User reviews

This is the slightly disappointing follow-up to the money-making CONFESSIONS OF A WINDOW CLEANER. POP PERFORMER tries to emulate the success and formula of that first film, but something about the set-up just doesn't ring true. These films work when they follow a straight forward, episodic format and this one is a satire of the pop scene, following the misadventures of a band whose music is appalling. There's no real reason for the characters to be involved in this stuff and it doesn't fit together too well, but it's still nice to see British actors working hard amidst all the boobs and bums.

There's less of the sex element here, although a handful of set pieces make sure it's still in your face! Robin Askwith once again beds a string of beautiful women in scenes that are generally played for laughs, but these seem to have been tacked-on rather than making up the central plot. One encounter in a music shop to the strains of Spike Milligan's 'Ning Nang Nong' is classic stuff. Instead of sex, the focus is on the accident-prone Askwith, with the laugher factor turned up so high that this resembles an episode of SOME MOTHERS DO 'AVE 'EM!

Still, there's something about watching the dated hijinks – especially in terms of the music – that make watching this film a lot of fun, and it's so light-hearted as to be completely inoffensive. Along with a string of beautiful, completely naked women (including TV star Jill Gascoine), there are turns from Benny Hill regular Bob Todd as a grumpy old boy; DAD'S ARMY's Bill Pertwee as a javelin-wielding cuckold; his co-star Ian Lavender as a randy copper; plus good turns for the regular Bill Maynard and Doris Hare, playing Askwith's mother and replacing the original actress. Director Norman Cohen takes over from the first film's Val Guest and he proves more than able to deliver a funny, fast-paced and chuckle-inducing romp.

Confessions of a Pop Performer, the second film to star Robin Askwith as randy, accident prone fanny-magnet Timmy Lea, sees our clumsy hero trying to find fame and fortune as the drummer for up and coming band 'Kipper'.

Timmy's equally libidinous brother-in-law Sid (Anthony Booth) acts as manager for the group, successfully exploiting his showbiz contacts—including the sexy wife of a music mogul—and it's not long before Timmy is being mobbed by gorgeous groupies and banging much more than his drum kit!

Offering saucy soft-core sex (including frequent, full-frontal, female nudity) and smutty seaside humour, the Confessions series is aimed squarely at those who enjoy their comedy lewd, crude, and unsophisticated, but in an effort to be more outrageous than the first film, Pop Performer takes the crassness and stupidity a little too far and loses a fair amount of the original's charm in the process.

The basic plot is rather hard to swallow (Timmy's drumming skills are non-existent), the tried and tested 'Timmy meets a nice girl' subplot is used once again but goes nowhere, and whilst the first film did at least attempt to throw in some genuinely well written jokes and inventive innuendo along with the slapstick comedy and jiggery-pokery, Pop Performer doesn't try very hard in this department: the humour in this sequel gives new meaning to the word 'lowbrow' and the result just isn't very funny.

Still, even though the format is already beginning to look tired, and the laughs are few and far between, this chapter does deliver the goods when it comes to nudity, and fans of the female form will have much to enjoy: a sexy fan mistakes Timmy for Mick Jagger and tries to seduce him; a kinky S&M swinger gets nekkid at a party; Timmy has it off with a tasty record shop salesgirl; TV star Jill Gascoine gets the not-so-gentle touch from Anthony Booth; and curvy Carry On girl Diane Langton appears as one half of a singing act called The Climax Sisters.

Other familiar faces also appearing, but keeping their clothes on, include Dads Army stars Ian Lavender and Bill Pertwee, husky redhead Rula Lenska, DJ David 'Diddy' Hamilton, and Hi-De-Hi's Linda Regan.

Robin Askwith was one of the most popular actors of the British sex comedy arc of the 70's and 80's, and there were four "Confessions" films. This one is about window cleaners (Robin and Anthony Booth) who stumble upon a band called "Kipper". Anthony's character Sid ends up managing the band, while Robin's character Timothy Lea (no pun intended, I'm sure!) ends up being the drummer. A clean comedy could have been light hearted fun, but this film is full of nudity and general mayhem. The dialouge is generally flat also. The very pretty Carol Hawkins is wasted here. I wouldn't call it an abomination, but there is a lot of sleazy stuff going on (I felt bad for the mom who discovers her daughter in the van with the band-surely the girl could have done better). This is recommended for fans of the genre mostly, and there is a 4 disc box of all of the Confessions films. Casual watchers beware.

