Frank: The True Story that Inspired the Movie Read Online Free

no doubt that, somehow, Caroline Aherne would have made it to the top. It just so happened that she did it with a Frank character’s
name.’
    The band’s guitarist Patrick Gallagher added to Middles: ‘It wasn’t Caroline’s fault. Chris was totally out of control. Whereas, say, Caroline Aherne had a single vision
and could just pursue that, Chris might have a fantastic idea, spend some time gaining interest and developing it and then, just as the point where it might actually get somewhere, he would spin
off onto something completely different. That’s OK for a while but it tended to piss people off because they never knew where they stood.’
    Chris never accused Caroline of plagiarism, not even in private. The worst I ever heard him say was that maybe she could have given Frank some recognition in interviews. By then she was forever
on the front pages of the British tabloids, under headlines like:
    A very fragile superstar
    When she surveys the lights of London’s West End from her new £800,000 penthouse flat off Carnaby Street, Caroline Aherne ought to feel as if she really has reached
the top. The daughter of Irish immigrants Bert and Maureen, she grew up on a council estate in Wythenshawe, Manchester, and her first job was answering the phones at the BBC offices in
Manchester.
    Today, she is acknowledged as an original and immensely talented writer and actress. She is now a wealthy young woman, garlanded with awards and hailed as a comic genius.
    She has, of course, had her problems. A broken marriage, a drink problem and a string of failed romances drove her to a suicide bid, intensive therapy, and eventually escape to Australia.
    It is a year since she left Britain, saying that she no longer wanted to be famous. ‘I’ve played the fame game long enough and I just want to disappear,’ she said.
    Alison Boshoff,
Daily Mail
     
    It was hard not to feel jealous. And it wasn’t only her. Suddenly everyone around us was becoming famous. My next-door neighbour Mani had a band. They became The Stone Roses. Our driver
Chris Evans left us to try and make it in radio. By 2000 he was earning £35.5 million in a year, making him Britain’s highest-paid entertainer (above Lennox Lewis at second and Elton
John at third). Edward Barton, who I’d last seen staring at his scattered belongings in Hulme in the middle of the night, wrote the song ‘It’s A Fine Day’. It was covered by
the group Opus III, became a huge hit, and was sampled by Kylie Minogue in her song ‘Confide in Me’. And we kept crisscrossing the country, playing to 1,000 people, sometimes 750,
sometimes 500. Still, there were happy times. Like when we played in London and on the way to the venue our driver said the funniest thing I’d ever heard anyone say. He pulled the van up on
Edgware Road and wound down the window.
    ‘Excuse me?’ he said to a passer-by.
    ‘Yes?’ the man said.
    ‘Is this London?’
    There was a silence.
    ‘Yes,’ said the passer-by.
    ‘Well where do you want this wood?’ he said.
    ***
    There is always a moment failure begins. A single decision that starts everything lumbering down the wrong path, speeding up, careering wildly, before lurching to a terrible
stop in a place where nobody is interested in hearing your songs any more. With Frank I can pinpoint the exact moment failure began.
    ‘Chris wants to have a rehearsal,’ Mike told me over the phone one day.
    There was a silence. ‘Chris wants a
rehearsal
?’ I said.
    ‘Yes,’ Mike said, after a moment.
    ‘Why would Chris want to
rehearse
?’ I said.
    ‘To take things up a level,’ Mike said.
    ‘Take things
up
a level?’ I said. I paused. ‘
Where
are we going to rehearse?’
    ‘At Chris’s house,’ said Mike.
    Mike was trying to sound enthusiastic. But I think he was worried too.
    Chris’s house was in a normal, nice, modern cul-de-sac a long walk from Altrincham station. His children were playing in the street outside. His wife,