes and car­toons that Sievey left behind after his death in 2010, and the archive footage makes this a fas­ci­nat­ing time cap­sule of late ​’80s/early-’90s tele­vi­sion. There’s even a star­tling shot of Sievey remov­ing the head, which is a gen­uine shock giv­en how clear­ly he delin­eat­ed Frank as an entire­ly sep­a­rate person.

The inter­views are hit-and-miss, with the con­tri­bu­tions from Sievey’s fam­i­ly, friends and fans doing lit­tle to illu­mi­nate our under­stand­ing of this com­plex man. Ref­er­ences are made to his frag­ile men­tal state and his drink­ing, drug-tak­ing and wom­an­is­ing, but the film­mak­ers seem unwill­ing to dig fur­ther into these dark­er elements.

Instead Being Frank feels more like a cel­e­bra­to­ry trib­ute to a unique artist, and it’s a very enter­tain­ing one. The film’s final third, in which Sievey attempts to pull him­self out of bank­rupt­cy by becom­ing Frank once more, is stir­ring and touch­ing, with Frank being met by a great out­pour­ing of love wher­ev­er he goes.

Chris Sievey nev­er did achieve his dream of emu­lat­ing the Bea­t­les, but he did get to sing ​‘Let it Be’ in front of an ador­ing crowd while wear­ing a giant head, and just like the Fab Four, he now has a stat­ue stand­ing proud­ly in his home town. In his own strange way, he was a superstar.