More HMHB in the Media

This is a continuing story. See the first eight years of our ‘HMHB in the Media’ page here.

Our page for any mentions of HMHB you see in print, radio, TV, online or just anywhere in the outside world, really…

Letters Sent (637)

parsfan

Re: ‘Some Men All Biscuit’ tribute show…

First of all – apologies, no video or even photos.

I don’t think I’ve ever been to see a tribute band before and I’m not really sure what my expectations were going into this, but a mate counted himself out last month as he didn’t fancy karaoke. I never expected anything as bad as that but there was a soundcheck of sorts while we were queuing and, through a couple of walls, the band sounded pretty ropey.

The venue is pretty small, about 100-110 seated, but it was full with a few more standing at the back. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, and exaggerating how small the crowd was, but I’m sure there was more here than at the Penzance gig in 2005.

The guy behind it all, and continuity announcer, was Alexis Dubus. I’m not 100% sure on the band but the guitarist seemed to go by the name of Silky and the drummer, ie a guy banging a box, was possibly called Gus (and supported the lads at one of the Edinburgh gigs a few years ago). They’d contacted Geoff about doing the show, got no reply so took that as approval.

A simple set up, Alexis did some chat and intros, someone got up and stumbled their way through a song, usually getting half the words wrong.

If all that makes it sound shit, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It certainly wasn’t a Biscuits gig but it was a great way to spend an hour, a really good laugh and refreshing to see see and hear so many folk get up on stage praising the band. I think most of the folk there knew them and the songs, most of the rest will be searching them out.

A few folk had pulled out, I’ve forgotten who, but no complaints as they were mostly replaced by Attila The Stockbroker who’d read about it in the programme and made sure he got involved. A random from the crowd volunteered for JDOG.

Lots of good stuff but the highlight was Lloyd Langford, possibly on his birthday, being called up from the crowd and being given the words to Breaking News. What a fabulous job he did too. The Commodores lines completely baffled him so he did it once, twice, three times, singing the last two. He still didn’t get it.

Paul McCaffrey – DPAK
James Cook – Bad Review
Steve ? – Len Ganley
Attila The Stockbroker – Lord Hereford’s Knob
Alexis Dubus – Surging Out Of Convalescence
Peter Buckley-Hill – Fred Titmus
Lloyd Langford – Breaking News
Attila The Stockbroker – Friday Night
Vincent/Rupert – JDOG
Alexis Dubus – spoken excerpt from Mileage Chart & Slipknot

17 August 2016

kennyp

I was at the Edinburgh “gig” this afternoon. Venue was like a sauna and the show was chaotic, shambolic and woefully out of tune most of the time……………………but it was brilliant fun.

The organiser, Alexis Dubus, was obviously a big fan of the band, and the guys who’d turned up made a great effort, even if most of them now know there’s no future career in music for them. However everyone had a great laugh, plenty cash was raised for Shelter and the singalong for the finale (Vatican Broadside) was as good as most proper gigs.

Hopefully they’ll do it again next year.

17 August 2016

dr desperate

Thanks very much for that, @PF/KP. Looks like a decent setlist (was it… no, I mustn’t).
Shame we won’t get to see it, but the legend will live on, long after other living legends have died.
(On a point of information, Lloyd Langford’s birthday is 6th August.)

18 August 2016

EXXO

Many thanks for the reports Paul & Kenny.

Have had a few distractions lately but will get back in touch with the rather more accomplished musicians of Half Arsed Half Biscuit about that proposed gig in Leeds.

18 August 2016

Chris The Siteowner

This just in from Alexis, the show’s organiser:

So…. it happened.
It was a lovely shambles but it happened.

After some last-minute dropouts (band included), we cobbled a show together and ended up getting 150+ people into the little Ballroom venue at Voodoo Rooms.

We had Scouse comic Silky on guitar and Gus Lymburn on a cajon board (Gus once supported HMHB at Liquid Rooms, apparently his band died horribly).

