Nick Moran’s lively film, based on his successful West End musical play, lives up to its description as the stranger-than-fiction story of Joe Meek, the independent record producer who wrote and recorded Telstar in the early Sixties, which became the first British single to reach number one on both sides of the Atlantic.

Meek managed a string of other hits with the Tornados, working almost exclusively out of a dingy flat in the Holloway Road, but, having four times refused the Beatles, committed suicide in 1967 after killing his landlady, possibly accidentally, in a fit of depression.

As in the play, writer-director Moran goes for satire rather than seriousness, which pays certain dividends but doesn’t answer some awkward questions about the sad decline and demise of either Meek or the Tornados.

The film relies more on performances from Con O’Neill, reprising his stage role as Meek, Kevin Spacey as his gentleman backer and the Tornado actors (James Corden, Ralf Little, Tom Burke and JJ Feild) to carry the story.

This they certainly do and the humour comes mostly from their expert playing.

But there’s also the more than amusing thought that four not terribly bright or adept musicians, absurdly dressed as cowboys and performing a song that was supposed to be composed by the ghostly spirit of Buddy Holly, managed to make it so big.

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Pop and rock legends are two-a-penny but Meek must have a prime spot in musical history.

O’Neill’s Meek takes himself very seriously, which makes him all the funnier.

But his decline and fall becomes little more than a bad joke, and Telstar’s failing is that its determined sense of fun doesn’t give enough value to its sad ending.

It’s almost as if Moran has decided to skate over that in favour of more facile entertainment. It works — but only just.

Entertained, however, you will undoubtedly be, especially if you remember that Meek was an inspiration for George Martin, Phil Spector and Mickey Most and that Morrissey and Nick Cave were influenced by the sound he created.