Occasionally I’ve come across a decent article about Half Man Half Biscuit which I’d never discovered before. You may well have done the same. Anyway, here’s your chance to give the article a small but perfectly-formed little piece of publicity. Feel free to add one you’ve written yourself. (Note: Don’t worry if you don’t know the code to make links work, I’ll tidy it up.)
Chris The Siteowner
I’ll kick things off with An Illustrated Guide To… Half Man Half Biscuit on Sweeping The Nation…
2 May 2009
Chris The Siteowner
…Kevin Sampson’s Taking The Biscuit from The Guardian…
2 May 2009
Chris The Siteowner
…Mike Wade’s fantastic blog entry Dean Friedman bites the Biscuits…
2 May 2009
Chris The Siteowner
…the 2005 career retrospective Half Man Half Biscuit on Spank The Monkey…
2 May 2009
Chris The Siteowner
…and Kicking Against The Pricks!: An Interview with Half Man Half Biscuit by Roger Holland on Popmatters
2 May 2009
Dave F.
Hi Chris
Aren’t these all linked on Gez’s site?
In your first link it claims only two TV appearances. Is that right?
I can think of three at the moment:
OGWT.
Tube
a Saturday morning football show (I forget it’s name)
Any others?
3 May 2009
Chris The Siteowner
I’m sure these articles (and many more) are indeed linked to from Gez’s site, but I started this page so that people can add to the list, which you can’t do on that otherwise admirable resource. Also, the articles will all be listed on one page – finding them on hmhb.co.uk is a rather daunting prospect.
4 May 2009
A J Smith
They famously didn’t actually appear on The Tube though, since they refused a helicopter to speed them away in time to catch Trammere Rovers (or Nigel did anyway). The Football show they were on was Under The Moon. I’m pretty sure that and Whistle Test remain the only 2 TV performances, although the Dickie Davies Eyes video made it to the Chart Show at least once.
9 May 2009
Paul F
I remember that Chart Show edition! The camera focuses on what appears to be a “Romany bint in a field with her paints” but as “she” looks up you see it’s a Dickie-Davies lookalike.
9 May 2009
simon smith
There was the late night ITV live gig filmed at Manchester Academy in 1990 (may have been shown in 1991) with an appearance by Margi Clarke.With Simon Blackwell`s horrid jumper, and tonsure and facefuzz of a 50 year old man, holding sway the original line up played `Our Tune`, `A Lilac Harry Quinn`, `Nerys Hughes/AIWFCIADPAK`, Dickie Davies`, `No Rugrats` and perhaps `Trumpton Riots` (I`ll have to watch it and check)
10 May 2009
Dave F.
No idea why I would have typed The Tube, knowing full well they didn’t play. (Doh!)
I guess I’m thinking of the show you mention Simon, but the HMHB Myspace page lists it as a Granada production so it may not have been shown down here in the West country. If that’s the case, I’m not sure how I would have seen it? It’s also got a fuller set list (down near the bottom).
10 May 2009
Richard
This appeared in the Daily Telegraph last year:
Like Dr Rowan Williams, Half Man Half Biscuit have enriched our culture
Possibly the only time that comparison has ever been made?
15 May 2009
Chris The Siteowner
Great work Gary Parkinson for the finest catalogue of HMHB football references I’ve yet seen on Four-Four-Two’s website.
19 May 2009
Dave F.
For those who aren’t on the Yahoo group:
Irvine Welsh talks about HMHB …and plays JDOG. His bit starts about 00:50.
14 July 2009
Chris The Siteowner
Great one from Cult Cargo which hasn’t been acknowledged yet.
14 July 2009
Chris The Siteowner
Why Half Man Half Biscuit are wholly terrific in the Guardian’s Music Blog: “Witty and dry, sardonic yet never cynical, the lyrics of Half Man Half Biscuit are an undiscovered treasure trove. It’s time this great Birkenhead band got their due”
24 July 2009
Ian in Colorado
The Guardian again comes through, this time from a reader at 11:55am.
1 August 2009
Chris The Siteowner
Nice page-long interview with Nigel in Word Magazine’s September 2009 issue, in a feature listing the magazine’s “Cult Heroes”. It’s the issue with beardy Robert Wyatt on the front.
