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Lionel Bart was an exuberant showman with a penchant for partying. He had a compulsion to please people and an ignorance of all things financial, which was to prove his downfall. But before all that dreariness – not a disposition Bart was prone to – this lively hour-long documentary tackles the late composer’s triumphs.
Familiar faces such as Barbara Windsor, Ray Davies and Marty Wilde talk animatedly between clips of Bart’s rock ’n’ roll songs (written for Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele and Billy Fury, to name but a few) and musicals (namely ‘Oliver’, of course). Plus, snapshots of London’s past, imbued with quaint nostalgia, are laid on thickly. As it happens, this isn’t just a story about a big personality who made musicals, it’s about a scene in which everything was larger-than-life.