Why people insist on being so "holier than thou" about this genre escapes me. It's good escapist fun. Askwith and Booth are having a bit of fun with the girls and scoring a lot of laughs in the process. From an age of more innocent sensibilities, these films rank as some of the funniest ever made, alongside Carry On, Benny Hill, Are You Being Served etc., etc. And the girls!!!! WOW!

Stop analysing it and just enjoy! In the meantime, if anyone would like to re- open the series with "Confessions of a film reviewer", I'd love Askwith's role!!

This can be summed up in three words: It's not funny.

The first of this series, WINDOW CLEANER was pretty atrocious but had a sort of cheeky originality to it. If you could barely tolerate that first one, avoid this, somehow they made it ten times worse. Whereas the first one was directed by Val Guest, someone who, having been involved with comedy from the days of Will Hay at least knew what comedy was. This one wasn't only not directed by him but seemingly not directed at all.

It is just staggeringly unfunny. Gormless Robin Askwith unconvincingly tripping up and dropping things does not constitute comedy. Slapstick, which is what I think this tries to convey requires acting not just messing about. Comedy requires either jokes, humour, amusing characters and a script, this drivel doesn't even have a story which can hold your attention for more than a couple of minutes. How it compensates for being extraordinarily boring is to have lots of naked ladies usually inexplicably cavorting with Robin Askwith. Amazingly the producers have managed to do the impossible: take a dozen stark naked attractive young ladies and make the most unsexy, unerotic and un-titillating film you're ever likely to see - and I'm including OPPENHEIMER in that. Without getting to know who they are first, however attractive they are, these girls you just come onto the screen, take off their clothes and ...come on the screen is not sexy. This feels as though it was made by a group of thirteen year old boys who had only just discovered that girls had strange wobbly bits that they didn't. The producers would probably argue that the tiresome inclusion of the wobbly bits wasn't meant to be sexy, it was meant to be funny. Well, it's not - for all their flaws, nudity in the CARRY ON FILMS was used for comedic effect.

It annoys me that some people describe these CONFESSIONS OF films as raunchier versions of the CARRY ON films. Although the CARRY ON films became tacky towards the end at least they were still sort of funny. They were proper films featuring professional comedy actors and were written by comedy scriptwriters. This waste of 8,000 feet of celluloid should not even be mentioned in the same breath as the CARRY ON films, which is saying something since a lot of them were dreadful.

And as for that so-called band - what the hell are they supposed to be doing? That's insulting to musicians.

Some films are deliberately downbeat and depressing; this film achieves that by default. The mid seventies were a high point for British TV - The Sweeney, Fawlty Towers, Rising Damp, Morecambe and Wise, Are you Being Served and many others; in all other ways British culture was at a low point. This film more than demonstrates that. Glam Rock was over, Punk hadn't started. There were two choices, Bay City Rollers for the kids, or bloated (if you'll pardon the pun) prog rock and heavy metal for the adults. Really not a good time for cinema to make a sexploitation comedy concerning pop music then! In fact as welcome as wearing a West Ham shirt at Millwall was at that time.

A sex comedy that is neither sexy nor funny, and these days you won't even be able to go to a Berni Inn in your Austin Maxi to refresh your jaded palate after watching.

But I have to agree - the appearance of Liam Gallagher's doppleganger provides a jaw dropping moment!

Timothy Lea (Robin Askwith) and his brother-in-law Sidney (Antony Booth) decide to ditch their window cleaning business to back a pop group named Kipper. Naturally, this results in lots of wacky hijinx and a bevvy of naked ladies. Adapted from a series of books by Christopher Wood, this was the second in a series of four sex farce films (preceded by Confessions of a Window Cleaner in 1974 and followed by Cpnfessions of a Driving Instructor in 1976 and Confessions from a Holiday Camp in 1977). This was my first exposure to this genre of British film and might be my last. I'd previously seen Askwith - who looks like Mick Jagger's handsomer brother - in a bunch of early '70s Brit horror films where he is killed. No such luck here. To give you how "zany" this film is, in the first ten minutes we get Askwith in his underwear being chased by a jealous husband with a javelin (done in sped up Benny Hill style), two beers spilled on people, Sidney being sprayed in the face with a fountain pen, another jealous husband getting swacked in the groin by his suspenders and Askwith hanging nude out of a window. I took it all in with a stiff upper lip, although I will admit there is one gag that made me laugh. Kipper is playing for Queen Elizabeth and the Lea family gets all dressed up to be around royalty. The father is rushing them as they'll be late and then they all walk into their living room to watch it on TV. Yeah, that's all I got. I'm sure due to the rampant nudity (if you set a timer, I'd bet it surfaces every seven minutes) they were childhood faves of kids growing up in the UK. Would love to hear about the formative experiences of experiencing these.