12 August 2009
Peter Gandy
Chris,
I’ve only just noticed the spine of that issue: “There’s a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets”
5 October 2009
Chris The Siteowner
I found what must be one of the first ever national press articles about the band in an old NME I picked up on eBay. It’s the one with that photo. And here it is.
24 October 2009
PaulLobster
The Sunday Post dated 14/02/2010 featured an article about the Lakes or wherever, and mentions Ambleside and (David) Wainwrights bitter. Further on in the Oor Wullie weekly, Vicky Leandros gets a mention or two, but they mention Corfu as opposed to Kos?
A great read that had me chuckling to myself.
Also has a decent sport section and TV bit which no-doubt had a handfull of other “Celebs” and “A-Lister” thrown in just for good measure.
I wonder if the editor re-alised what he had put into print.
16 February 2010
Chris The Siteowner
As a follow-up to the NME article (above), the mighty eBay has now provided me with an issue of Sounds from a few months later (April 1986) which had the band as their colour centre spread, no less. You want to see it? Aw, go on then:
Full colour spread (now there’s a photo)
Cleaned-up article scan – you may need to zoom in with your browser (“Hairy Diana” anyone?)
3 March 2010
Chris The Siteowner
And from the same April 1986 issue of Sounds, a live review (the band presumably had to play down in London to get one) from a gig at the ICA.
3 March 2010
Chris The Siteowner
Just found this nice interview with Andy Kershaw broadcast from the Brampton Festival in 2006.
18 May 2010
Alan K
Just found these on YouTube, only uploaded this week, from 1991 and 1985.
Video 1
Video 2
Ed’s note: brilliant! The first is a TV session featuring “A Lilac Harry Quinn” and “Our Tune”. The second is a “North West Tonight” report on the band from 1985 which seems to have been squashed but is worth the effort.
18 July 2010
dagenham dave
Good interview with Nigel in the latest Record Collector about ‘Back in the DHSS”.
My favourite quotes being:
“I tried to write lyrics on relationships and love but they ended up sounding like a load of bollocks”
and on their appeal…”My wife thinks the way I sing is also part of it. She describes it as someone shouting one long letter of complaint to the local council, which I suppose it is really”
5 January 2011
James Dodd
Hello,
I recently interviewed Nigel for Bido Lito! Magazine.
Ta very much.
Ed’s Note: the online version is now here.
25 January 2011
Hillary Clinton and Terry Nutkin
Nice illustration. Haven’t heard the Pam Ferris line before so we’ll file it under ‘F’.
25 January 2011
Chris The Siteowner
Not online unless you’re a subscriber to the magazine, but The Word magazine this month (May 2011 issue) has a decent and quite extensive article on Geoff Davies, Probe and Probe Plus.
Update: OK, as it’s a few months after the issue, I’m sure the magazine won’t mind us putting a scan of the article online.
14 April 2011
Fredorrarci
And here’s an interview with Geoff Probe at The Quietus, where there is soon to be an article by Taylor Parkes on HMHB. If his piece on The Fall last year is anything to go by, it’s something to look forward to.
16 April 2011
Chris The Siteowner
In show three of “a six programme history of novelty records” by Carlos Slazenger on Resonance FM in 2010, there’s a chat with Geoff Davies which is worth a listen. Don’t worry, the presenter isn’t classing Half Man Half Biscuit as a novelty act, and takes great pains to point out that HMHB “put humour and satire in music without being a comedy band”.
28 April 2011
Dave Wiggins
Not sure if this review from Buzz magazine has been posted before or should be on the gigs page!
Ed’s note: here would indeed be the right place – the piece seems more like an article than a gig review to me.
7 September 2011
Ben Granger
Here is the above mentioned article by Taylor Parkes on The Quietus – superb, probably the best thing I’ve ever read on them.
30 September 2011
Ben Granger
And here’s my own effort from Spike Magazine back in 2005, tied to coincide with Achtung Bono.
