‘People of Sheffield, are you ready to go mental?’ So begins Pulp’s emotional last-ever UK gig in their hometown. Ordinarily there’s something a bit undignified about a pop star who’s getting on a bit cavorting about on stage. Not Jarvis Cocker. His elbow-jiggling antics have always been silly and giddy but still, somehow, way beyond cool. Even now at 50, Jarvis is a man who remains head-on crushable while dry humping an amp like your geography teacher on the Bacardi Breezers.
Mixed in with the gig footage, director Florian Habicht interviews the band. Here’s Jarvis on fame: ‘Like a nut allergy, it didn’t agree with me.’ Habicht also wanders around Sheffield, popping into the fishmongers where Jarvis worked as a teenager and interviewing fans. A cross-dressing musician explains that he ran away from a psychiatric unit to listen to Jarvis’s Radio 6 ‘Sunday Service’ show. We also meet the city’s OAP Pulp fans. One old lady says she prefers them to Blur: ‘They’ve got better words.’ Bless.