Fisherman’s Friends feel-good film a hit in troubled times
Written by News on 03/04/2019
A group of Cornish shanty-singers say they are planning to tour Australia following the success of a movie portraying their rise to fame.
The Fisherman’s Friends film – released last month – tells the story of a group of fishermen and workers from the village of Port Isaac who signed a million pound record deal 10 years ago.
Their success led to a top 10 album and performances in front of the Queen and on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury.
The film is expected to gross around £5m by this week.
One of the group’s singers, Jon Cleave, told Sky News how it all started, a decade ago: “It’s been a long old voyage. It’s been good fun though, we’ve had some terrific times, all very unexpected.
“When we first got spotted and discovered, even though we weren’t lost, it was a bit of an odd moment. We were asked if we’d like to make a record and we sort of reluctantly said ‘alright then’ and it all went on from there.
“In the next couple of years we were on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury and went on and did all these other things…it’s been amazing.”
Despite the group’s success all the men have kept their day jobs – from fishermen to builders.
Jeremy Brown says maintaining a connection to the village of Port Isaac is crucial: “None of us wanted to escape our jobs or Port Isaac and the first tour they organised was 21 dates and we just looked at each other and thought ‘we don’t want to be away for 21 nights!’.
“So we only do three or four days at a time and then we come back to Port Isaac and that suits us really well.”
The group say the film’s release is timely. Singer Toby Lobb says the continuing uncertainty surrounding leaving the EU means this feel-good movie is providing an escape from Brexit.
“I think the big thing that has come through is the community feel and that’s kind of something, I guess at the minute missing quite a lot in this country so it’s nice really to be associated with something that is giving people a bit of joy at the minute when everything is a bit rubbish.”
A decade of success, now on the silver screen. So what’s next?
“We may well go to Australia by the sounds of it which would be nice,” says Jeremy Brown.
“We quite fancy that…a little winter tour to Australia wouldn’t go a miss – summer time out there, we’ll just see where it leads.”
The group are set to perform at Cornwall’s Minack Theatre in May before shows in London, Cardiff and Manchester later this year.
(c) Sky News 2019: Fisherman’s Friends feel-good film a hit in troubled times
