UK Crowd Reports


So how many were in the audience for your screening, and how did they react?

I arrived a couple of minutes into the film, so it was pitch black as I looked for a seat. When the lights went up at the end, I was suprised to discover that there were only 5 of us there. Defintley the smallest crowd for a film on opening day I've seen for a while!

Anywhoo, enjoyed the film, and the rest of the small crowd seemed to as well, judging by the laughs coming from them in the humorous moments.

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Most seemed to like it. It was a large-screen cinema in Haymarket, London and I think it was half-full. The film doesn't make you feel sympathy for Paul Raymond, especially at the way he treated his eldest son, whatever liking you had for the man, went at the end. My friend didn't like one aspect of it and I have to agree - that is the use of guest appearances by TV celebs like Fry, Walliams and Lucas, amongst others, made it feel more like a BBC TV movie, than something made for the cinema.
Overall it was a good film and the use of Black & White in the early part of the 60's really made London look of that period. The Soundtrack was good too.

I arrived a couple of minutes into the film, so it was pitch black as I looked for a seat.

Oh dear, you missed the rather hot opening credits!

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'Directed by Michael Winterbottom' that's when I arrived, so what did I miss? :p

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'Directed by Michael Winterbottom' that's when I arrived, so what did I miss? :p

70's-style pics of female cast members inspired by Paul Raymond's publications. Tamsin Egerton as Fiona Richmond sticking her butt out. I'm not sure if this was a recreation of real pics, or just meant to look so.

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4 people including me on the first Monday afternoon screening. One more than the total watching the late afternoon screening of Bernie.

Mind you the afternoon preview of Evil Dead only at 6 people in. Two of those were pensioners.

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Watched an afternoon screening of it yesterday, which turned out to be one of the most memorable cinema going experiences I’ve had in living memory.

I’d say in total there was around 16 people in the audience, which isn’t bad for a 1.10pm afternoon screening on a boiling hot day in Manchester. I did worry that at one point me and my friend would be the only people in the cinema, which is always an eerie experience albeit a very rare one (the last time it happened to me was a showing of the Bottom movie ‘Guest House Paradiso’) but at the last minute others starting rolling in.

First in after us were a young Muslim couple, who left after the opening credits, not even making it to the first scene in the film. I couldn’t work out if their leaving was down to them going into the film in error, and that they meant to see a different film at the cinema, or whether they took exception to the nudity contained in the opening credits, but either way it was a rather costly mistake, considering that it is now £7.80 for a cinema ticket in Manchester these days. The row in front of where we were sat was occupied by a family which included an elderly man who possibly had learning difficulties, and who had some kind of psychotic episode the moment David Walliams appeared onscreen.

This however pales in comparison to the antics of the elderly people on the front row, in particular one lively woman in a wheelchair whose ‘audience participation’ brought comedy to moments in the film weren’t intended to be particularly funny and instantly rendered several nothing-special scenes as completely unforgettable. A scene in which someone rang Paul Raymond’s doorbell prompted her to shout out in an alarmed tone “who was that”, to which a rather weary and embarrassed voice (possibly belonging to her spouse) replied “it’s a doorbell” as the rest of the audience totally cracked up from laughing. She also must have felt she could add to the film’s soundtrack, as the scene in which Fiona Richmond first meets Raymond, and he reveals his real name, was accompanied by her singing “The Long and Winding Road”, stopping mid-sentence when the Richmond character began stripping off. Another scene provoked the incomprehensible request of “cake, I want cake, anybody got any cake” a request seemingly aimed at Steve Coogan’s image onscreen.

Despite or perhaps because of these outbursts I do highly recommend the film, ignore everything that was said about it by those awful, humourless bores on The Review Show. The film itself plus the walkouts and freak outs it provoked all added up to a never boring afternoon, even if I know that for me future viewings of the film, or anything to do with Paul Raymond, will now be inseparable from the memory of somebody shouting “cake, I want cake” in a cinema. If the recording of film screenings in cinemas were legal, then this is one that really should have been preserved for posterity.

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incomprehensible request of “cake, I want cake, anybody got any cake”


Cake is no laughing matter; known on the street as "loonytoad quack", "Joss Ackland's spunky backpack"

"One young kiddie on Cake cried all the water out of his body. Just imagine how his mother felt. It's a *beep* disgrace"

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I was once a cake addict :-( I was on four slices a day at the height of my addiction :-(

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Laughed my head off at that!

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Gavcrimson, that's the funniest post i've read in a very long time. Thanks for cheering me up!

"Perhaps he's wondering why someone would SHOOT a man before throwing him out of a plane..."

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I loved the movie, personally. I think anything that isn't Fast and Furious or by Disney Pixar, won't ever do particularly well in British cinemas.

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