The lyrics of For What is Chatteris… may well be my favourite in the whole Half Man Half Biscuit songbook. And not because the song refers to a village just up the road from here. The track from Achtung Bono famously generated a story in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph which would surely have made the band chuckle: Fellow Chatteris councillor, Peter Dickinson, continued: “I’ve yet to hear the song, but it’s great news. Well done for Chatteris – we’re always trying to promote the area, and this will certainly help.”
Alan Perkin
You’re doing a great job and your site is great but isn’t it ‘prick barriers’ ?
24 November 2007
chris
Ah, the $64,000 question. Well, actually, a question hardly anybody is asking, but one which has been a source of debate at the pub here. To some of us, it sounds like ‘prick’, to others (including me) ‘crick’. I can’t find any reference to ‘crick barriers’ or ‘prick barriers’ anywhere, other than in people’s transcriptions of the lyrics of this song. So what is the term, and where did it come from? We have them in our village, and ‘crick barriers’ (slalom things you have to drive round) seems a quite feasible name for them. But what transport planner would call their invention a ‘prick barrier’, I asked myself? So I thought if there was a name for the things, it’d more likely be ‘crick barrier’. Perhaps Nigel will help out.
24 November 2007
Brads
I always thought it was “quick barriers”.
30 November 2007
lifeislandfill
Prick barriers: A traffic-calming device, spikes in the road which burst tires if driven over in the worng direction or before they are lowered. Or a device to keep out Pricks.
That’s my reading of it at least.
18 January 2008
grim
Oh dear. I submitted the original “crick barriers” definition to gez at hmhb.co.uk. It was changed at some point to “prick barriers,” and although even after careful listening with headphones I think there’s room for doubt, I’d still probably stand by my initial hearing.
The barriers themselves I mostly recall from travelling up and down the B1040 in childhood, but on more recent revisits I’ve learnt that they’re not as Z-shaped as I remember them; in fact the construction I was picturing is simply such that a single lane of traffic is blocked entirely, and the other is entirely unimpeded.
I forget from which direction one is forced to give way…
7 February 2008
geraint
I always heard as ‘prick barriers’ in the ‘barriers to keep out pricks’ sense, probably because it fits so well with the overly-idyllic village the lyrics conjure up. it’s not THAT much of a stretch to say that Nige might even have picked it because it rhymes with/sounds like ‘Crick barriers’
18 April 2008
Pete
HMHB’s own site says “prick barriers”, defining them as “a traffic-calming device of particular abundance in the Fens. I can’t speak for Chatteris, but nearby Gamlingay certainly has them, at both ends no less. They’re somewhat like a chicane but more Z-shaped than hourglass-shaped and the purpose is to allow traffic through from one direction at a time.”
I’d also argue it’s “what’s a park if you can’t see a limit”, not “linnet”, mainly because it has the same general meaning as the next line about the timetable.
14 May 2008
Paul F
The official site certainly used to say “Crick barriers”.
19 May 2008
Nick
The PopMatters interview supports the “prick barrier” theory
It’s quite clear that Blackwell has a problem with the people that, for simplicity’s sake, he terms “pricks”. His idyllic rural Chatteris, for example, boasts “prick barriers at both ends”
Maybe the author checked with Nigel during the interview?
20 May 2008
Ray Gee
It’s got to be ‘prick barriers’, to keep out the pricks, nob-heads, and I think it’s linnet not limit.
Great song, whatever the lyrics.
21 May 2008
Swanaldo
Definitely ‘prick barriers’ – I imagine traffic calming devices to keep the chavs at bay.
25 May 2008
Pete
I refer you to http://www.hmhb.co.uk/
Click on the album
It definitely says “prick barriers”.
27 May 2008
dj
having recently heard the bootleg from the brampton folk festival from the kershaw show i’d agree it’s prick barriers, but what exactly are they? something nigel just made up?
2 June 2008
chris
I’m definitely outnumbered here, so “prick barriers” it is from now on. Thanks all.
