Not exactly a boy band, more of a “buoy band”, 10 rugged Cornwall fishermen have launched a singing group career that has only just started with a one million pound recording contract.
It was a scene as taken from a sentimental movie: The Fisherman’s Friends were discovered following a pub gig by the same label that had Abba and U2 under contract, they were offered a record deal that would make any EU fishing subsidy seem like a spit in the Ocean, and their first album was released on April 26.
So, not surprisingly, a major British Film Studio, Ealing Studios – hosting blockbusters from the Alec Guiness/Peter Sellers era to “Star Wars – Episode 2”, “Sean Of The Dead” and “Bridget Jones 2” – has now announced plans to make a movie about them.
The working name for the so-called biopic is “No-Hopers, Jokers and Rogues’.
The Fisherman’s Friends, as of early May number seven on the British CD charts, all but one live within a kilometre of each other in Port Isaac on Cornwall’s north coast. Their combined age, as of early May, is 562.
They started singing together in 1992, and explain that the common thread throughout their material has become “increasingly nautical”. As part of the contract with Universal records, they will appear this summer at the big Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, sharing the stage with U2, Stevie Wonders and other more stellar attractions.
“We can’t wait to get our hooks into those festival audiences”, they told the BBC.
“10 blokes singing loudly and having fun is the embodiment of the festival experience.