30 September 2011
Rubber Faced Irritant
A fantastic Quietus article worthy of arguably the best website covering new music. But I do feel the need to take issue with the assertion that Excavating Rita features a “grief crazed Betterware salesman”. Given that this character is only able to visit the grave whilst on leave from a secure unit, this sounds implausible (unless it is referring to a previous occupation). Unpalatable as it seems, I think the reference to Betterware is in relation to a means of preventing decomposition or, perish the thought, a method of taking away body parts for consumption.
1 October 2011
Chris The Siteowner
I’m not sure if the 1991 TV appearance mentioned above and which is now on YouTube, ever got a link, so here it is:
Granada TV “The New Sessions” (Part 1) with A Lilac Harry Quinn, Our Tune
Granada TV “The New Sessions” (Part 2) with Prag Vec at the Melkweg, Dickie Davies Eyes
Granada TV “The New Sessions” (Part 3) with All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit, I Hate Nerys Hughes (From the Heart), No Regrets
(All clips uploaded by jimmod123)
19 December 2011
Duchess of Westminster
Nice little recent interview. Apologies if this is up on the site elsewhere (it is – Ed).
This lightened a dark day for me:
Nigel Blackwell’s defining moments – “In no particular order: Realising Tuna was a lot bigger than I’d previously thought (Scarborough Aquatic Museum 1988), my first library fine (abject shame), the incident with Mrs Greatorex, the tragedy that was Crisp in the 1973 Grand National, reading Odd John by Olaf Stapledon, realising I’d ‘grown out of lemon curd’, sharing a taxi with Doctor Thomas Wessinhage, getting into Plainmoor on a Tuesday night when they had an away fan ban, childhood holidays in Llanbedrog and shouting out “It’s a fucking cartoon!”* in a Porthmadog cinema when Bambi’s mother died. These are the things… (*-still feel bad about this)”
18 May 2012
Chris The Siteowner
The Word magazine interview with NB10 from March 2004 has been posted on the rather excellent WholeHoggBlog, which is going through the issues of that late lamented magazine, one by one. You can find it here.
I’ve also archived the scan here.
2 September 2015
paul f
Cheers Chris – good interview.
2 September 2015
Richard k
Great interview, terrible caption of Neil (sic) and Nigel. First man in Wallasey to get those two mixed up.
3 September 2015
Chris The Siteowner
“How Half Man Half Biscuit have forged a career mocking middle-class idiocy” – Julie Burchill in the New Statesman, March 2016.
4 March 2016
Paul f
Here’s a 2011 online article that we appear to have missed by (not the) Richard O’Brien.
9 March 2016
dr desperate
‘Parataxis’ is good.
9 March 2016
paul f
He also deserves merit for linking to this site and Gez’s.
9 March 2016
Chris The Siteowner
Half Man Half Biscuit And A Very British Odyssey
The Big Issue
June 6, 2016
Indie-pop survivors Half Man Half Biscuit inspire incredible devotion amongst their fans. Peter Ross finds out why…
This is a love story from B-road Britain; from unsung towns and unsung lives. Roger Green, a 53-year-old accountant, lives near Pontefract. Karen Carter is a 40-something civil servant from Nottinghamshire. They’ve been together for the last couple of years, having met during a Half Man Half Biscuit concert at the Holmfirth Picturedrome (below the pair are pictured outside the venue). This bright cold spring day is a sort of anniversary; the group having returned to the pretty West Yorkshire village for one of the handful of shows they play each year. Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca would always have Paris; Roger and Karen will always have Holmfirth. “Half Man Half Biscuit,” she says, “are just the best band in the world.” (continued)
6 June 2016
Bobby SVARC
“I had lost the power to speak,”……They still hold regular parties in Barwell celebrating the day it happened.
6 June 2016
Brumbiscuit
Nigel’s comments about playing live confirm what I’ve noticed at several gigs. He has really seemed in some mental anguish at times; eyes tight shut and belting out a number as if he’d rather be anywhere else, but carries on regardless.
6 June 2016
Gary Parkinson
Just to say we rejigged the FourFourTwo site and the HMHB piece is now at https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/half-football-half-rock-all-genius. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had writing a piece, and it came to mind because this morning (as Christmas rumbles nearer) we got sent a vintage Dukla Prague away kit…
25 October 2017
Chris The Siteowner
An oldie: interview by the Liverpool post-punk poet Tony Chestnut Brown from an 80s fanzine called Pulps Pulpa…
Part One
Part Two
(Thanks Facebook and Dr D)
25 October 2017
dr desperate
Another oldie, originally from the Tranmere Rovers Supporters Trust website.
