Critically speaking

THERE are people who enjoy a night out at the cinema, film fans, film fanatics. . . and then there's Mark Kermode.

Mark, who lives with his wife and children in Brockenhurst in the New Forest is a film critic for Film Four, Radio Five, Radio Two and various film magazines.

He also makes documentaries for Channel 4, has written a number of books, and is the world expert on the horror film The Exorcist.

But film is more than his career - it is his life.

"When I got married, do you know what I did for my stag night? I took myself on my own to Leicester Square to see a 70mm print of The Exorcist that I hadn't seen before and that was a great night out for me," he enthuses.

"When I was a kid and other people were going to parties and having girlfriends, I went to the cinema, because to me that was a treat."

Mark has been a film critic since he was at university, although his method of getting his dream job was somewhat unconventional.

"I started working for a magazine in Manchester called City Life.

"I wanted to be a film reviewer but they didn't want a film reviewer.

"They wanted a van driver.

"So I became their van driver but I totalled the City Life van.

"I completely wrecked it doing their deliveries and I think they decided that it was safer to let me write about films than to try and drive the van for them, so that was how I became a film reviewer."

Although few career advisers would encourage would-be film critics to follow Mark's haphazard approach to career advancement, it continued to work for him as he progressed up the critic ladder.

"I came down to London at the end of the Eighties and started working for a big entertainment magazine.

"They didn't need a film reviewer but they needed somebody who could do cinema listings.

"I did them very badly and got all the dates and times wrong and they decided that it would be less difficult to let me review the films than to do the listings."

While he was working at the magazine he was approached by a local radio station to do video reviews.

"The first time I ever reviewed anything on the radio I was completely terrible but the producers thought it was really funny.

"They thought it was an act.

"I'd lied and said I had loads of radio experience but I'd never been on the radio before and when the green light went on I blathered like a complete lunatic for about four minutes, totally incoherent, unstoppable nonsense and then it was all finished.

"I thought I'd completely blown it but they said, 'that was really funny. We really liked the way that you pretended that you had no idea what you were doing,' so that became my act.

"I love films, I'm really enthusiastic about them and when I'm talking about them I tend to get a bit carried away.

"I'm never going to be a sober, quiet, relaxed armchair comfy jumper sort of critic."

Although films are Mark's first love, he doesn't want to do anything other than watch them.

"I have no desire to make films whatsoever.

"I have no idea how people make films and I have nothing but respect for anyone who manages to do it.

"I have seen people who are more talented and more interesting and more driven than me be absolutely destroyed by the movie industry so I don't want to make a film.

"I'm a critic. I like to watch films.

"I know that an awful lot of people think that critics are failed filmmakers but I'm not.

"I want to watch films and I'm really impressed when people manage to make them."

Although Mark is best known as a film critic, fans of skiffle music may remember him for his stint as a member of the house band on Danny Baker After All.

"I was in a band called the Railtown Bottlers and we won the international street entertainer of the year award in Covent Garden and then we were the house band on Danny Baker's television show for an entire series!

"I can say, without fear of contradiction, that we were probably the biggest skiffle band in Britain that year and that's a pretty small field," he says with a hint of sarcasm.

Although Mark's days of playing double bass in front of a live studio audience are over, he hasn't left his musical beginnings completely behind.

But these days Mark confines his musical outpourings to once a month at the Thomas Tripp pub in Lymington with his band, The Dodge Brothers.

"We play old-fashioned American country and rockabilly folk songs that are all about people getting drunk and having disastrous relationships and shooting each other.

"It's an evening of misery played out to a swinging four-four beat," he laughs.

"It's just good old fashioned music about people having really bad times in the west."

So does Mark dream of leaving his career as a critic behind and vying it out with Will and Gareth for chart success?

Not likely.

"I've got a fabulous job. I see films and I review them and people employ me to do this. "It's the best gig in the world I have no complaints - it's much better than working!"