“The man behind the mask at C&A’s was quite polite”
So… what do we know about C&A?
The A to Z of HMHB
The A to Z of HMHB
There are 14 Half Man Half Biscuit albums, plus two roundup compilations, as well as 4 EPs and a handful of one-off songs. No 'Greatest Hits'. Indulge yourself by starting here.
In which we chose the nation's favourite Half Man Half Biscuit song. For the next four years, anyway.
Search for any lyric, reference, song title ...whatever.
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CARDINAL RICHELIEU
I know a very rude blonde joke about some C&A knickers, but I’m guessing you could probably work out the punchline yourselves.
17 March 2014
Eugene C
Involving which way round they go?
17 March 2014
Brumbiscuit
C&A is considered rather upmarket in Hungary. Mind you, so is Izal Medicated.
17 March 2014
Spindrifter
Still going in Warsaw
17 March 2014
Chris Quinn
I got married in a C&A suit in 1991
23 March 2014
acidic regulator
The Specials recorded a pretty good song about C&A.
If you ever frequent Yahoo Answers – C&A there means Comics & Animation, which is currently being overrun by Chinese spambots, much to the amusement of those people who think Marissa Mayer is a witch with a capital ‘B’.
23 March 2014
Matt Lee (@mattl)
Still going in Germany too.
5 May 2014
Pirx the purist
Folk etymology derives the name from ‘Coats & ‘Ats’. In actual boring fact, the initials of the founders, the Dutch brothers Clemens & August Brenninkmeijer.
20 April 2019
Brumbiscuit
Quiet day, Pirx? ?
21 April 2019
dr desperate
The second C&A store was in Leeuwarden.
21 April 2019
EXXO
The A-Z is ripe for a ‘chain’ game. For example, I post something in C&A, like for example the second branch in their history was in Leeuwarden (use blockcapitals if you can’t do bold), and off we go, someone else posts something else in Leeuwarden (real facts of genuine public interest, so as not to subvert the A-Z and its march towards truth and beauty), but it must mention another A-Z entry. If you do repeat topic in the game, you’re out.
21 April 2019
EXXO
Wow, I actually posted that before I saw Dr. D’s post!! The game is afoot!
21 April 2019
dr desperate
Now officially the shortest reader-generated, thematically-linked sequence of musically-based items on the Internet.
22 April 2019
EXXO
Not up for it Doc? Would only take 2-3 of us to get it going. The main issue would be where to store/update the ‘archive’ and the ‘rules’ and ‘who is out’ (if someone did an ‘out’ post the previous post would still need to be followed). Another occasional issue (if we were lucky) might be more than one person posting an answer at once – in which case the first one to appear would be the one to follow – making the game difficult for first time-posters.
If nobody’s up for it, it could work as an individual thing for Pirx once he’s gone through them all in alphabetical order.
22 April 2019
Lord leominster
I was led to believe that C&A stood for Cheap & Awful. I was about to suggest that probably accounts for their demise but then I encountered Primark FM.
24 October 2020
Bobby Svarc
Nothing wrong with Primark.
24 October 2020
dr desperate
I never understood why the man at C&A’s was “behind the mask” in those pre-COVID days. Presumably he was selling Nigel’s character his Kojak apparel, in which case “behind the macs” might have made more sense.
There are loads of old ‘Man at C&A’ ads on YouTube, but I haven’t seen one featuring masks.
Too late to ask now, of course.
26 October 2020
lord leominster
@Dr D. In trying to find meaning in “the man behind the mask at C&A” I have tried to find a link between Alexandre Dumas’ The Man In The Iron Mask and Marquis de Sade but I have found no connection other than the incarceration of French noblemen. My thinking was that C&A’s high-street rival Marks and Spencer (no third ‘s’) can be shortened to M&S which, when reversed, becomes S&M which is (I am led to believe, ahem) shorthand for sado-masochism, a practice popularised by the Marquis. C&A reversed become A&C which the urban dictionary tells me is American shorthand for ‘ass and collar’ referring to a method of ejecting undesirables from bars. This is going nowhere but before I abandon it altogether can the findings of better minds make something of this?
27 October 2020
EXXO
It’s just a fusion of a branding slogan “Man at C&A” and a movie/TV/comics trope “Who is the man behind the mask? (Lone Ranger, Zorro, HK Phooey, Batman, tons of horror movies).
You would surely not expect it to be anything too impressive or clever in a lyric which is basically saying “I can’t be arsed singing anything impressive or clever.”
27 October 2020
lord leominster
Ah. That helps. I had it in mind that the character The Man In The Iron Mask might have been based on de Sade, but it wasn’t.
27 October 2020