MANLY’S back – and he’s new and improved. Last year we reported on Colchester actor and writer Darren Gooding’s first feature film starring his beloved creation, East Anglia’s most notorious actor, critic and raconteur, Mr Manly S Truelove.

His mockumentary, As I Remember Thrigby, saw Manly turn filmmaker as he made his own a unique personal odyssey, struggling to unravel the stratospheric rise and subsequent Icarus-like fall of scandalous Sixties matinee idol, Sir Thrigby Tree-Frog.

In the film, Manly takes the audience on a guided tour of Thrigby’s bizarre and often utterly unbelievable theatrical life.

It explores how a man who once had the world at his feet found his career descending from fame into infamy and, ultimately, into obscurity.

Now after a few editorial tweaks, Darren is showing the film again, this time at the Lakeside Theatre at Essex University.

The most recent edit was shown last month at the Bafta theatre in London. Manly was a guest of the Whitby Goth Festival, where he compered one of the stages. The film is an off-shoot of Darren’s popular Manly shows, the first of which was performed at Colchester Arts Centre in 2001.

The following year he took it to Edinburgh, which eventually led to bookings all across the region.

Manly the Movie started filming in June 2008 with a team of willing friends. Locations all over the area were used, from the Mercury and Lakeside theatres to Hylands House, in Chelmsford, to a scene shot in St Peter ad Vincula Church, in Coggeshall.

Darren premiered the film last March in a Hollywood-style event at Colchester Arts Centre and since then he has been using the film as a showcase for his shows as well as screening the film in its own right.

l As I Remember Thrigby is at the Lakeside Theatre, Essex University, on May 31, at 7.30pm. Tickets are £5 available from the Mercury Theatre box office on 01206 573948.