Set list was:
Paul McCaffrey – Dukla Prague
James Cook – Bad Review
Seymour Mace – Len Ganley Stance (bloke in the crowd got up afterwards and gave us a great stance)
Attila The Stockbroker (who turned up at the back) – an impromptu a capella Lord Hereford’s Knob
Me – Surging Out Of Convalescence
Peter Buckley Hill – Fuckin’ Ell It’s Fred Titmus
Lloyd Langford (a brilliant Welsh comic in the crowd who I recently converted to HMHB during our tour of New Zealand) – Breaking News (I got him up as I thought it would sound great in a Welsh accent. It did. He’d never heard the track and stumbled through it wonderfully)
Attila The Stockbroker – Friday Night
Vincent Lynch – a guy in the front row who I happened to know – got up to replace an act who was meant to be doing JDOG. Did admirably.
Finale: an unnecessarily florid and lengthy but hilarious intro from Silky into a rousing Vatican Broadside.

We raised £471.68 for Shelter and it was the most fun I’ve had all Fringe.

Never heard back from Geoff at Probe Plus, but a guy afterwards who knows him assured me he and the band knew about it and gave it their blessing. Suggested I give Geoff a bell today, which I will. A warm, generous crowd, and there have been many calls for a repeat next year. Probably won’t be taking my own shows up next year, but may well head there just to do this.

18 August 2016

Bobby SVARC

Teach em young, that’s what I say. We always have a quick sing of Vatican Broadside every Sunday before tea.

https://postimg.org/image/f4fjf9r89/

20 August 2016

warden hodges

The poor lad. It’s OK for us knackered middle-aged guys. ha.

20 August 2016

Bobby SVARC

“New” Album Out – 21st October

12 September 2016

Chris The Siteowner

“A gathering of hard-to-find tracks only previously available on long-deleted releases”

One for the CD completists! Come back here nearer the time and I’ll put a big pop-up or something like that on the site, so that you can order it from Probe Plus directly, rather than any tax-avoiding virtual megastore.

Here’s the reverse side of the CD.

And here’s the page for the CD, for further discussion…

12 September 2016

gipton teenager

I’m sure I hear Mark Steel on Wednesday night on Radio 4 mention something about a bloke throwing up and somebody saying ‘Leave that, it’ll win a Turner prize’ or something like that. I was driving at the time and concentrating on the road, like we’re supposed to, but that was the general gist.

16 September 2016

paul f

I caught that as well – rather by accident as I rarely listen to Radio 4 except for TMS.

16 September 2016

MISTER TUBBS

It looks as if Cold Feet actor Robert Bathurst is another fan of the band. In today’s television pull out in the Daily M**l, in the inside back page question and answer section, his reply to “The poem that touches your soul…” – “I love the lyrics to songs by the rock group Half Man Half Biscuit, especially 24 Hour Garage People. I put on their music loud when I’m feeling low – they’re so funny it cheers me up”

17 September 2016

dr desperate

In ‘My Perfect Weekend’ in The Daily T*l*gr*ph in 2011 he listed a few of his Favourite Things, including:
Sleeper trains in India
Garlic
A double bill of Christy Moore and Half Man Half Biscuit.

(I don’t think there ever has been a double bill of Christy Moore and Half Man Half Biscuit.)

17 September 2016

dr desperate

Although, blow me, when I come to check they did share a bill at Glastonbury (q v) in 1986.
http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/glasto-advert-1986.jpg

17 September 2016

Ted

Listening to the Times football podcast “The Game” this week and they introduced a football writer (Ollie Kay) and asked him if he owned an aga.

He did, though it’s not known whether he uses it.

21 September 2016

GIpton teenager

On page 35 of the Grauniad Giude on Saturday some DJ called Paul Wolford gives a nod to the boys and NSD in particular. It’s sandwiched between Miles Davis and Neil Diamond. Which is maybe a bit odd. I can’t do the link-ey thing

28 September 2016

dr desperate

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/sep/23/paul-woolford-favourite-tracks

28 September 2016

GIpton teenager

Yes that link-ey thing. Thanks Dr D

28 September 2016

Chris Smith

As a family we watch the daily American You-tube show Good Mythical Morning. A recent episode featured a game in which the object was to guess whether unlikely- sounding band names were real or made up. Our heroes were featured. There was also a degree of irony about the cover they chose to display when they revealed the truth. Here is a link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3xsO1lY8XY
Enjoy

29 September 2016

dr desperate

Excellent, @Chris, I enjoyed.

29 September 2016

rubber faced irritant

Half Dude, Half Cookie. That’s what I’m calling them from now on.

30 September 2016

rubber faced irritant

Half Dude, Half Cookie. That’s what I’m calling them from now on.

30 September 2016

Hendrix-tat

Good Stuff@Ctso.
Loved the You Tube clip.