A bit more detail on that Tube helicopter, some on other transport arrangements (including the colour and registration of Nigel’s dad’s Ford Anglia) and a lot on TR.
The band name ‘Roughs With Sticks’ (and stones) is a line from Tess of the d’Urbervilles, so may be a Blackwellism.
I particularly enjoyed the quote from the anti-slavery senator Charles Sumner:
“Give me the money that has been spent in war, and I will clothe every man, woman and child in an attire of which Kings and Queens would be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole Earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to the gospel of peace”.
And Nigel’s comment: “You could even replace the word “war” with “Cup Final Catering”.”
https://www.foxestalk.co.uk/topic/19465-half-man-half-biscuit-interview-with-nigel-blackwell/
(Archived off here – Chris)
25 October 2017
Paul F
Good read that Dr D. Holly Park was my local non-league ground as a kid, and my grandma lived in the old folks’ flats over-looking the ground. I remember going there for the filming of “Cup Final It’s a Knockout” in 1977 (the result did not bode well for the match itself). Also worth noting that the Anglia concerned giving up the ghost would have been doing so very close to its place of “birth” as it were – well within walking distance of Holly Park.
25 October 2017
EXXO
Sharing some further local knowledge that may be of use to others in gaining their his own wry smile from the Blackwellism (or more likely pulling the wings off a butterfly for you), Caldy is of course very posh, and Roughs with Sticks would doubtless be Calday Grange alumni like OMD & members of The Coral. The sort of West Wirral people who would see Prentonians as ‘Roughs with Sticks’.
25 October 2017
warden hodges
Re Paul F.
A graffiti I read in a Dale Street pub a (good) few years back read ‘ The South shall rise again’. They never did…sadly.
26 October 2017
dr desperate
As we recall, the ‘Roughs With Sticks’ blue vinyl OSA ‘Fuck Off Mr Chips’ featured on the inlay card for ‘CSI:A’.
26 October 2017
bobby svarc
The brilliant Steve Hardstaff
26 October 2017
Paul F
@WH – Give it time – the name lives on at Jericho Lane. I fervently hope your graffito (surely a Biscuiteer should know better than to type “a graffiti”…) is an accurate prediction of the fate of the club rather than the Confederacy. https://www.theonion.com/south-postpones-rising-again-for-yet-another-year-1819565548
26 October 2017
EXXO
Irrelevant trivia to dull the pain of not googling and having to think about real stuff: when the original South Liverpool FC upped & moved to New Brighton in 1921 they played their 3rd Divsion (North) games for about 15 seasons at Rake Lane, an area dear to Mr. Carl Henry I believe. They were blitzed out of there and played at New Brighton Tower after the war, but were still always known as ‘The Rakers’.
The South Liverpool & New Brighton ‘phoenix’ clubs were briefly in the same league about 6 years ago just before the latter ceased to exist once again.
26 October 2017
transit full of keith
So … I was looking through an online archive of Smash Hits magazine, definitely not looking for a particular double page spread of the Bangles that made some kind of impression on me aged 13, and I chanced on this:
https://archive.org/stream/smash-hits-12-25-february-1986#page/n5/mode/2up
It’s not a very good article, but I think it’s the second earliest one on this thread. Funny magazine, Smash Hits which was always trying to smuggle a bit of the Fall or the Pogues in amongst the Duran Duran and the Bananarama, quite a noble enterprise really.
11 December 2018
kittymc
There is nothing on this earth that could ever budge me from the conviction that Smash Hits, at its peak, was a work of genius. Half Man Half Biscuit were referenced more than once, that’s for sure. I used to await its fortnightly release with massive anticipation. It was joyful. I used to wade through the NME around this time, and that was hard and unfruitful work, in retrospect. Smash Hits gave us ‘Dame David Bowie’ and ‘Fab Macca Thumbs Aloft’, both of which still make me chuckle quietly to myself to this day, even in these dark times. I won a Beastie Boys album and shop display in a Smash Hits competition in 1987. I’m bragging now, because I’m remembering what fun it was …Oh my God … I AM GERALDINE!
