If This Is Spinal Tap is not somewhere near the top of every musician’s – or indeed comic’s - film list, then something is surely wrong. Although, of course, a fictional band, Spinal Tap’s life on the road in the mockurockumentary is nevertheless the best expression of group dynamics, musical differences and amps that go up to 11. From complaints about the backstage canapes to the overblown (but undersized) pomp rock of the band’s Stonehenge set, the parody is perilously close to reality – as James Blunt points out.

That said, there have been several films that have tried to catch the real mayhem of rock’n'roll or celebrate an artist in celluloid. The heady days of the Factory record label in Manchester in the Eighties were summed up in fine myth-making style in 24 Hour Party People; the Clash on the road in Rude Boy give some great live performances and the documented disintegration of the Beatles in Let it Be is painful to watch.

Recent biopics have taken on Joy Division’s troubled front man Ian Curtis in Anton Corbijn’s Control and Bob Dylan, played by six different actors including Cate Blanchett and Richard Gere, in Todd Hanes’s I’m Not There.

But for sheer rock joyfulness, you just can’t beat the Tap.

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