More about: Doc n Roll

I’ve lived in London for five years now, but I grew up in Manchester. I spent my adolescence playing in bands at venues like Night & Day Café and the Deaf Institute – and once or twice I even rocked up in St Ann’s Square and did a spot of busking, something that has always been a massive part of the city’s music culture. 

I could reel off a whole list of Manchester’s busking regulars, but none is perhaps as well known as the Piccadilly Rats (maybe only the Hoochie Coochie Mancunian comes close). The Rats stood on the corner next to a newsagents opposite Piccadilly Gardens for years; they were distinguished by the rubber rat mask worn by their drummer, the pound-shop-Rod-Stewart haircut of lead singer Gaz Stanley, and the irreverent antics of their two dancers, Ray Boddington and Tommy ‘Trouble’ Piggott. 

Nathan Cunningham’s film The Piccadilly Rats: Live in Moderation tells their story, and I managed to catch the London premiere at Doc ‘n’ Roll film festival at the end of last month. On the surface it’s a music documentary, but the story that unfolds is one of heartbreak, hardship, and community. 

The band’s founder Garry Stanley is a charismatic figure, and in many ways it’s his Tim-from-the-office looks to camera that hold the film together. In any other environment, he’d be the most eccentric person around, but standing next to wacky characters like Boddington and Piggott he’s left looking paradoxically sensible. At points, his role reminded me of Paul McCartney’s in the recent Beatles Get Back documentary – he’s an unlikely leader, constantly exasperated and kept going only by his unrelenting passion for the band. In the opening scene of the film, we find him waking up on his couch surrounded by empty cans of lager, late for the third time that week to his job as a litter picker. It’s impossible not to find him endearing. 

Dancers Piggott and Boddington both have existing reputations as local characters when they’re recruited to the Rats. Tommy ‘Trouble’ Piggott is a charming autistic pensioner who sidles up to the band one day and pretty much joins them by sheer force of will. Ray Boddington on the other hand – who is never seen without a pair of wraparound shades, a comically oversized plastic medallion, and the ugliest haircut you’ve ever seen – is already performing on Market Street when Stanley chances upon him. 

We watch the band go through setback after setback across the course of the film. Drummer Heath Dean keeps going missing for long periods, an ill-advised trip to London in the rain ends with them being sent away by the council, a day at the St George’s Day carnival parade is destroyed by torrential rainfall, and at the St Patrick’s Day parade, there’s panic when Piggott falls off the float and is badly injured. 

It’s Garry Stanley’s interactions with Piggott that ultimately left me feeling the most moved. In one especially touching scene, Stanley goes to see his friend in hospital after the St Patrick’s Day incident, and Piggott silently embraces him. I don’t think it’s too extreme to say that anybody not moved to tears by that moment in the movie should be put on some sort of list.

Narratively, the film does feel a little disjointed. Cunningham makes the wise decision to tie it all together with a retrospective interview with Stanley, which sort of acts like linking narration, but in places the story lacks shape. The decision to set the movie’s climax at a successful gig at Kendal Calling makes sense but the scene doesn’t really speak to what’s compelling about the Piccadilly Rats story, which at its heart feels less rags-to-riches and more rags-to-rags. In an epilogue we learn that Ray Boddington has sadly passed away having been hit by a tram in Manchester city centre on the way home from a gig. It’s a sobering moment, and leaves the end of the film feeling uncomfortably bittersweet. 

"As a story about friendship and resilience however, the film is no doubt a success..."

After the screening, Garry Stanley joined director Nathan Cunningham for a Q&A, and was still visibly shaken by his friend’s death. He was reticent when asked when he might reappear as a busker on the streets of Manchester again but was refreshingly open about his recent struggles with anxiety and depression. Drummer Heath Dean was also on the panel, and he was the person who appeared to have been the most positively affected by the Rats. Before the band, he was homeless and addicted to drugs. He’s now clean, and credits the group with getting him there. 

It might sound harsh to say it, but as a music documentary, The Piccadilly Rats: Live in Moderation comes out looking like something of a damning indictment of Manchester’s music scene. Oasis, the Smiths, and the Hacienda are all held up as paragons throughout, which gave me the same sense of cultural stagnancy I sometimes felt when living in the city. The Piccadilly Rats, as wonderful as they were, are relics from a bygone era. The scene where they play a clumsy version of ‘Wonderwall’ to a lukewarm reception in Leicester Square almost felt like a self-parodic commentary on Manchester’s fading cultural significance. 

As a story about friendship and resilience however, the film is no doubt a success. Its central characters are the kinds of everyday people too rarely given the opportunity to appear on the big screen. They’re effortlessly entertaining and bursting with punk spirit – and it’s for those reasons that they make me feel proud to be Mancunian. The less said about the music the better – but they could have told you that themselves. 

The film is available to stream for the until Monday 14th November.

Grab your copy of the Gigwise print magazine here.

More about: Doc n Roll