30 September 2016

TOASTKID

Yeah, that was surprisingly funny actually. Didn’t take themselves too seriously, unlike many “Tubers” as I believe the kids call them nowadays.

3 October 2016

parsfan

The singer out of Slipknot…on QI, just started. I wonder…

4 November 2016

hendrix-tattoo

Watched a documentary earlier about the construction of the Grand Coulee dam and this picture was shown.
http://images.popmatters.com/news_art/w/woody-guthrie_2-620.jpg

5 November 2016

John Anderson

There’s an honourable mention for HMHB in this (not wildly enlightening) piece about the relationship between music and football:

http://tinyurl.com/hs3u2sf

15 November 2016

EXXO

It’s interesting that since the point when that article stops, over 20 years ago now, the orthodoxy of the relationship between music and football industries that was established around that time hasn’t really changed and it’s surely the Soccer AM Sofa which symbolises that orthodoxy more perfectly than anything. No half decent update of that article could avoid a mention of R&RIFOBW and of the fact that for HMHB and for half decent football fans of our generation, the relationship has not really changed.

15 November 2016

EXXO

I think, with the great benefits of hindsight, that what the author misses is the HUGE cultural (and therefore commercial) gap that was waiting to be filled in the eighties for those of us who, unlike the kind of effete music fans he represents, had always loved both football and music but who felt the lack of connection between the two almost painfully, above all in the early eighties when the scalls started wearing all that daft kiddyish sportswear shit and we were there in our DMs and trenchcoats to go to a helf-decent pub or gig afterwards.

15 November 2016

BOBBY SVARC

Stony T-Shirt OUT SOON

http://probe-plus.co.uk/index.php/news

17 November 2016

EXXO

Best – dare I say “most iconic” ( of course you do – ed.) – HMHB t-shirt since the motorway sign.

17 November 2016

BOBBY SVARC

Just heard from Geoff, T-Shirts are one sale tomorrow night. Why Aye.

17 November 2016

BOBBY SVARC

There’s no e.

17 November 2016

EXXO

@Svarco further to comment #942 in the old media thread
Been a good couple of days for my father & son team-mates, beating the world #7 and the world #3 (slight NB10 lookalike) respectively.
Won a few quid on both too.

27 November 2016

Bobby svarc

Very good, I watched the boy Trump lose. Can’t be doing with Robertson. BTW 20/1 is still available for the drop.

27 November 2016

BOBBY SVARC

@Exxo: Old Father Lines got beat today.

28 November 2016

EXXO

That our Carrie Anne getting ‘King of Hi Viz’ on the wireless just now? Good work.

8 December 2016

CARRIE ANNE

Thank you @Exxo, I am the guilty party.

8 December 2016

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

Simon Mayo just had a phone in caller from Chatteris. His immediate response to her location was to quote in full the first verse of FWIC – caller had never heard it and so he promised/threatened to recite the other verses after her requested record. Unfortunately my car journey ended so I can’t say whether he did or not.

(I like to think that someone someday will phone in on his “all-request Friday” for an HMHB song, but I’ve never yet heard anyone)

21 December 2016

hendrix-tattoo

@GWA, I think Simon Mayo is a fan of HMHB because he has mentioned the band a few times in the past.
Not a fan of radio 2, However my works van radio would only transmit this station so I had no choice but to listen.
Don’t have this problem now, Due to a HMHB compilation C.D being stuck because it won’ t eject.
The songs are from a Roger Green review from the Cardiff Tramshed setlist and that’s all I can play.

21 December 2016

John Stevens

I did get through last year on “all request Friday” but they wouldn’t play Chatteris. If it was covered by ELO or Queen, it might have half a chance.

21 December 2016

Chris The Siteowner

The likeable Mr Mayo has been reciting his party piece for years, and indeed it was the subject of the very first comment in this section of the site over 8 years ago. I haven’t heard a lot from him to suggest that his knowledge of the band extends too much further though.

21 December 2016

parsfan

I got it played on Radio Scotland’s themed request show, Get It On, a couple of years ago, but probably only because Vic Galloway was doing it that day not the normal guy.

Had a few mentions over the years, they seemed to like the idea of Nove On The Sly, but not enough to play it.

22 December 2016

Chris The Siteowner

I’d been meaning to post this one for a while. It’s in the collection of John Peel’s writings, The Olivetti Chronicles. I’m guessing it was one of the most significant early mentions of the band in the national press.

