Cure video director Tim Pope to publish memoir charts 80s excess and ego

Pope’s entry into the industry was characteristically unconventional for an era defined by its improvisational spirit. His first professional break came after smuggling a camera into a concert inside his trousers, capturing performance footage that led to him directing the follow-up to Soft Cell’s "Tainted Love". From there, work snowballed, with Pope soon shuttling across the Atlantic to feed the demands of the newly launched MTV.

The memoir – released this August – chronicles a period when directors worked guerrilla-style, money flowed freely, and few ideas were deemed too outlandish to commit to tape. Pope’s anecdotes include dressing Queen’s Freddie Mercury as a giant Mediterranean prawn, an incident that saw him called a “funny little arsehole” by David Bowie, and the time he locked The Cure in a wardrobe before launching it off a cliff.