THIS MUCH IS true
Spandau Ballet’s MARTIN AND GARY KEMP send themselves up in a spoof documentary
POP ICONS MARTIN and Gary Kemp have never taken themselves too seriously – even at the height of their 1980s fame, when their band Spandau Ballet had a string of top-10 hits, including True and Gold.
Now the brothers are sending themselves up by playing fictionalised versions of themselves in spoof documentary The Kemps: All True
– like a cross between This Is Spinal
Tap and the 2018 Bros documentary
After the Screaming Stops.
Cameras follow the Kemps while comedian Rhys Thomas interviews the famous brothers as they record their anniversary album, Spandau
Rekemped, and embark on a range of ludicrous business ventures.
COMEDY GOLD
‘I’d worked with Rhys a few years back on the brilliant [BBC4 spoof documentary] The Life of Rock with
Brian Pern, so I knew how great his work was,’ explains Martin.
‘What you see on screen are heightened versions of both of us. Watching Gary take the mickey out of himself was so nice – he made me laugh so much.’
The brothers are seen bickering over everything, including who came up with the name Spandau Ballet. Meanwhile, Gary makes a disastrous launch of his vegan meat substitute, Wonge, and Martin tries to drum up investors for a sci-fi film he’s written.
‘The show seems to suit that strange place Martin and I occupy of being actors as well as musicians, with a band story that goes from the sublime to the ridiculous,’ says Gary. ‘We also loved the idea of sticking a pin in the ego of our own celebrity.’
The top-notch cast includes Christopher Eccleston, playing himself, who has a role in Martin’s movie project, while Daniel Mays also appears as highwayman Dick Turpin in the film franchise.
Meanwhile, Foyle’s War’s Michael Kitchen is barely recognisable as the brothers’ old tour promoter Harvey Stickles, and Anna Maxwell Martin appears as Gary’s fictional wife Lorna.
FAMILY FEUDS
There’s also a role for
Benidorm’s Perry Benson, who plays Gary and Martin’s long-lost brother Ross Kemp (not that one!), who they get to work for them as their accountant and general dogsbody.
‘We’ve known Perry since we were kids at the Anna Scher Theatre school,’ says Martin. ‘But the rest of the cast were pulled together by Rhys – they were all huge fans of his work.’
‘It was a total joy to work with Martin again,’ adds Gary. ‘We both went into this head first – it felt totally mad at times, but we knew we had to commit to the idea 100% or it wouldn’t work.
‘There’s a lot of blurring between what is fact and what is fiction. At times on set, even I forgot what was real and what wasn’t.’