2 June 2008
Geoff
I think I remember someone commenting in an interview that the dyke that passes through the town is *bricked* up at either end…
5 June 2008
dj
will the debate never end???
from the official site
“Crick barriers A traffic-calming device of particular abundance in the Fens. I can’t speak for Chatteris, but nearby Gamlingay certainly has them, at both ends no less. They’re somewhat like a chicane but more Z-shaped than hourglass-shaped (i.e. there’s a crick in the road) and the purpose is to allow traffic through from one direction at a time.”
19 June 2008
sean
I’d go for ‘prick barriers’ also.
One thing though, I heard ‘envy of the Fens’ as the ‘Denbigh of the fens’ (its in North Wales, pronounced Denby) – I thought it might be this ‘cos the area is often referenced in HMHB lyrics.
Interesting fact: Denbigh is absolutely heaving with Liberty Cap mushrooms when the season comes around!
2 July 2008
Fen_boy
I agree with prick barriers, however having lived in Chatteris for the last 6 years the they should be to keep the locals in. None of the roads into town have a chicane just sleeping policemen. As far as I’m aware we only have 1 Butchers not 3 but that wouldn’t work as well in the song. I remember reading that NB had never visited Chatteris.
8 July 2008
Mr Larrington
Apropos nothing at all, when I found myself in the Green Welly Café in Chatteris a couple of years ago, they had a poster on the wall advertising gigs at The Junction in Cambridge. It will come as no surprise to The Assembled Faithful that one of them was HMHB.
Oh, and if they’re really prick barriers (as I have always understood it) they don’t work on the local bus drivers.
14 July 2008
Fen_boy
Arrr The green Welly – Rooms from £12 a night nuff said.
14 July 2008
Phil Elson
Well, I always thought it was “crick barriers”, but I suppose like many people I wasn’t sure, so I did an Internet search to check and came across this site. Obviously it’s vitally important I get this right, as I can never get this song out of my head and I often sing it during the day. No-one wants the humiliation of singing the wrong lyrics in front of others! – although I live in St. Petersburg, Russia, so the chances of really being embarrassed in public on this particular point are slim to none.
12 August 2008
Michelle Stamp
The last line of what’s chatteris, I’m sure it’s
“I may as well be in Ealing or St Ives”
19 September 2008
Chris The Siteowner
You wouldn’t if you lived round here!
19 September 2008
Neil G
In reply to Michelle, Chatteris, Ely and St. Ives are all in Cambridgeshire. There is a railway line between Ely and St. Ives, called, suitably, the Ely and St. Ives Railway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ely_and_St_Ives_Railway
Chatteris is in the vicinity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatteris
I think this points to it being ‘I may as well be in Ely or St. Ives, rather than Ealing. It would be too much of a coincidence. It sounds like Ely to me anyway.
22 September 2008
Chris The Siteowner
It is Ely, of course. The railway above is long gone, and St.Ives is getting a brand spanking new white elephant called a “(mis)guided bus” to connect it to Cambridge. Anyway, the point of this post is to put to bed for once and for all the crick/prick debate, because it’s quite clear from the live performances now that it’s “prick barriers”. So there we go. Or not, probably, if we’re on the bus.
30 October 2008
Giles Pattison
May be of no significance but found the following. Can’t say I understand it and further googling revealed nothing, it just struck me that the Fens are rather vulnerable to flooding.
“As for Britain, “Times” River and “Dalatford Crick” barriers were closed, as it is expected that the water level would rise by a meter and a half above sea level.”
19 November 2008
Paul F
Incidentally, I was walking back from the pub a while back, with a mate of mine, a fellow Scouse HMHB fan, in the small Berkshire village where I live. As we were walking he asked me if we had many “drive-by shoutings” in the village. Not 30 seconds later, a car sped past us and the lad in the front passenger seat leaned out the window and yelled “Fuck off” at us. One of the funniest things that has ever happened to me – tears rolling down our faces.