Half Man Half Biscuit
Observer, 26 January 1986

‘ME MAM DIDN’T KNOW I was in a band until month ago,’ said Nigel Blackwell, rhythm guitarist and singer with Merseyside’s Half Man Half Biscuit, teen sensations that are, as we disc-jockeys yell, sweeping the nation.

The band had walked to the pub from Bristol’s Tropic Club past a queue which ran down the stairs, out of the door, up the street and around the corner. ‘I should be queuing with them,’ mused Nigel, faintly embarrassed by this palpable evidence of demi-Biscuitmania.

In the pub, poet turning singer Jeggsy Dodd shuffled paper, selecting a set suitable to the time and the place. His best material includes a piece called ‘Wine Bar Man’, firmly nailing the brutes with the Dickie Davies haircuts and shirts ‘open to the knees’, and some musings on Manchester United manager Ron Atkinson.

Half Man Half Biscuit’s opening shot was the unequivocal ‘It’s Fred Titmus’, reflections on the feelings engendered by coming face-to-face with celebrities in the supermarket, and a track from the LP Back in the DHSS. The eager consumers bellowed the title each time it occurred and some foolhardy spirits at the front slam-danced beneath the perplexed gaze of two bouncers.

‘Jesus Christ, come on down!’ roared Nigel, introducing ‘99% of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd’. Half Man Half Biscuit’s cultural references are spot on, characters drawn from your least favourite television programmes, settings from children’s television’s Trumpton and Chigley.

Their lyrics are the first genuinely and consistently funny pop lyrics since Viv Stanshall wrote for the Bonzo Dog Band, and they are set to unexpectedly memorable tunes, the whole rendered in a manner more appropriate to rehearsal than to performance. Somehow this is as it should be.

At the Tropic Club, most of the songs came from the LP or from a session recorded for Radio 1. The latter yielded forth the superb ‘Trumpton Riots’ and ‘All I Want For Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit’. There were newer songs, too, presumably titles from the impending EP, including an excruciatingly tasteless song about the late Hattie Jacques.

The set ended with the rowdy ‘I Hate Nerys Hughes’, and the band shuffled awkwardly offstage. A minute later they shuffled awkwardly back again as a section of the crowd chanted, somewhat enigmatically, ‘Keith Chegwin, Keith Chegwin,’ to perform ‘The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine’, a title best known in its version by Laurel and Hardy.

It would be difficult to predict the future for Half Man Half Biscuit, for in success could lie the seeds of their own destruction. Perhaps it is enough, as Nigel seemed to think, that they have recorded ‘Back In The DHSS’. In Bristol they were a tonic, giving me my best night out in years. You must see them.

23 December 2016

CHARLES EXFORD

Nice one CtSO.

Neil used to get that ‘Keith Chegwin’ chant everywhere.

I suppose ‘cos Peel would have worked with Chegwin a lot he would be less likely to see a ‘celebrity lookalike’.

23 December 2016

CHARLES EXFORD

By the way may I just congratulate you on not giving the ‘HBHB on the Chain‘ feature a comments facility. If it had one, I’d be there every day moaning about how hard it is to get HMHB on that show, despite the fact that any record in the world, anywhere, ever, always has several possible HMHB links.

Today will be the umpteenth time I’ve tried to get ‘Depressed Beyond Tablets’ on. William Bloke to William Blake kind of thing.

If only more editors would remove the comments facilities from their features it would stop certain people monopolising the internet with their irritating rants and rambling reminiscences.

Yours,
Charles Exford Esq,
Hughes Lane,
Oxton.

23 December 2016

hendrix-tattoo

Can’t believe it’s been 30 years since that John Peel review. Thanks@CtSO.
How he describes what a tonic they were when he first saw them.
Comparing NB to Viv Stanshall of Bonzo for genuinely consistently funny pop lyrics, and also the mention of the foolhardy spirits of the mosh to the perplexed gaze of two bouncers.
And the quote ‘for in success could lie the seeds of their own destruction’
Excellent stuff.

I would also like to hear’ Wine Bar Man’ by Jeggsy Dodd@Exxo’s posted you-tube clip has given me the taste to hear more of the fella, maybe @Charles could tell me what album WBM is on and then I can buy it from Geoff.
I first seen HMHB in 87′ after my mate got some tickets free from his college and I went along with him at one of the Salford Uni’s. Can’t remember much, both of us was drunk.

