Very much the story of singer Ricard Jobson, this amiable portrait takes in tales of Sid Vicious and the pop culture hysteria when the genre exploded
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his affable documentary should perhaps have a different title; it would be more accurate to call it The Richard Jobson Story, consisting as it does entirely of Jobson – erstwhile frontman of the Scottish punk act Skids, TV presenter, film-maker and novelist – ruminating on these and other endeavours that have kept him busy since his teen years in the 1970s. In between the bits of archive footage, Jobson gets a haircut, tries on a leather jacket or two, and trundles around the stage in a sleeveless T-shirt reliving the glory days.
The way Jobson tells it, his and the band’s ascent to national prominence in the late 70s was bit of a miracle in itself: growing up in a bleak, postindustrial mining village outside Dunfermline, his first stroke of luck was bumping into Sid Vicious in Malcolm McLaren’s Sex shop on a trip down to London as a 15-year-old in 1976 to try to buy some leather trousers. Becoming a face on the early punk scene, Jobson’s second bit of luck was meeting fellow Dunfermline-ite Stuart Adamson, who asked him to join his nascent band after an audition at Cowdenbeath Workingmen’s Club. Jobson’s stories of Skids’ early days are pretty entertaining – most of them involving some kind of mass fight – as the band became part of the record-industry feeding frenzy after punk rock broke through in 1977.