15 December 2018
kittymcdermott
Correction: Fab Macca Wacky Thumbs Aloft
(I think this was round the time Smash Hits also reported on Macca throwing a wobbler when the teachers were on strike, too… Think he wanted a medal for sending them to state school. Oh, halcyon days!)
16 December 2018
dr desperate
Just come across this Echo piece by Paddy Shennan from 2005, following the release of Achtung Bono. Exxo posted it on the Liverpool FC Forum and I can’t recall having read it here, though I probably have.
SINCE the last time we interviewed Nigel Blackwell, singer with Half Man Half Biscuit, he has been voted 57th Greatest Ever Merseysider by ECHO readers and Radio Merseyside listeners.
Nice one, Nigel – admittedly, you couldn’t compete with a dead horse (Red Rum, 15), but at least you raced clear of the likes of Stan Boardman (59), Bunnyman Ian McCulloch (62) and Jimmy Tarbuck (a lowly 99). Pretty good going for someone who is so keen to preserve his anonymity, for fear people might stop him in Kwik Save and say: “Hey! Aren’t you the 57th Greatest Ever Merseysider?”
He says: “Obviously the whole thing was a bit silly, but it did at least astound my parents, whom I feel had hitherto deemed me a bit of a tramp. Which I am of course.”
More likely to take to the stage in Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle or Glasgow than “over the water”, the Biscuits are about to play their first Liverpool gig for seven years – and that last one was their first in the city for six years.
Previously, Nigel revealed: “It’s just that thing about playing in front of everyone I know – I’m not a natural performer.” Now he says:: “I didn’t realise it was seven years. There isn’t any interesting reason for that I’m afraid. We’ve not played Hereford for 12 years!”
The gig, at the Carling Academy, coincides with National Peel Day, but the singer explains: “The date was fixed quite a while back, so it’s an absolute coincidence – but an excellent one.”
John Peel loved HMHB and the late, much-missed broadcaster once said of the band’s gifted lyricist: “He’s a shrewd observer of life and genuinely funny – a man who rejoices in the use of language”. Nigel loved Peel, too, and says: “What is often overlooked about him is his writing, although his forthcoming book should go some way to redressing the balance. And he was someone who had the attitude of ‘F**k the visitor centre, let them explore’ – I don’t know why Radio One doesn’t just simply replay a load of his old shows.”
As for Nigel’s shrewd observations and rejoicing in the use of language, there’s a new body of evidence on the latest HMHB CD, entitled – sorry, U2 fans – Achtung Bono.
What kind of mind is it, for example, that marries a seminal band with an everyday household item – producing the classic track ‘Joy Division Oven Gloves’ (sample line: “Nero fiddles while Gordon Burns – in his Joy Division Oven Gloves”). Nigel, who’s fond of telling big fibs in his rare interviews (he once told The Guardian there was a HMHB tribute band called ‘It Ain’t Half Man, Mum’) says: “I received the idea for this song from a powerful inspirational force that comes from somewhere outside myself – a theory of creation somewhat similar to that of the poet Shelley. Or possibly our drummer wrote it.”
‘Letters Sent’, meanwhile, celebrates the letters pages of local newspapers. But does Nigel believe those people who pen made-up, mickey-taking missives have got too much time on their hands? (see CD’s inner sleeve for examples) Or should it, instead, be an Olympic sport? “To be fair, it’s probably a tragic reflection of my life. I merely got to wondering one day how many letters of an equine nature I could get printed in the local freesheet and it sort of went on from there.”
Then there’s the sublime ‘For What Is Chatteris’, which isn’t intended as an insult to the Cambridgeshire town, whatever its local paper might think.
Of its inspiration, Nigel says (fibs?): “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.”
And what’s Merseyside if Half Man Half Biscuit aren’t in it?
Sep 30 2005
Paddy Shennan, Liverpool Echo
15 November 2020
dr desperate
In point of fact, Nigel wasn’t fibbing about his source for the title of ‘Chatteris’ – though Frankie Baldwin’s line from Coronation St referred to Chingford, not Dagenham.