8 December 2008
Rik
Surely it’s crick?
27 July 2009
Keefaz
Sounds like ‘crick’ to me. Don’t think ‘prick’ would be in keeping with the general tone of the song, to be honest.
17 August 2009
Dave F.
I hear it as prick, the barrier being more metaphorical than physical.
Can someone provide a link to a picture of said barrier actually being described as crick?
17 August 2009
s.g.d.,a Shropshire lad
I found this poem…
The butchers and cake shop have now all closed
Fen subsidence has left pot holes along the roads
For sale signs now outnumber the towns few trees
And nothing has sold cos of the credit squeeze
There’s no sign of a linnet, or even a bunting
Just fields of pheasants for the farmer’s hunting
Chatteris is no longer looked at with fenland envy
For what is Chatteris if you’re not in it, its empty.
It was/is on the “Toadsnatcher warts ‘n’ all” website
s.g.d.
17 August 2009
Petrovic
@ SGD: Now, that’s heartfelt.
http://toadsnatcher.blogspot.com/search?q=chatteris
@ Dave F.: I’d always thought it was ‘crick’ from the album, but at the Roadwater gig it was ‘prick barriers’, definitely. I’ve failed to find a photo of a crick barrier, but guess it is one of those that sticks a bit of pavement into an otherwise usable road so that you have to drive around it?
18 August 2009
Dave F.
Petrovic
I’d like to say that I could confirm what you say from the Bath gig the night after, but due to the sound of the vocals being so muffled which was “naturally caused by the walls of the venue”, I am unable to.
It sounds like you’re describing chicane calming. If the barriers are side-by-side, I think they’re called chokers.
18 August 2009
Petrovic
Chicane! That was the word I was looking for, thank you.
Was that the official description of the Bath venue? Perhaps they would prefer it without walls…
18 August 2009
Chris The Siteowner
Well… it’s confirmed as “prick barriers”.
16 April 2010
Joe
It’s crick barriers – look on hmhb.co.uk
11 June 2010
nigel (no not that one)
@Joe
Have you checked the source of the confirmation posted by Chris?
🙂
13 June 2010
Charles Exford
Well yes, NB57 did tell me it was ‘prick barriers’, but we always have to allow for the possibility of the Tarkovsky factor (AKA an Emily Davison). However, perhaps Gez is equally likely to have been a victim of a Tarkovsky/Davison, and I would like to know if he has actually personally witnessed such measures in Gamlingay? Google satellite images show no sign, either there or in Chatteris.
Nor does this page make any reference to them.
Nor can I find any other reference to Crick barriers in lists of traffic calming measures anywhere on t’interweb.
14 June 2010
grim
Not this again. As I said in 2008: it was me. The term “crick barriers” and the accompanying definition on hmhb.co.uk are taken directly from an email I sent to Gez, years ago when the album came out. It’s what I heard, at the time, and it even seemed to make sense. I was wrong.
At any rate, this is what I was talking about:
Give way.
and at the other end:
Yaw Evig.
14 June 2010
Chris The Siteowner
Yep, we love ’em here in Cambridgeshire. NB57 said in the Popmatters interview that he’d never been to Chatteris, so maybe it was just luck that we happen to have so many of the things around here.
14 June 2010
Charles Exford
Notice the phrase “when set against the scale of human suffering” in that interview, two years before it appeared in NSD.
14 June 2010
Chris The Siteowner
There’s an even earlier use of the phrase in the Is This Music? interview from 2004 on Gez’s site: I wonder if as the Biscuit’s lyricist people have him down as a grumpy so-and-so. “With music it’s peoples attitudes which amuse me, the things people will complain and get het up about,” he says. “We live in one of the most spoiled societies in the western world; nothing is bad enough to moan incessantly about. You can write about your art or your angst-ridden love life, but you can’t expect people to think you’re hard done by, set against the scale of human suffering.”
