ENGLAND IS MINE - MORRISSEY BIOPIC

Hands up if you think Morrissey is a lyrical genius!

Hands up if you think he’s a bit of a twat?

Hands up if you think he is both!

It can’t just be me.

I used to loathe The Smiths. Within seconds of hearing them my stomach would twist and my stress levels would rise. They just offended me on a primal level.

And then one day when one of their songs was playing in the background I had to admit to myself that there was nothing wrong with them.

In fact they were very good.

Better than good.

I just had a chip on my shoulder about their fans.

Not even all of them as how could I know all of them.

I just had a particular dislike for the majority that I did know.

It was a class issue. There’s no doubt about that, and I wore those issues on my sleeve a bit too blatantly.

At the time there was a very obvious divide between the unemployed/working classes and the middle classes that seemed to be doing just fine.

Thatcher was kicking at our fingers as we tried to maintain a grip on the bottom rung, and then seemingly rubbing our faces in it was these perceived affluent types who to a man, and woman, was a Smiths fan.

That was my limited experience of the world I existed in. The class war of them and us was a tactile reality and I was allowing my rage at circumstances beyond my control to cloud my judgement.

I couldn’t hear The Smiths without it triggering something that I wouldn’t have admitted existed within me.

I was drawing parallels where none existed.

I was the stereotypical angry young man with my finger hovering over a self destruct button.

Thankfully rationality comes with maturity, or it should do.

I can now clearly see how misplaced my loathing was, and not just for the band, but for the people who I had cast as villains in a story that neither they nor I had penned.

Since then it is a regret that I never seen the Smiths, but I do have a few Morrissey gigs under my belt.

All extremely enjoyable affairs it has to be said.

I have become a bit of an aficionado if truth be told, but even with this ongoing love affair with the music of The Smiths and Morrissey, I just can’t get on board with Morrissey and his click bait persona.

He bores me with his Katie Hopkins styled need to be a contrarian.

I have similar feelings about John Lydon.

Both Lydon and Morrissey appear to have lost themselves in artistic creations and off stage and outside of the studio they offer little more than contentious sound-bites to attract the media spotlight.

Ever get the feeling you have been cheated works on so many levels when they open their mouths and troll the world.

But what is the point of all this rambling about my love/hate relationship with Steven Patrick Morrissey?

Well it’s all just the lead in to mentioning the forthcoming biopic England is Mine.

Thankfully it focuses on his early years when he was just an apprentice contrarian so I can take some pleasure in knowing that when I go to see it that it probably isn’t going to be a chunk of my day spent listening to Jack Lowden berate everyone that has ever walked past a Burger King as being complicit in an act of genocide.

Well it better bloody well not be.

If it is then I will have to write a very strongly worded review about it.

If it is just over an hour and a half of the actor portraying Morrissey declaring his undying love for The New York Dolls that will of course be totally acceptable to me.

Now here's the trailer.