I'm a Confessions lover, yes. This second installment has just what you expect: Many Saucy hotties exposing their goods, and much laughter intermittently, courtesy of the bumbling Timmy Lea, that our unexceptional Askwith, plays it down to the T. He was born for this role. That's it. From the very start, he gets himself in strife, where as a window cleaner, he is doing a married woman, where husband comes home, and you can guess what happens. Finding a new career path, him and his enterprising brother in law, Sid (the much charming Booth) come across a fake rock band, and sigh em' up, Sid, the manager, Askwith, the promoter. Check out the lead's frizzy hair, the in thing those days. Hey all you need is that get up, and someone else's deafening singing voice, playing in the background on tape, and you've got one sweet set up. Though really, we wanna see what chaos our clumsy klutz, Askwith, will cause next, and like Alvin Purple, here's another enigma, to why hotties fall at his feet. He is Mick Jaggerish looking, one young, extra hot hottie/groupie, believing he is Mick Jagger. These two wind up in trouble, while horsieng around, one could say. Even if you're from a rock band, you'll laugh and identify, with this lightweight adult romp. Two of my favorite scenes are humping ones, that steal the movie. Too I guess it's kind of sexy to see drummer, Askwith, wearing just a dress, and the wheels are turning in your head to where his normal attire went. I loved the band's name. Kind of fishy. What I love too or respect about these Confessions films, are family time, shed, where Askwith's father Bill Maynard is classic as the grumpy hoarder. I can identify very much with these characters and the others of the Lea household. If nudity's your thing and you like laughs, you'll like this adult frolic caper, where if a Confessions fan, that is advantageous. Much an improvement on the first weak outing.

Read the broad section of reviews, you should get the picture. One of a Confessions series, opinions differ about best, worst, etc, from memory Driving Instructor wasn't bad (had a vague story), and similar with Holiday Camp? It was after all aimed at Friday and Sat night lads who'd been in the pub, and for whom tits and female pubic hair were quite a novelty. Don't expect Hamlet!

This one has a set of reliable English acting talent doing their best with a pretty feeble script, and a director who spent much of his time looking at job ads?

But the girls are lovely, Jill Gascoine who went on to better things shows off her body - hopefully well paid -- as does Carol Hawkins. The funniest scenes are arguably with old pro Bill Maynard, and in the 'Royal Box' with a hint of ER2, the Duke of Ed, and a Corgi!

The Carry On films were generally much funnier though.

One of those films I've had on a pile for ages, and got round to watching tonight.

The most positive thing I can say about it is it's nice to see 70's English shops and fashion.

Unfortunately, the films story and dialogue is poor, and worst of all for a comedy, it's just not funny for most of the time, and there's a lot of padding . It's not the actors at fault, they do the best they can with what's given to them, but it's a poor script that fails to raise many laughs. It has a few moments, but they're few and far between.

The band aren't really believable either, the music they play is no particular genre.

I'm surprised at how raunchy it is for the time, lots of flesh and hair on display, and I guess that's why it was popular.

Disappointing.

I saw this 1975 British comedy classic the first time in 1982 on cable. I loved it. I've seen all the "Confessions" and this one I think is the best. I see that it is no longer available as well as the others. That is too bad. I searched high and low to get it on VHS and I finally got it. Simple story of Timmy Lea, an accident-proned blunderer and his brother-in law Sid Nogget a get-rich-quick schemer decide to manage a local pop band and try to get them off the ground. Of course Timmy runs in to his share of promiscuous women in the process. Very funny British humor.

Sex-comedy about a 15 minute pop wonder.

There has never been a great film about the groupie scene and this is a shame. Indeed such movies are so short on the ground this has to have some interest for this fact alone. Despite being made by dirty old men types whose only goal is an easy buck -- and some thing that sounds a lot like an easy buck.

This is just another product of the Confessions production line (a more blue version of Carry On) and suffers from that formula of getting a lot of "star" day performers in that add little to the plot but look good on the poster. If Rula Lenska is in it it must be kosher -- right? Wrong!