30 years of foolhardy spirits….

24 December 2016

Bobby svarc

You can get the CD ‘The Probe Plus Years’ by Jegsy Dodd from Geoff, I bet he’s a few in stock still.

Visit http://www.probe-plus.co.uk. it will blow your mind

24 December 2016

Bobby svarc

‘The Probe Plus Stuff’ and not years

24 December 2016

hendrix-tattoo

Thanks@Bobby….

24 December 2016

CHARLES EXFORD

So anyway @myself (comment #46 above, and another one ages ago when CtSO first mentioned The Chain on here and I postulated that they weren’t too favourable to HMHB)…

I had loads of time on me hands in December and did try to get HMHB on the chain 2-3 times a day for a month, to no avail.

As soon as I give up and try another of my favourite lyricists, yesterday, lo and behld, I get on the bloody wireless:

1.11.40 (ish) into yesterday’s show it was:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08651b1#play

So while I was waiting I said to the producer “do you get too many HMHB suggestions, or worry that there’s going to be swearing, or something?”

And he said “Possibly, but it’s not normally me that chooses them.”

4 January 2017

paul f

The band have been featured 7 times on the Chain which is quite impressive when you compare it with some more mainstream acts (eg Elton John with 5, Status Quo with 6, George Harrison with 7). I guess the difference is that HMHB’s lyrics lend themselves to connections which makes us think every connection should be HMHB. The one time I tried, I didn’t even get a mention when the song was chosen, because so many people had responded to the rather obvious Junior Kickstart connection. I suspect that a concerted campaign like yours would always be in danger of backfiring though.

4 January 2017

paul f

I did however once get on to suggest the Chemical Brothers “Hey Boy, Hey Girl” as a link from Run DMC’s “You be Illin'”.

4 January 2017

CHARLES EXFORD

Well I shall desist entirely now that the dreaded word ‘campaign’ has been used. An average of less than once a year on The Chain however is not enough for Our Lads though more than enough for most of the other acts you mention.

Interestingly the last HMHB record they played, not on the Chain, on their last festive show before Xmas was described as the “inordinately popular” ‘All I Want for Xmas’, so they’d had a lot of requests for it but seemed almost reluctant to play it.

4 January 2017

Paul f

“Inordinate”?! The cheeky beggars.

4 January 2017

CARRIE ANNE

That is interesting stuff @CharlesExford, I’m beginning to suspect there has been an internal memo circulating 6 Music, warning the presenters about requests for our beloved band’s songs.
Last week, Nemone, whilst sitting in for the unlistenable Keaveny, read out my earworm suggestion of Everything’s AOR, and then asked “What is it with HMHB? Yet another HMHB earworm!”. And this morning, Chris Hawkins stated that our heroes are probably the most requested band on the station. If they are now blacklisted, then I’m afraid I’m partly to blame. Last year he played two of my 5.15 requests, Restless Legs and the aforementioned EAOR, but I’ve asked for numerous others. Sorry.

5 January 2017

dr desperate

The Irish HMHB tribute band Half Arsed Half Biscuit are at it again, playing a gig at Fred Zeppelin’s in Cork on 11.2.17. Tickets on sale here. https://halfarsedhalfbiscuit.wordpress.com/
Perhaps we could get some video this time?

5 January 2017

EXXO

@John: been assuming I won’t be able to get to Cork due to (a) skintness and/or (b) maybe work overseas. As the time approaches (a) is ever more assured but (b) hasn’t happened yet. I do notice there’s a flight back early enough on the Sunday to make not having to pay for a bed over there a realistic possibility. I’d say 30% chance of me being there. If I am, I’ll take a video cam and maybe negotiations to bring HAHB to these shores can begin.

Anyway, I notice that Niall needs to sell a certain number of tickets in advance to make the gig viable – maybe we could contact Niall and say if they publish a vid we’ll all chip in a Euro?

6 January 2017

EXXO

Just listening again to the Hitchers’ excellent 1997 Peel session and reading their Wikipedia page, I notice that sleeve notes for one of Niall’s releases refer to a probably imaginary LP called ‘Javier Clemente is Pulling Off his Captain’ (just in case anybody doubted this fella had the right vibe for a HMHB tribute).