There’s a Corrie fansite here where, believe it or not, every episode is discussed in microscopic detail by a bunch of pedants – the line that normal people will be interested in (“What’s Chingford if you’re not in it?”) comes towards the end of the Monday 7 June 2004 transcription.
http://www.corrie.net/updates/episode/2004/0406.html
15 November 2020
EXXO
Fairly sure the 2018 book “Scouse Pop” by Paul Skellen has never been mentioned on here. The book contains plenty of interesting stuff from interviews with Merseyside musicians.
Pages 38-41 deal with HMHB, but because NB didn’t agree to an interview, there is little more than an overview of the Lads’ oeuvre. The most interesting bits are when the last of the four pages features a misunderstanding of the irony of ‘Look Dad No Tunes,’ plus a sentence quoted from Karl (about Nigel, while the author is trying to get an interview with someone from the band) that hasn’t been published elsewhere.
30 April 2021
EXXO
I only posted that comment because my second link was to a pdf of the chapter in question – which is available on the University of Chester website (under “Scouse Pop”) with the author’s permission – but I see the link has disappeared from my comment. Was there a problem with the pdf link, Chris?
Anyway when people find the pdf it’s pages 10-13 (which are pages 38-41 of the book)
30 April 2021
Chris The Siteowner
Yes, your link was to a file on your own computer. Nice one.
30 April 2021
EXXO
Blimey. I didn’t even know I’d downloaded it. Anyway, folks, it’s there on the University of Chester website and – if fate decrees – you’ll find it.
30 April 2021
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Good job, because if you’d posted the right link, I wouldn’t have googled it, and wouldn’t have found he’d also done a set of TV interviews around his research here:
https://www1.chester.ac.uk/recap/research-projects-and-case-studies/scouse-pop
… episode 2 of which starts starts with a pleasant 25 minutes in Geoff Davis’s company.
30 April 2021
EXXO
One step ahead (you meddling kids). I was gonna post that there was a youtube channel but that I hadn’t watched any yet.
30 April 2021
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Lovely interview, although HMHB only make an appearance about three minutes from the end.
30 April 2021
Chris The Siteowner
Don’t think this has been mentioned: Half Man Half Biscuit and the depths of Tranmere Rovers loyalty by Ryan Ferguson (2019).
3 May 2021
Mike Singleton – Mikeydred
A article I wrote on the poetic genius of Nigel Blackwell , hope this is OK
https://vocal.media/beat/the-poetic-genius-of-nigel-blackwell?via=mike
1 November 2021
EXXO
Great stuff Mike. See you at a gig some time.
2 November 2021
Chris The Siteowner
This one has been around before, but I can’t find a link to it on this page, so here it is, thanks to Dalliance68 on Twitter:
5 January 2022
Alice van der meer
Please tell me that tthe Oxford ice rink story isn’t one of Nigel’s wind-ups!
5 January 2022
Natalie at the back
Me and my girl, out on the ice…..
6 January 2022
transit full of keith
@Alice:
I’d heard the ice rink story somewhere else, then later I saw someone on Twitter post a thing from an auction site including an old HMHB gig poster with it listed.
Can’t find that listing but I have found the poster – October 19 1991, Oxford Ice Rink:
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/half-man-half-biscuit-poster-244784400
6 January 2022
EXXO
I recently asked Mr. B what were his memories of their worst-attended gig and he immediately said that Oxford Ice Rink one. There was apparently some sort of mix-up where the promoter booked them assuming they were a dance act. There was another DJ or DJs lined up so they got on early and got out. If there was fewer than the Leeds Irish Centre in 2000 then it really was sparse.
8 April 2022
Neil
Many years ago we played Derby and that was poorly attended.
8 April 2022
dr Desperate
One of my earlier musical obsessions was a pick-up band containing members of various combos, playing residencies in diverse taverns around South Manchester. Their line-up often reached double figures; the crowd occasionally didn’t.
One night the singer said, “I’d like to introduce you to the band – lads, this is John, this is Kevin…”
9 April 2022
BOBBY SVARC
The Half Time Orange, very sparse crowd.
9 April 2022
Chris The Siteowner
A few recent – or recently found – articles not previously listed on this page:
27 April 2022