Bill Nighy and Rhyf Ifans launch nostalgic pirate radio movie

The stars of The Boat that Rocked, Richard Curtis's first new movie since the 2003 hit Love Actually, attended its world premiere in London last night. The film celebrates the era of Radio Caroline and the other 1960s pirate radio ships whose DJs entertained millions of Britons in the days before the launch of BBC Radio One.

Pictured here are Bill Nighy, who plays Quentin, the aristocratic owner and skipper of the Rock Boat, Talulah Riley, who plays his naughty niece, Rhyf Ifans, one of the boat's DJs, and Gemma Arterton, who like Riley made her name in the recent St Trinian's remake, and plays Desiree.

Said Nighy: "I did enjoy making the film and I'm not just saying that. We floated on a boat off the coast of Dorset with a bunch of very cool guys, we played lots of music, you could have a toasted cheese sandwich any time you wanted."

The all-star cast also includes Philip Seymour Hoffman as one of the DJs and Kenneth Branagh as the uptight politician trying to close the pirates down. But early reviews suggest the real star is the soundtrack - bringing together the music of Jimi Hendrix, the Yardbirds, the Who, Cream and other early 1960s greats.

Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard called the film "a bright, breezy, if slightly aimless romp" but said that Curtis, a one-man Ealing Studios who also wrote Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral before he turned to directing, deserves credit for producing another reliable, upbeat British comedy. "It's fashionable to knock his optimistic films but we could all do with a bit of feelgood factor right now."

Elsewhere in the Standard, it is reported that as Curtis left the Leicester Square premiere, cinema attendants, not recognising the filmmaker, tried to flog him CDs of the soundtrack. Unruffled, he responded: "Yes please... I'll have two."

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