Details

Release year: 1989

Storyline

While his mining colleagues are on yet another strike, Bert Rigby decides to try his luck in show business.

Top credits

Directors

Carl Reiner

Writers

Carl Reiner

Cast

Robert Lindsay — Bert Rigby
Robbie Coltrane — Sid Trample
Cathryn Bradshaw — Laurel Pennington
Jackie Gayle — I.I. Perlestein

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Did you know

• Was booked for a week-long engagement at Dublin's Adelphi cinema in late 1989. However, after four days there were fewer than 20 paying customers, so the manager withdrew the film and let the theater go dark for the remaining three days, to save heating and projection costs.

• "Landed Gentry", the band who win the talent contest by singing about striking miners, are played by the Nottinghamshire pop-punk band Slaughterhouse 5.

• There is a scene on a bus in which Bert is "receiving unwanted attention" from a woman. Unable to take it anymore, he stands up and shouts, "Are we at Ilkeston yet?" This is a reference to Robert Lindsay's hometown in Derbyshire in the United Kingdom. The role of Bert Rigby was written for him, and the character's background mirrored his own. Originally he wanted a portion of the movie to be filmed in Ilkeston, but the producers thought that Ilkeston no longer looked "industrial enough" to match the character's background, so the bus scene is the only bit of Ilkeston that made it to the final product.