Gormless lead Robin Askwith is the drum basher in a rather talent less dance hall band called Kipper (who are -- so they boast -- "meaner than Jack the Ripper.") They are actually a total rabble with no talent above what you might find down the local youth club -- but they give it their all. Beer is drunk, stages are wrecked and girls are bedded (if there is one nearby) but it has nothing much to do with the real music scene. The straight ahead songs are actually OK on first hearing and Askwith gets as close to playing who he was born to play -- Mick Jagger -- as he ever would.

While cruelty and sexism have no place in this world -- you have to acknowledge that they look more at home in this world than they do in, say, a driving school or a holiday camp. Backdrops to other parts of this series.

If you are looking for hard-core porn then don't watch this film. If you are out to have a laugh at sex or the seventies then it's for you. I found the film very amusing, it is what it is, just a film on the same lines as Carry ons but it goes that extra step and contains sex and naked bodies. I was nothing more than a child when this film was released so have only discovered it thanks to channel 4 and the paramount channel since then I have made it my duty to collect these saucy seventies films, believe me there are hundreds of them out there and I think some of them are gems.

I might agree that this is the best of the "Confessions" series, but I can't agree that its at all funny. There are long stretches of inane and completely boring 'plot' scenes. But by the end of the film some decent opportunities for 'kit-off' have been exploited, which at least makes it memorable. Not likely to feature in the top 100 films.

It's apparent that the British love their sex comedies. The U.K. was a veritable hot-bed for the genre. The Confessions series, much like the Adventures Of series, was an R-Rated version of the Carry On movies. Same dated humor but with younger casts, nudity, and the swinging 70's as their setting. I've seen about 15-20 of these films and they all are the same middling British comedies that Canadians and Americans won't get.

This one stars Robin Askwith as Tim Lea, a clumsy young man who gets in cahoots with his brother-in-law over managing an unproven rock band called Kipper. Askwith's job is to get venues and record deals for them and all he does is get into a lot of crazy situations and into the bedroom of some fine women (for the 1970's).

Typically, the acting is filled with double entendres and British humor. Nothing awful but nothing spectacular, either. Interestingly, in this film, Askwith looks like a young Mick Jagger and two scenes in the film extenuate this. In one scene, Timothy needed to replace the drummer for their first gig and he does a pretty good job; enough that he is being chased by groupies. He goes into hiding but one of them finds him and seduces him because she thinks he's Jagger. In another scene, he is in the office of some woman. She asks for a light. Somehow later, the garbage can is on fire and he tries to fan the flames with ridiculous results. He finds an extinguisher and starts spraying this foamy white liquid all over the place and destroys the office. It reminded me of The Rolling Stones' video for "It's Only Rock 'N Roll" where tons of soap bubbles appear on the set. Funny.

It's an O.K. timewaster. I haven't seen the others but I'm guessing like the Carry On series, the Adventures Of series, or the Beach Party with Frankie and Annette if you've seen one, you've seen them all.

Usual ridiculous "Confessions" affair with some pretty funny moments.

Definitely worth seeing for the *incredible* look-alike of Liam Gallagher (singer from UK-band Oasis) on guitar in the band. This alone made me laugh more than the rest of the film. Seriously, it *is* him.

This film also turned a Japanese female into a big fan of Robin Askwith and the Confessions films, so there must be something good in it.

No disrespect to the previous reviewer but this is one of the worst British comedies ever made. However, trivia fans may note that Star Wars was being made in the next studio at the time of shooting and during a love scene with Robin Askwith and Jill Gascoigne, both Darth Vader and Chewbacca looked on during a break from filming.

Not a bad punk song during the finale and plenty of kit offery but a gag-free zone.

Peter Cleall who was made famous by the TV series "Please Sir" was an extremely good actor but for some reason the producers of the film "Confessions of a Pop Performer" decided in their better judgment to employ the services of a professional singer to dub his vocals. They chose Maynard Williams who was already contracted to play the part of "Eric" the Bass player of the group "Kipper". However,for some reason,he was never given any credit for his vocal work,but went on to tour the group "Kipper" in between various acting and singing projects. A note of interest:Maynard's son Jake(then known as Jake Cooper)appears as Jason Nogget in Confessions from a holiday camp.

Has anyone got this on DVD do they can grab still frames?

I think some of the "hi-tech" seventies hardware in the record shop scene was scavenged/recycled from the Moonbase set used in Gerry Anderson's UFO.

This is only a supposition at the moment, can anyone help?

I think UFO was shot in the same location only a few years earlier.

Please ignore this sentence. IMDb require all comments to be a least ten lines but I can't think of anything else to add so.. To be or not to be that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the