5872/18892
Perfect end to Boxing Day as we decided to watch the Bros documentary
“After the Screaming Stops” on iPlayer. I had heard some good reports of the programme, but it exceeded expectations. It was hilarious, poignant especially for someone who has been in a professional partnership and experienced the kinds of ridiculous arguments that stress and rivalry can create - though admittedly the twin relationship adds a new dimension to that. I laughed, I winced, I didn’t cry (though there were moments where you might) and I thought about my own moments of arrogance and pettiness and stupidity and thanked God that none of them were as bad as this! We’re going to watch it again tomorrow because we missed so much in the laughter and it was hard to process, but ultimately you came out somehow loving these men a little bit more than you did at the beginning. And hats off to them for allowing this to go out in this form (though there’s a possibility they didn’t see why it was funny). Or a possibility that they are a lot cleverer than they appear and know that this will be a good thing for them.
I have crossed paths with Bros, though I don’t really remember too much about it. They attended Fairlands Middle School in Cheddar for a year (before moving back to London) and excitingly the opening titles use photos of them taken at the school in the uniform. I don’t remember them, as they were a year or two below me, but have oft repeated the legends and possible lies that they beat up my friend Chris Scard and both (separately) "got off” with Fairlands Middle School beauty Bridget Sealey ( a few years later on a school trip to France I made it clear that I was infatuated with her - she found my poems and songs about her funny rather than terrifying, but was correctly not interested in me).
The band they formed became big when I was at University and, of course, were seen as naff by my contemporaries and I and we made jokes about them. I made a little mileage from the Cheddar connection in our radio and TV comedy too. A decade or so later I would appear on a radio show with Al Murray and one of the twins. But I don’t remember much about it or indeed which one it was now.
They seemed like the flash in the pan pop stars that Terry Wogan implies they will be in his interview with them (and the quote from him is the title of the doc).
Both brothers had to go to America to escape the image and the process that had gobbled them up and then spat them out when they were no longer as profitable, but they’d been driven apart by their own insecurities too.
Matt appears to be a big success in Las Vegas, whereas Luke became an actor and has done reasonably well, but probably not as well as his brother, who he already felt inferior to in looks and star power. In another band the drummer may have accepted this disparity, but of course, they are brothers and thus need to feel to be on a par.
It’s fair to say that the seriousness with which they both take themselves is part of the comedy. Other bands that have reunited for a nostalgia tour are perhaps more prepared to wink at the naffness, but these two both admirably and stupidly are not approaching it with humour. I do like them for that. You have to take your job seriously however stupid it is. Matt does not enjoy being made fun of, even lightly by his own brother and Luke is in the difficult position of coming back to a band after a quarter of a century away from music, trying to hold his own with his brother and the other professional musicians, needing to have an equality with his twin that he possibly realises he doesn’t deserve to have. They are childish and resentful of each other, just like all family are when they get together - there’s so much playing out here. And like I say, a lot of it was personally familiar.
And Matt wants to show himself to be a thoughtful intellectual, but is over stretching and out-Spinal Tapping Spinal Tap with some wonderful pronouncements and missteps.
And fuck you Terry Wogan, it’s 2018 and they play to a packed O2 of people who are not taking themselves as seriously as the band are, but who would not enjoy the show anywhere near as much if the boys weren’t taking it this seriously.
The whole thing walks the line perfectly and I heartily recommend it.