14 June 2010
Mr Larrington
Didn’t NB57 say he pinched the phrase or saying off Peelie?
15 June 2010
tomasz.
i was going to suggest the same thing as Mr Larrington in the post above. i’ve got recordings of Peelie using the phrase on at least two separate occasions on his Radio 1 show, dating back to the late 90s. i think it was one of those ‘go-to’ phrases he was fond of using in certain situations as the best way to express a particular idea (usually, the same ‘mustn’t grumble’-type idea Nigel expresses in both the PopMatters and Is This Music? interviews).
20 May 2011
Acidic Regulator
No-one’s going to like me much for this, but I’m going to have to say it as it’s been troubling me for a long time now. I love this song, of course, one of the very greatest. But it’s that word ‘quintessence’. A top rhyme, yes, but I can’t get my head round the usage. And I just have this sneaking suspicion that it’s that very very rare thing – an NB57 lyric with a slight misunderstanding of a word at its heart. ‘Quintessence’ means “the most typical representation of a quality, state, etc”. I can’t see how a town can “lack quintessence” – it’s not the quality itself, it’s the most typical representation of that quality. Please tell me I’m wrong? And why?
26 May 2012
Chris The Siteowner
It’s my favourite line in the whole song. I’ve always seen it as a joke on the tiresome use of the otherwise obscure word “quintessential” as a synonym for “typically traditional” – so frequent that it could be said that the appearance of the term “market town” without the prefix “quintessential” would be quite a surprise. But rather than saying “a market town that’s not quintessential”, which makes the point but which isn’t funny, the song says “a market town which lacks quintessence”, a phrase nobody in their right mind would ever use.
(Although irrelevant to the song or the joke, “quintessence” has a separate, scientific meaning. “A market town that lacks the hypothetical fifth fundamental form of energy whose tracker behaviour partly solves the cosmological constant problem”? I’m sure I heard that sung by one of the acts on the last Infinite Monkey Cage tour.)
26 May 2012
Acidic Regulator
aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh…..excellent. Thanks so much Chris. This was almost certainly obvious to everyone else. I knew it was me. Yes, that awful cliche, the quintessential market town…I live in wilts and am surrounded by ‘quintessential English villages’….
26 May 2012
RB
Hello
It is definitely Prick Barriers and Linnet (a bird – whats a park without a linnet which has a lovely song indeed). It is “Ely or St Ives”, both are cambs towns. The isle of Ely is quite famous. Prick barriers is a funny. A haha. Keep out silly people.
Nice one
Rusty Bullethole
Crispy Gazebo
14 June 2012
Steve Nicholls
and now the Anglia In Bloom Gold Award winner, as I noticed yesterday.
I also saw two barn owls, which was a source of great excitement.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28840305@N02/7433114878/in/photostream
24 June 2012
MIKE IN COV
“A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square” is a topic of ongoing controversy among ornithologists. (1) Unlikely habitat, must have been a robin. (2) As there were also angels dining at The Ritz, it bloody well was a nightingale.
There is a third meaning for quintessence. From the OED: “(in classical and medieval philosophy) a fifth substance in addition to the four elements, thought to comprise the heavenly bodies and to be latent in all things”. So, a market town that consists of nothing but (inanimate) earth, air, fire and water. Works for me.
That’s not how I would spell mediaeval..
5 July 2012
RastusFB
Ignorant American and neophyte HMHB fan just chiming in here for no justifiable reason (knowing this will have no effect on the apparently-settled debate at all), but if you really listen to the studio cut, it’s crick. I’d wager my third leg that it’s crick. Over and over I’ve listened to it. Over and over it sounds like crick. Crick, crick, crick. Crick. If I didn’t know that each and every one of you pedants know more than I do, I would fight you to the death that it’s crick.
But since I must submit to your superior knowledge and insight, I will say “prick barriers” as I hum HMHB on my stroll to work. Even though I hear “crick” when I listen to the actual song.
