As an ex-punk rocker, filmmaker Kim Hopkins wasn’t much impressed when Black Lace’s cheerily inane pop anthem Agadoo stayed in the UK singles chart for more than six months in 1984 and then went on to sell over a million copies. It was later voted as the worst song of all time. Nonetheless, Agadoo has become a big part of her life. Dene Michael Betteridge, the subject of her new feature doc Still Pushing Pineapples (sold by MetFilm Sales and opening Sheffield DocFest) has spent much of his life singing that very song – and has sometimes dressed up as a giant pineapple to do so.
Hopkins calculates that Dene must have performed Agadoo over 20,000 times in public. She had the idea for making the film after reading a newspaper article about the rise of scripted pop star documentaries.
“The documentary world has just gobbled up all these IP documentaries that are heavily curated and controlled,” the director notes of all those Elton John, Blur and Wham movies of recent times. She wanted to make a music doc that would be far looser and more independent in spirit. She is based in North Yorkshire and discovered that Black Lace came from South Yorkshire, not far from her. Dene, who had played with the band since the mid-1980s, was still touring round the north of England, playing gigs in Blackpool, Skegness, Minehead and “similar, more impoverished areas of the country.”
Dene was in his late 60s but the old zest was still there. “I was just really fascinated that he was still on the road with this material.”
Early on, Hopkins took Dene to see her previous film, A Bunch of Amateurs, which won the audience award atSheffield Doc/Fest 2022. This was an affectionate tribute to Bradford Movie Makers, one of the oldest amateur film clubs in the UK.
“I wanted him to understand the type of films I make and that it would not be a PR puff piece. If I was going to do it, he had to give me total access.” The film, if he agreed to appear in it, she warned, would be warts and all. This didn’t put off Dene in the slightest. “I think he has the philosophy that all publicity is good publicity.”
After all, Dene has had his fair share of very bad PR – and had come through it. In 2016, he was sentenced to six months in jail for falsely claiming disability benefits. In prison, he is said to have continued performing Agadoo for his fellow inmates, apparently leading 60 of them on a conga.
The film avoids this episode. “There is no coverage of that all, no archive, no recordings, nothing of it. I just couldn’t find a way to tell it. I also felt that we have millionaires who don’t pay their taxes but that when it comes to working class people eking out a living…these smaller misdemeanours are really blown up in the press.”
Hopkins has now spent over two years with Dene and her verdict is that he is “a very, very nice man.” He has worked for four decades in the pop world which is “dog eat dog and quite ugly” but has somehow remained likeable and completely free of bitterness. Hopkins describes him as compassionate and kind. He is utterly devoted to his mother, Annie, now 92. She remains his biggest fan.
There’s a touching moment early when the son is shown is shown in long shot pushing his mother down the pier and they’re heard saying how much they love one another.
During the making of the film, Dene begins a relationship with Hayley, an Agadoo “superfan” who is 30 years younger than him. “That was not something I was expecting to happen obviously in the film. I thought it was going to be a story about somebody who went out and entertained with novelty pop music in some of these most deprived areas. No matter what he was feeling, he would have to put a party on and then he would go back into his very small apartment in Bradford at 3am.”
The film soon developed into a Little Miss Sunshine-like road movie. Dene and Hayley take his aging mum on a bucket list trip back to Benidorm in Spain where he used to perform regularly and where they had spent some of their happiest times. Annie is too frail to fly and so they embark on an epic journey to Spain in a van instead.
“Benidorm is like their Brigadoon…it may not be everybody’s cup of tea but it’s the cup tea for a lot of working-class people. That’s why they drive hours in vans. That two weeks in Benidorm in the sun. It’s easy and they can get their usual beer. That’s what people love.”
Dene’s mother knew she wasn’t in good health but reasoned she’d far rather risk dying going to Spain than pass away in her armchair watching daytime TV. “That’s her glass half full attitude – and I think Dene has that as well.”
We soon discover that Dene’s financial situation is challenging. He spent 15 years performing in Benidorm, didn’t keep up with National Insurance payments back in Britain, and has no pension. That means he needs to keep on performing simply to make money. “Not only is his audience dwindling but his salary is dwindling,” the director explains his plight.
Hopkins identifies closely with her subject. She may not dress up as a giant piece of fruit to sing novelty pop songs for a living but, as a documentary maker, she leads a similarly precarious existence. “They say you always make films about yourself. I just drew a lot of parallels with what was going on [with Dene] with the industry I am in.”
Dene is on the road constantly, which is one reason why it’s hard to have a stable family life. Documentary makers often have to make similar sacrifices and won’t always be at home for holidays and family celebrations.
After her own run of recent hit docs, Hopkins is not currently short of admirers. Backers for Still Pushing Pineapples include BFI Doc Society, Screen Scotland, Ffilm Cymru Wales and Screen Yorkshire.
“I don’t think it ever gets any easier. I think it gets harder to be honest. The only thing that changes is that people will speak to me,” Hopkins reflects on the ongoing struggles to get her work funded despite the success of A Bunch of Amateurs and Hotel Folly (2013). “It used to be you never got a ‘no’ because you never got an answer. Now, you get ‘no’s’.”
Even so, Hopkins is now hard at work on a new film, The Local, the third part of her trilogy on northern working-class life. This is based around life in a Bradford real ale pub, The Jacobs Well, a beer house that dates back to 1830. The project is being supported by Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture and made through production company Labor of Love with Margareta Szabo as producer.
“Again, it is a film about community, about what’s important to working class people. It is using Martha Gellhorn’s quote that if you want to find out what is going on in Britain, go to the pubs. It’s a really interesting way to find out what people are thinking about Elon Musk, Donald Trump and what is happening with their local council…”
In the meantime, the director is looking forward to the Sheffield premiere where Dene will be performing alongside Atomic, billed as the “world’s sexiest 80s band,” and they’ll be doing the Conga Donga together.
“We’re doing a full-on 80s revival with a [walking] pineapple…giant fruit flying around and pina coladas…let’s have a little bit of joy in our life!”
