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“professional” songs. The Shaggs convince me that they’re the real thing when they sing.’ The jazz composer
Carla Bley said, ‘They bring my mind to a complete halt.’ Nothing much happened after that. The album sold pretty well. They performed one or two shows. Susan Orlean wrote about them
for the
New Yorker
. A stage musical –
Philosophy of the World
– was written and performed in New York and Los Angeles. Their film rights were bought, although no film has
yet been made. I turned my meeting with them into a documentary for BBC Radio Four. But, basically, it was a just flurry and everything went back to normal for Dot and Betty.
    ‘When did you first listen to
Philosophy of the World
and think, “This is actually quite good?” ’ I asked Betty towards the end of my day with them.
    She looked at me and hesitated. ‘I still don’t think it’s good,’ she said.
    No trace of The Shaggs’ story made it to our Frank film, but something did: for all our mythologizing, the margins can be painful and some people are there because they
have no choice.
    ***
    A week after I returned from Fremont, I saw Frank Sidebottom’s name trending on Twitter. I’d spent a couple of years living with the words Frank Sidebottom every
day, so this didn’t seem at all odd. It was just his name on a screen like every day. I clicked on the link and it said ‘Frank Sidebottom dead’. I wondered why Chris had decided
to kill off Frank and why Twitter cared enough to make it a trending topic. So I clicked on another link:
    Stars lead tributes as Frank Sidebottom comic dies at 54
    Chris Sievey, famous as his alter ego Frank Sidebottom, was found collapsed at his home in Hale early yesterday. It is understood that his girlfriend called an ambulance and he
was taken to Wythenshawe Hospital, where his death was confirmed.
    Manchester Evening News , 22 June 2010
     
    When I’d told Chris at our last meeting in Kentish Town how thin he looked and he shrugged and said it was a mystery and he seemed pleased – he didn’t know it then, but it had
been throat cancer.
    Frank Sidebottom comic faces pauper’s funeral
    The comic genius behind Mancunian legend Frank Sidebottom is facing a pauper’s funeral after dying virtually penniless. Chris Sievey had no assets and little money in the
bank, his family have revealed.
    Manchester Evening News , 23 June 2010
     
    A pauper’s funeral? What did that involve? A journey back in time two hundred years? Later, Chris’s son Sterling told me that the hospital bereavement officer had described a
pauper’s funeral to him as ‘not as bad as it sounded. There’d be a coffin but it wouldn’t be coffin shaped. It would be more like a rectangular box. Like a cargo crate or
something.’
    ‘What about a service?’ I asked Sterling.
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘No real service. And there wouldn’t have been a gravestone.’
    I sent out a single tweet, saying that for a few thousand pounds Chris could be spared a pauper’s funeral. Within an hour 554 people had donated £6,950.03. An hour
later it was 1,108 donors and £14,018.90. By the end of the day it was 1,632 donors raising a total of £21,631.55. One blogger wrote of the donors: ‘I found the speed of events
breathtaking, and genuinely inspiring that so many people could reach into their pockets in tribute to a man who many won’t have met, spoken to, or even seen his face. It’s nice to know
there are so many kind-hearted people out there & wonderful to see another example of how social networks can be used in a positive, inspirational way.’
    The money we raised that day was more than enough to bury and exhume and rebury Chris half a dozen times. The donations never stopped. We had to stop them. People still wanted to give but there
was nothing to give for.
    A Timperley village councillor, Neil Taylor, started his own campaign to raise money for a memorial statue – Frank cast in bronze. He sent me photographs of its