16 November 2013
CHARLES EXFORD
I feel your pain, but it is more knowledge than insight in this case – we asked Nigel and he told us – see comment 35 in this thread.
16 November 2013
Steve howell
Personal I don’t care what Nigel says. I reckon he’s deliberately changed it to “prick” just to irk the purists, as it were.
I’m with RASTUSFPB. I’ve always heard it as “crick” and always will.
29 November 2013
Williteverend
I found this; no mention of barriers of any kind…
19 November 2014
jenna
he sings “crick barriers” at both ends … crick barriers are these really irritating traffic ‘calming’ devices. It’s where you block off one side of the road – needlessly! So the cars on the blocked side of the road have to stop – needlesssly. Then they wait (you guessed it – needlessly!) until there is no traffic on the other side of the road, so that they can drive (on the wrong side of the road (which is dangerous in my book) around the “crick barrier” … Anoing 😀 x
4 February 2015
exxo
Mr. Blackwell confirmed to me in person 5 years ago that it was ‘prick barriers’, not that I ever had any doubt personally, because that’s what he has always sung live. Steve in comment 54 in this thread hints that he thinks this may be one of Nigel’s famous bits of misinformation, but I am pretty sure he has never done that in any conversation I have had with him about lyrics. I note that the timing of your comment is just after a gig review in which someone has mentioned that this lyric is a point of debate, but it hasn’t been a matter of much doubt on here for five years.
By the way, Jenna, the song seems to endorse such road calming measures and appears to denounce those who would potentially speed through small towns as ‘pricks’. This may not be Blackwell’s own voice – in fact we know it isn’t because he has never resided in Chatteris – but we do know that although he doesn’t drive he does seem to care about many road-related issues, usually from the pedestrian & cyclist’s point of view.
There’s an interesting account here from one Chatteris High Street resident just a few days ago of how traffic calming measures are desperately needed in that thoroughfare, and how a set of temporary lights (for temporary roadworks) are currently causing said route to be much safer.
4 February 2015
bobby svarc
Cheers Jenna, Thank god I don’t drive, they sound pretty dangerous.
5 February 2015
grilly
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31365003 bad news for Chatteris…
13 February 2015
EXXO
I know not much happens in Fenland, but even in Chatteris five months is long enough for it not to be ‘news’ any more. Think it was mentioned on here in a couple of times last year, as well as endlessly on tw*tter every time it’s been mentioned since, but the media will keep referring to it as their symbol of Tescos’ current plight so I guess it will get repeated on here from time to time. Poor old Tescos eh.
Anyway it’s good news really – they’ve got an Aldi.
13 February 2015
mr Ed
I don’t know if the good folks at the Jiangxi Lefu Industrial Co. are HMHB fans, but they offer: “the best substitute of prick barrier”. The
Internet Archive Wayback Machine noticed this only in July 2015. I’m sure we’ve all Googled for “prick barriers” in the past and found nothing. I like to think that they have somehow learned the vocab from our searches and this is in fact an extreme example of niche advertising: HMHB fans looking to buy traffic-calming hardware.
6 December 2015
mr Ed
Until now I hadn’t followed the links in #31, #32 to the
heartfelt poem. I’m somewhat saddened to find that it was inspired by the song, and not vice versa.
I’ve always thought of “chandlers” as shops selling ropes, brass compasses, stripy shirts, etc. There is one, inexplicably, on Shaftesbury Avenue in London. But Chatteris is presumably not a big sailing centre, so “chandlers” must mean “general trader” here. (OK, we’ve established that NB57 hadn’t visited the place when he wrote the song. This explains why my diligent searches of Hansard and OFSTED have come to nought.)
6 December 2015
TAYLO
Myself and The Fifth Biscuit made a recent pilgrimage to Chatteris whilst down south to have an egg custard in a first class cake shop. It’s a bit of a shithole tbh though Ely is lovely.
29 March 2016
Chris The Siteowner
There’s only one way to slow down the traffic on the Chatteris road. Of course there is.
