Dead Whingers Society

Originally published on SoundsXP, 4th May, 2005

Scene 13 – The Rector’s Office, St Xenolith the Pure, Boarding School of Music

THE RECTOR IS SEATED IN A LEATHER CHAIR BEHIND A GIANT MAHOGANY DESK.

ENTER THE DEPUTY, A TROUBLED LOOK UPON HIS FACE.

THE RECTOR PEERS OVER HIS SPECTACLES AT HIM, AS THE DEPUTY  ADVANCES SHEEPISHLY TOWARDS THE RECTOR’S DESK.

DEPUTY: Rector, please forgive my intrusion.

RECTOR : Your expression and general demeanour don’t inspire me with confidence. I take it that I am not expected to be delighted by your forthcoming revelation?

DEPUTY: Well, Sir, regretfully, I have some… erm… grave news, Sir…

RECTOR: Out with it, Deputy!

DEPUTY: Unfortunately, I have it on good authority from the head boy; I’m afraid, Sir, that, in spite of all our best efforts, there have been subversive sounds heard in the night.

RECTOR: Subversive sounds? What sort of subversive sounds?

DEPUTY: They were described to me as, if you please, Sir.. (gulps) the faint whingeings of Fishjumpery…

Making Radio Waves

Interview with Richard Curtis and Bill Nighy, Sunday Business Post, 19th April 2009

If there’s one line of dialogue that defines the message of The Boat That Rocked, Richard Curtis’s new film about pirate radio on the waves, it comes from the disc-jockey character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman:

‘‘These are the best days of our lives.” Writer and director Curtis may have made his name with hit romantic comedies Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Notting Hill, but for his latest film he has turned to the subject he describes as his ‘‘first love” – pop music.

‘‘I wanted people to stop for a second and think how gorgeous it is to have music to provide soundtracks to times of your life,” Curtis says, relaxing into an armchair in his Dublin hotel suite.

‘‘I can tie down the years of my life [to music] – the Dylan years, the Cohen years, the Joni Mitchell years, the David Bowie years, the Madness years. Pop music has never let me go.”

Curtis and The Boat that Rocked star Bill Nighy have come to Dublin as part of a busy media tour to publicise the film, which travels back through time to 1967 and an era when more than half of Britain would tune in to pirate radio stations – some of which were based on boats – to listen to tunes which the BBC considered too subversive to play.

As many as 25 million daily listeners – including a youthful Curtis – were influenced by those DJs. ‘‘Pirate radio was like a sweet shop,” Curtis says. ‘‘You’d switch it on and hear songs you’d never heard before. It was very exciting.

‘‘Think what it would it be like if there were only two films showing in every cinema across the country, and then you heard that somewhere else there were 50 more films you could watch – that’s what it was like discovering pirate radio.”