Timperley's finest
Outside of the UK, people may not be familiar with Frank Sidebottom. A powerhouse comedy legend of Northern England, particularly the Timperley area of Manchester, he hit the heights of his fame in the 1980's and 90's.
But Frank Sidebottom wasn't real.
It's not the most straightforward of tales to tell, but bear with me.
He was a character created and played by a chap called Chris Sievey. If you didn't know Frank's name, you knew him by appearance, as he was never ever pictured without his instanly recognisable papier-mache head.
Only a select group of family, friends and colleagues knew that it was Chris Sievey under the head. It was kept a closely guarded secret until after his death in 2010.
As someone who tries to maintain a reasonably distinct online identity myself, I was intrigued by how Frank Sidebottom became a person in his own right, and how his and Sievey's lives were woven together.
I have grown up with memories of Frank Sidebottom on TV, wedging himself into everything from local news reports (as a bona fide reporter) to kids Saturday morning shows like Motor Mouth – where his anarchic brand of humour found its audience with delighted pre-teens and hungover students.
I was never a huge fan, I just didn't find him particularly funny. I didn't really get the joke.
However, recently, I had the good fortune of watching Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story – a 2018 film about their lives. Now I have a new love for Frank Sidebottom and a huge respect for Sievey – a multi-hyphenate, with fingers in a number of creative pies.
Creatively, Sievey was an absolute tour-de-force. Initially he pursued a career in music, writing and recording songs as lead singer and guitarist of The Freshies – with some minor successes.
Their popularity was so localised, Sievey would produce bootleg cassette copies of their music to order, often personalising the copies with a recorded message specifically for the recipients.
Ahead of his time, he knew the value of cultivating and engaging with a small but loyal audience.
A lesson in world-building
He created Frank Sidebottom initially to be a fake fan of The Freshies – using him for promotional activities to shine a light on the band. He also used him in a computer game he created for the ZX Spectrum called The Biz.
Frank's popularity soared beyond The Freshies, and Sievey started to devote more time to being Frank – doing family-friendly stand-up comedy with lots of audience interaction and recording comedy records.
But Sievey opened Frank's world up beyond the stage. He would widely publicise his real home phone number and answer phone calls from fans in character. He'd write responses to fan mail, including detailed drawings of Frank and poetry he'd written.
He even created a smaller puppet version of himself with a cardboard body called Little Frank, and Little Frank's girlfriend, Denise.
When Denise's head went missing after a show in London, Sievey continued to perform with Little Frank and Denise – using just the headless body! It seemed exactly the type of eccentric move that Chris Sievey would pull, and befitting of Frank Sidebottom's surreal sense of humour.
He hooked up with Oink – an edgy UK children's comic that was worlds away from the more wholesome reading of the Dandy and Beano. Oink's anarchic brand of humour was a perfect match for Frank Sidebottom.
Originally asked for just a few lines or jokes to give to Oink's illustrators, Chris Sievey took the time to hand-draw and felt-pen all Frank Sidebottom strips himself, spending hours on each one.
It was method-acting in its highest form. Chris Sievey was a master of keeping himself and Frank so separate that they were viewed as two different people.
Ultimately, he made it his life's mission to preserve the myth he'd created, while battling against his alter ego. He was happy about the limited fame that Frank Sidebottom had generated, but always felt he was somehow worth more, and had more to give to the world as Chris Sievey.
I feel like he was frustrated that his fame came as an entertainer with a papier mache head, rather than as himself.
Being Frank
Sievey died in 2010, from cancer, leaving behind a wealth of content in various formats for film-maker Steve Sullivan to wade through.
Audio and video tapes of Frank, with hand-drawn, coloured-in covers, poems and illustrations – Chris Sievey's creativity really knew no bounds. He'd perfectly crafted a crazy, surreal world for Frank Sidebottom to exist in.
He also left a huge digital footprint across the internet – maintaining various websites and producing the Radio Timperley podcast.
As I was watching Being Frank – I drew a lot of parallels between what Chris Sievey did and the current Coil community. The level of localised support and personalised engagement he had with fans really resonated with me.
The poet John Cooper Clarke quotes Salvador Dali in Being Frank:
“To be universal, one must first become ultra-local”
My next big question for myself – and more widely for the community – is one that I come back to continually. I just haven't cracked this one yet. How do we broaden out? How do we capture a new audience beyond Coil creators and the XRP community?
It's so difficult to tell how well we're doing this at the moment with no on-platform comments or analytics to see where visitors are coming from.
But regardless of getting bogged down in metrics to understand how we can get better at this craft, and see who we're talking to out there, let me leave you with a lovely inspirational message from Chris Sievey himself.
“Now let me know what you would like to do and give me just one good reason why you can't.”
- Chris Sievey
Finally, here's a picture I drew of Frank Sidebottom after watching Being Frank.
Here's a YouTube clip of Frank's Magical Timperley Tour so you can see an example of his surreal humour.
Franktastic! You know he was, he really was.