It's not often that we get to see a movie in the UK almost 8 months before it is released in the USA. Pirate Radio starring Silksoundbooks audio book star reader and travelling ambassador Bill Nighy is one such film.

In the UK it was called The Boat That Rocked and is based on the sort-of-true story of a 1960s British rock-and-roll radio station broadcasting from a boat in the middle of the North Sea. To our American friends this must seem very odd - why would a bunch of DJs need to be miles from shore on a rusty old boat in order to play rock-and-roll music?

Well, in the UK we only had radio from the BBC and they only played about an hour a week of 'pop' music - even then it wasn't the real thing. If you wanted to hear The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Small Faces, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin or any of the great new music of the sixties you had to listen to pirate radio - the stations which got round the British laws by broadcasting from outside territorial waters.

In the movie, written by Richard Curtis, Bill plays the boss of Radio Rock, loosely based on the original pirate ship Radio Caroline. He is joined by an amazing cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Rhys Ifans and Kenneth Branagh in what we think is a great celebration of great music.

If you are a fan of Bill Nighy, check out The Dupin Mysteries , written by Edgar Allan Poe. Bill adds his own suspense and tension to these wonderful stories that introduce us to C Auguste Dupin, the first fictional detective.

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