The Observer film critic’s first passion was music. In this extract from his new memoir he reveals why slapping the strings till his fingers bled was worth it
• Mark Kermode: ‘There’s magic in going onstage with a band’
Hello. My name is Mark Kermode. I play skiffle. And I am not ashamed.” According to the BBC’s website, that statement was one of “eight moments that defined the Folk awards 2017”. The glitzy ceremony had been staged at London’s Royal Albert Hall and featured performances by such notaries as Billy Bragg, Al Stewart, Ry Cooder and Shirley Collins. I knew Billy was a hardcore skiffle devotee, but I’d been more surprised to hear Al Stewart announce “I love skiffle!” while receiving his lifetime achievement award. Suddenly, it seemed, everyone was jumping on the skiffle bandwagon, although some of us had been aboard longer than others.
Like so many people, I started playing skiffle by accident. At the age of about seven or eight, long before I started trying to build my own electric guitar, my brother Jonny and I formed a skiffle band in our back garden in Finchley. Since Jonny is a couple of years younger than me, it’s probably fair to assume that the whole thing was my idea and he just got corralled into cooperating. But that’s not how I remember it. In my mind, we both simultaneously decided to stop messing around with bikes and Action Men and do something more expressive, more creative. Like forming a band.
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