6 January 2017

Chris The Siteowner

They should crowdfund a video, I’m sure we could get the requisite backing between here and the Facebook group, even if the results were made available for free whether you supported it or not.

6 January 2017

zedsquared

The last record on The Chain was “The heretic Anthem” by Slipknot … there’s an obvious shoe-in (shoo-in?) if only swearing were allowed on the BBC.

6 January 2017

paul f

Incidentally – has nobody mentioned yet the connection that every single Chain “link” has to the boys? Gordon Burns (qv) saying “The Chain” before each one.

6 January 2017

Irish Niall

Hi to all and thanks to Chris for stopping by the wordpress –which I’m hopeless with by the way. I approved your comment Chris and I’m still not sure it’s showing. I’ve a bit of formatting and practice to do.

HAHB will endeavour to video and post at least some of the Cork show. It’s a long set so it’d chew up the GBs on my cameras SD card pretty quickly –even at basic quality. But we’ll do our best.
The crowdfund is an interesting idea. I might go with a more modest ‘donate’ button for now. Maybe we could aspire to TBAs greatness and take requests in exchange.

Thanks also for the kind words re my old unit The Hitchers. Our first UK release was 20 years ago yesterday which is horribly sobering.

One George Hamilton who does the live commentary on Irelands international games gets the credit for the Javier Clemente quip. Proving you can’t make up the best ones and also that it aint just his co-commentator Beglin who needs bricking up George blurted that out one night in Seville where the Spanish captain Butragueno was having a nightmare trying to cope with the attentions of the Irish midfield (chief malefactors amongst whom being a 21 year old Roy Keane and a uncharacteristically fleet-footed Andy Townsend). The board went up, George gasped a gasp and exclaimed. Actually I think he prefaced it with words to the effect of “I can’t believe what I’m seeing here …he’s pulling him off!” (must’ve made for an eyebrow raising radio simulcast). He then started to repeat the statement as if to demonstrate that it was exactly how he’d intended to phrase it in the first place.

George has a fansite Danger Here dedicated to this and other gaffs. He also has a bloody good show on LyricFM (our BBC3 basically) called Hamilton Scores where he plays some canny classical peppered with ‘one time in Vienna…’ anecdotes etc. Well worth checking out.

8 January 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Post the link to the donate button and let everyone know! Maybe we could finance a bigger SD card? And the cost of a flight to Cork was being discussed at Coventry on Friday night, in all seriousness, I can confirm.

8 January 2017

Irish Niall

Will do. If anyone does decide to travel Cork is a great town for a night out. It’s a while back but I went to college there. Some handy cheap accomodation to be had as well.

If Cork proves too soon after Christmas -we hope to play Limerick before the summer. Cheaper accomodation again, great town to go out in, shannon airport has decent connections to Gatwick/Stanstead/Manchester. Ye can crash in mine for that matter!

8 January 2017

dr desperate

Discussing the possibility of a trip to Cork to see HAHB with m’ladyfriend:
She: Are they Irish?
Me: Well, he’s called Niall Quinn.
She: Not Lilac Harry?

My work here is done.

10 January 2017

Irish Niall

I don’t look much like my namesake* I’m afraid -nor Jap Staam either. I was compared to Steve Stone once which I felt was harsh …Lars Ulrich is another one that popped up -though they may have been merely taking the piss out of my drumming ability.

Anyway, I’ve been scared off a ‘Donate’ button by horror stories of Paypal freezing and seizing funds paid to accounts that had such buttons but weren’t registered charities. Seemingly in the very least I’d have to ‘upgrade’ my account to be able to access anything raised. Anyone else here with knowledge or experience of such things do please advise. It’s odd because you do sometimes see them on blogs.

SO -what we did instead is set up a similar thing on the bands Bandcamp page -which ironically offers paypal as a payment option. https://themetuneboy.bandcamp.com/merch/put-petrol-in-the-van

*I was on a flight with my namesake last year -think it was after the Holmfirth gig. He was asleep in his seat about 6 rows back accross the aisle. I know this because at 6’5″ most of his head is above headrest level. I found myself near overwhelmed by an urge to remove a shoe and skull him with it. Urges under control I spent the rest of the flight giggling to myself at the idea of a furious 6’5″ NQ storming up and down the aisle demanding to know what f*&^%$ hit him with a shoe.
Indeed, I instead approached him in arrivals and thanked him for the skinful of free pints I got in Limericks sadly defunct Buddies bar following his equaliser against Holland in 1990. He was a gent and correctly assessed I’d have been somewhat underage.

