Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

The ΜύstartsΜύnext FridayΜύand once again I have a growing list of films that I am definitely going to see. I make this list every year and end up being lucky to see one. Luck has nothing to do with it , of course. Its a scheduling matter. Work, family, amnesia. Trying to fit films into that combination defeats me every year. But I will definitely go to the new biopic of Ian Dury. (How do you pronounce biopic , by the way ? Bio-pic or bi-opic ? When I learn the correct pronounciation I may use it in conversation. Until then its confined to paper.) I know little about the film which is inevitably titled Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, the phrase which Dury came up with for his first solo single in 1977. I saw him in Derry in 1978 just as 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' was going to number one. It was St Columbs Hall, an old temperance hall owned by the Catholic Church. I'm sure Ian would have thought it the ideal place to hear someone singing 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll'. I used to think the hall had a sloping stage but Ian managed to negotiate it quite easily for a man still limping from childhood polio. Derry hasn't been lucky over the years in bands appearing here just as they reach their artistic heights. It was that night and I was lucky to be there.