Spinal Tap find real life as a spoof

Is it a rockumentary or a mockumentary? Actor-director Rob Reiner's fictional documentary about a 1980s British heavy metal band in the throes of disintegration, comes so close to the truth, that many people consider This is Spinal Tap to be the ultimate film about rock'n'roll.

Its colourful, eccentric and downright funny rockers can easily pass for musicians straight out of rock's golden age, something that's accentuated by the fact that the eponymous band - actors Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer - have played some big tours over the past 30 years and also major music events such as the Glastonbury Festival.

The 30th anniversary of this film - it was shot in 1982 but released in 1984 - was commemorated with a special screening at this year's New York Film Festival. Guest - who's better known as Spinal Tap's grumpy lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel - attended and stayed to take questions from an army of Tap fans.

Seemingly inhabiting a space between himself and Tufnel, Guest cut straight to the quick when confronted with the question fans had been asking for years: no, Spinal Tap were not based on any one rock band from the '70s or early '80s.

Of course, he always says this, and no one ever believes him.

Everyone who has ever been in a band can recognise the bizarre, sometimes surreal moments that occur on tour, even at the lower echelons of stardom. In fact, the humour is so close to the truth that when the film came out, many rock stars thought they knew who it was based on: themselves. "At the time, every band we met would say, 'It's about us, you're doing us.' Literally dozens of bands came up to me and said that," Guest says.