Lonnie Donegan and Me

Downton Abbey’s Mr Carson may have hung up his butler’s jacket for good… but even as his final scenes were being shot, actor Jim Carter was already at work on a remarkable film about the King of Skiffle, 1950s singer Lonnie Donegan.

Jim shares his life-long passion as he tells the story of Lonnie’s profound impact on pop culture and a generation of British musicians who went on to conquer the world.

Though now almost forgotten, Lonnie was once the most famous man in Britain. His high energy and self-styled Skiffle music helped the nation to shake off the postwar greyness of the 1950s and jump-start the teenage music explosion of the 1960s. Indeed, without Lonnie there might have been no Beatles.

The documentary features Jim’s lively encounters with seminal rockers who were inspired to take up music by Lonnie Donegan, including Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Roger Daltrey, Jack White and Sir Van Morrison.