FILM: Vinyl (15)

Sara Sugarman directs this feel-good comedy inspired by the true story Alarm front man Mike Peters, who stuck two fingers up to the ageist music industry in 2004 with a cunning hoax.

Johnny Jones (Phil Daniels) is the former vocalist of The Weapons Of Happiness, a 1980s punk rock outfit who once opened for the Buzzcocks but have now gone their separate ways.

A funeral reunites Johnny with his band mates, Griff (Chris Turner), Minto (Keith Allen) and Robbie (Perry Benson), and that night, they jam together for the first time in years, high on alcohol and grief.

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In the morning, Johnny listens to the song they recorded and is pleasantly surprised. He attempts to sell the track to the label, which once represented The Weapons Of Happiness, only to be told that the youth of today aren’t interested in middle-aged rock’n’roll has-beens.

So Johnny concocts an ingenious scam: he claims that the single is the debut release of an undiscovered Welsh band called The Single Shots.

He enlists the services of a busker called Drainpipe (Jamie Buckley) to front this bogus outfit then schools the talentless teenagers how to pass themselves off as bona fide rockers so that no one in the industry spots the deception.

Released: March 15 (UK, selected cinemas), 85 mins

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