The Sing-Along-A-Wicker-Man Scrapbook by David Bramwell

Since 2010 David Bramwell has been performing as Lord Summerisle in Sing-Along-A-Wicker-Man, a show that attracts more than its fair share of pagans, despite the film’s portrayal of them as a homicidal cult. Across history and culture in the West, pagans have invariably been portrayed as purveyors of the dark arts. But what is it that has led us to demonise a way of life that honours nature and gave us such beloved festivals as May Day, Halloween and Yuletide? In this entertaining and thought-provoking ‘scrapbook’, Bramwell unravels the history of The Wicker Man and its irreverent and popular sing-along and charts how, despite an unpromising start, the film’s current status as an iconic cult means that it has been referenced everywhere from comedy shows and a Radiohead video to a homespun Muppets comic book remake. Undertaking a quest to understand our relationship with paganism in contemporary culture, Bramwell hangs out with druids at Glastonbury, rewrites the ‘unholy trinity’ of folk horror, participates in May Day rituals and meets The Wicker Man’s Robin Hardy and musician Julian Cope, revealing an island still alive with rituals and traditions that the author himself will come to fully embrace. David Bramwell is a writer, performer, broadcaster and singer-songwriter with the band Oddfellow’s Casino. His work includes The Cult of Water, The No9 Bus to Utopia, The Haunted Moustache, The Odditorium and Adventures in Nutopia podcast. For BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4 he has made programmes on subjects ranging from Ivor Cutler and Ken Campbell to an Alpine community of time travellers.