4 July 2016
dr desperate
In an interview with Paddy Shennan in the Echo in 2005, NB10 claimed of the title: “I got it from Frankie Baldwin in Coronation Street who, in relation to moving up North to be with husband Danny, said something like ‘What’s Dagenham if you’re not in it?’ It may not have been Dagenham, but it was certainly Essex-based.”
26 December 2016
Johnny biscotti
I just checked the site and it does say ‘crick barriers’ there:
Crick barriers A traffic-calming device of particular abundance in the Fens. I can’t speak for Chatteris, but nearby Gamlingay certainly has them, at both ends no less. They’re somewhat like a chicane but more Z-shaped than hourglass-shaped (i.e. thre’s a crick in the road) and the purpose is to allow traffic through from one direction at a time.
20 February 2017
Chris The Siteowner
Which site?
20 February 2017
Bobby svarc
Gez’s site. It says crick barriers.
20 February 2017
Chris The Siteowner
Ah, someone else who thinks Gez’s site is “the” site. Sorry to disappoint you sir, but despite appearances, HMHB.co.uk is just another fan site like this one, albeit older and wiser. And – curiously – mentioned on at least one album sleeve, a claim to fame I would sell my firstborn for.
21 February 2017
nigeyb
Listening to a recent Word in your Ear podcast with Simon Mayo (June 2018) he mentioned in passing that he knows all the words to this song by heart. I was quite surprised to discover this. Just thought I’d mention it. As you were.
14 June 2018
CaThedral Juice
Not exactly a fine chandler, but no longer devoid of tenants as of tomorrow:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/11/tesco-launch-discount-chain-aldi-lidl-jacks?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
11 September 2018
Pete Anstock
Now I know why they recommend going by bus with all this going on overhead….
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-49664560#
Perhaps the parachute club could get added to a live version of the song as another factor making Chatteris the envy of the fens.
12 September 2019
Stringy bob
Is it a coincidence that the nickname of Kings Lynn Town F.C is “The Linnets”? Probably, because they aren’t actually as close to each other as I originally thought…
30 December 2019
BOBBY SVARC
Had some great nights taking boxers to Kings Lynn ABC and Lynn ABC, I’m sure one of the clubs had a Linnet on its badge. Lynn-it
30 December 2019
dr desperate
Amish joke:
Q: What goes clip-clop, clip-clop, silence?
A: A drive-by shunning.
(From Danny Baker’s Treehouse podcast.)
13 March 2020
dr desperate
Apologies for the duplication, but I’ll repost this here for the ease and convenience of future generations (though what have they ever done for us?):
Nigel claims that his inspiration for the title of the song was a line spoken by Frankie Baldwin on Coronation St in 2004: “What’s Chingford if you’re not in it?”
A transcript of the relevant episode appears on this Corrie fansite, towards the end of the Monday 7 June entry.
http://www.corrie.net/updates/episode/2004/0406.html
16 November 2020
Jay Jay
If it cheers anyone, before I tuned into this clarification station, I thought it was Nigel singing (in Blue Peter presenter type voice) “Quick, Barry, it’s at both ends!” I was envisaging a twee live lambing type situation where the game amateur farmer getting more than they bargained for with a placenta/afterbirth/meconium situation.
8 March 2022
EXXO
Thanks for that image, Jay Jay.
And @comment 64 (i.e. @Mr B, and @Paddy for not doing his research), It was in fact Chingford.
8 March 2022
Paul
Never mind the prick barriers. The highly dependable busses are no more!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-63046348
Buses or busses?
28 September 2022
dr desperate
Buses (though according to Alfred Denis Godley, Bi).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motor_Bus
28 September 2022
Irish niall
We’ve been pointlessly knocking about the ‘prick/crick’ debate in Ireland tonight. A long since settled argument of course.
My only observation- the only reason it sounds like crick (and sometimes and on some devices it undeniably does) might be down to the vagaries of audio source, compression and speakers.
22 July 2023