Read Online It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive by Mark Kermode - Free Book Online

Anderton, a man who was famously on first-name terms with the Almighty. Unaffectionately nicknamed ‘God’s Copper’,Anderton made headlines at the height of the AIDS panic with comments about people ‘swirling about in a human cesspit of their own making’ – comments which helped turn him into a near-mythical bogeyman for those of a liberal persuasion. Indeed, anyone drifting even idly toward the radical left needed only to take a cursory glance at Anderton’s more outrageous outpourings to spur them on to man the barricades forthwith.
    In my case, the ‘barricades’ were a series of anti-deportation campaigns which centred around Viraj Mendis, a Sri Lankan activist whom the government were attempting to repatriate despite well-supported claims that he would be persecuted for his political beliefs (he was a passionate advocate of the Tamil Tigers) if sent back to his country of origin. Viraj had a lot of support in Manchester, where he had lived for several years, and his campaign to stay in the UK grew in size, importance and popularity throughout the eighties, becoming the focus of numerous similar anti-deportation battles. In December 1986, things cranked up a gear when Viraj went into sanctuary in Hulme’s Church of the Ascension after a deportation order was issued against him by the Home Office. He stayed there for 760 days, publicly defying the authorities who finally ordered the police to batter down the doors of the church and forcibly remove him in the early hours of 18 January 1989.
    During the years of Viraj’s ‘voluntary’ incarceration, his support team the Viraj Mendis Defence Campaign (VMDC, of which I was an active member) fought and won a number of other anti-deportation cases whilst simultaneouslymaintaining a twenty-four-hour vigil at the Church of the Ascension. Once a week, each of us would get to stay up all night in the dingy foyer of that church discussing the inevitable decline of capitalism (thus combining my two favourite obsessions – religion and politics) with Viraj’s comrades in the Revolutionary Communist Group (not to be confused with their sworn rivals the Revolutionary Communist Party , or indeed the Judean People’s Popular Front) and in my case writing rude and satirical songs about James Anderton.
    Here, for the record, are the lyrics of my best efforts in this area:
    James Anderton is big and strong
James Anderton is in this song
James Anderton, his friends call him ‘Jim’
How truly wonderful to be like him
Oh please don’t think I’m faking
But I’m swirling in a cesspit of my own making
For you
Do-be-do-be-do.
    You probably had to be there.
    One of the acceptable hobbies for a fledging comrade was the writing and publication of articles in newspapers, presumably because this would provide a future opportunity for ‘subverting the mass media from within’. By happy coincidence I had been making inroads into journalism ever since my arrival in Manchester thanks to the open-doorpolicy of Mancunion , an award-winning publication based on the second floor of the Students’ Union. As far as I could tell the paper was pretty much obliged to support any and all budding student journos by printing their submitted copy, no matter how poor – an opportunity which I exploited to the hilt. It was in the pages of Mancunion that I made my ‘proper’ newspaper debut, a review of the funk-punk band the Higsons (hark, is that the sound of the system collapsing?) at the Hacienda. As before, this was yet another attempt at sub- NME scribery which I spiced up with interview quotes obtained by cornering frontman Charlie Higson backstage armed with a pen, a pad of paper, and the scarily convincing declaration that I was ‘from the local music press, alright?’ By a peculiar twist of fate, Charlie Higson would later go on to present the short-lived Channel 4 film show Kiss Kiss Bang Bang , making him a far more famous and successful film critic than me and thus the subject of