Review
King Rocker (2020)
image: Fire Films
Director: Michael Cumming
Writer: Stewart Lee
Cast: Robert Lloyd, Stewart Lee, Frank Skinner, Kevin Eldon, Robin Askwith, Bridget Christie, Samira Ahmed, Nish Kumar, Seann Walsh, Nigel Slater
Run Time: 1h 30m
UK Rating: N/A
9/10
King Rocker begins with 41st Best Stand-Up Ever! comedian Stewart Lee introducing the audience to the history of Nicholas Monro’s unloved and neglected five and a half metre tall statue of King Kong. Part of the Sculpture for Public Spaces Scheme by the Arts Council of Great Britain, the massive fibre glass tribute to cinema’s great ape was installed in Manzoni Gardens in Birmingham’s Bull Ring for eight months in 1972. It was met with almost unanimous hostility. Archival footage shows bemused locals stating Kong has nothing to do with Birmingham and the city would be better served with a Churchill statue. So the city passed on the opportunity to buy the work even at a discounted rate. Still the behemoth sparked the imagination of the city’s young and thirty years later Lee (who fronts this documentary) was reminded of the statue seeing The Nightingales’ frontman Robert Lloyd performing. Gesticulating with his arms wide, you can see the resemblance. The film written by Lee and directed by Michael Cumming (best known for directing the brilliantly subversive Brass Eye television series) uses the parallels between the statue’s fate and Lloyd’s music career, a comparison that’s largely symbolic but surprisingly accurate.
image: Fire Films
The documentary details Robert Lloyd’s eclectic working life. As frontman of The Prefects and The Nightingales, his brief solo career, food writer, postman, video producer, record label owner and one time sitcom writer. A varied career that he treats with the same working class diligence and lack of pretension. Lee is shocked to find how organised Lloyd’s office space is, his lyrics carefully collated by year in folders next to his horse racing research (sports betting massively supplementing his income and could have been a full time career) Lloyd is tall and unassuming, nothing at all the ageing punk you might imagine. It's only when he talks that you hear the mischievous spark of a playful provocateur. In his Brummie accent, muted but more evident when he sings, there's none of the sneer associated with early punk. Instead he's self deprecating and engaging, an unreliable narrator of his own story. The film uses interview inserts to fact check his claims, creating a call and response dialogue with his anecdotes. Most of the film’s interviews take place in pubs and curry houses, half supped pints on the tables. Lloyd is a garrulous, larger than life character and you can imagine him as a pub raconteur holding court in a crowded bar (something that his son attests to).
image: Fire Films
Lee who dispenses his defiant stage persona is a great interviewer, warm and knowledgeable (as anyone who has heard him discuss music will attest). He’s able to coax information from Lloyd without needing to harangue him. You get the sense that Lloyd holds some bitterness in how his music has been largely ignored by the public and the way in which Virgin Records unceremoniously ditched him upon the indifferent response to his solo album, his one polished attempt at commercial success. He describes that failure as his lowest ebb, surprising given that he experienced homelessness as a young man but with a family to provide for you can see how much it weighed on him decades later. Lloyd is quick to dispose of maudlin reality, happy to segue with a joke or a laugh to brighter topics. The pair have a good rapport and talk like old friends, teasing and needling each other playfully. Lee is quick to express his admiration and respect for Lloyd’s work though, with the documentary being a clear attempt to expose The Nightgales’ music to a wider audience. The interviews are uniformly fantastic with informal chats with past and present band mates, friends and some surprising famous faces. Clearly Lloyd was on the periphery of stardom during the early years of his career, with photos with the Ramones and a tour supporting The Clash. There’s a distinct lack of the bitter acrimony that punctuates many music documentaries (perhaps the lack of financial success means that isn’t anything to squabble over) and the talking heads discuss Lloyd fondly.
There’ll be times that you wish a topic was explored further but the film is content to paint in broad strokes knowing there’s too much information to cram into one film. It moves with a brisk pace, interspersing Lloyd’s stories with a scrappy animation of his exploits as performed by Munro’s King Kong statue. It helps to break the flow of the static conversations and adds to the idea of Lloyd as a mythic figure. It’s a warm and genuinely heartfelt documentary, free from the ironic detachment that Lee is usually known for. Lloyd is the focus, his art and under celebrated career the film touches upon the commercial life of art and a brief social history of punk in Birmingham. King Rocker is a brilliantly funny, thoroughly enjoyable documentary, even if you have no interest in the subject.
Watched on Sky Movies
Published 25th August 2026