Ticket options updated https://halfarsedhalfbiscuit.wordpress.com/

11 January 2017

EXXO

Hi Niall,

I’m (another) Nigel who posts as Charles ‘Exxo’ Exford on here. The names ‘Nigel’ and ‘Neil’ both originate from ‘Niall’ don’t they, so there you go.

It was me last summer who, after some of us were frustrated that we couldn’t get to Limerick or get any video of that gig, said we should invite you to Leeds, getting that particular idea because (i) I live in Leeds and could put you up (ii) you are a well known Leeds fan and wrote that amazing song (chapeau et encore mille foix chapeaux).

I think I tweeted you, but as I only tweet when severely provoked that means of communication didn’t last long. I think I forgot my tw*tter password or something. I even tried to facebook massage you or something, using my dog’s secret facebook account (zero friends, zero likes, cos nobody even knows he’s a dog). That didn’t seem to work either. You can see I’d be good at the social media side of promoting your hypothetical gig in Leeds. No but seriously I could that sort of shit well if I had to.

The facebook message which I guess you never got was actually to invite you to Leeds for the HMHB gig before Xmas (and the Leeds match the next day), at a time when the flights to Leeds (from Dub anyway) were about 99pence. December’s HMHB gig itself was the reason I hadn’t really followed up on the idea of getting your band over, cos I’m not sure even Leeds was ready for HAHB and HMHB at around the same time, the Leeds gig being announced just a couple of weeks after my bright idea to invite your gang last May/June.

Anyhow I’m trying to get to Cork, but am temporarily skint and need to find a dog-sitter (Mrs. Exford travels a lot too). Hope to talk there. I’ve been to Fred Zep’s before and I love Cork (my mum was born there but alas no family in Ireland for me). If I don’t make it, I’ll email via the Siteowner and we can arrange something. If I do make it, I might be the one who’s ironed a photo of the great Mick Lynch from ‘Stump’ onto a t-shirt in some sort of half-arsed way.

That other Niall Quinn. Pity you didn’t shoe him. I was in the away end at Highbury in 1985 (?) when he scrambled the first jammy horrible goal of his horrible, horrible anti-football career.

You’re right though the Steve Stone thing is well harsh.

11 January 2017

EXXO

“fois chapeau” instead of “foix chapeaux” then if you’re in the mood.

11 January 2017

EXXO

(as is Jap Stam for NB, especially these days).

11 January 2017

parsfan

Once upon a time between songs:
[i]They call me Jap Stam
It’s not my name[/i]

Can’t remember where, but about 10 years ago.

11 January 2017

Irish Niall

@Exxo Hi Nigel, I got that message and I emailed a reply on Dec 19th to the hotmail address you supplied. Though I’d have loved to make both show and match I’d a drumming gig that weekend (rare I get to say that nowadays) anyway but the offer was much appreciated. Might see you in Cork yet! If not, no worries. If you or anyone else is determined to have the Irish experience of crossing water to hear your favourite songs played live then we’ll likely be doing Limerick before summer and a venue in Dublin are also saying they’ll have us up ‘when a slot arises’. Lucky us.
Dublin would be handy for any loons talking of coming over in terms of options for flights etc, though considerably pricier for accomodation considering it’s scarcely bigger than Leeds. But all the bs that goes with gigging up there put me off it a long time ago. Still we’ll try to go anywhere people want to hear these songs.

11 January 2017

EXXO

@ Niall – must have made one of my famous typoes – don’t usually make them in me own email address but there’s a first time for everything – apologies for that – but looks like I haven’t messed up on the Manc-Cork flights and I’m all booked and looking forward to it. If it’s OK with you I’ll be bringing an actual little video camera (probably all I’ll be bringing as I’m only in Cork 12 hours) and so no worries about memory on anyone’s phone.

12 January 2017

EXXO

By the way Chris if you were to decide with your usual sagacity that all this needs to be syphoned off into its own thread, might I suggest ‘Curating An Exhibition of Songs’ as the subtitle?

12 January 2017

EXXO

In other housekeeping-related news, I notice that the ‘Latest Comments’ page is becoming a bit NSFW (and not all that suitable for the workless either)

The Mexican swingers are the latest to make a bold bid for the #hmhb hashtag (hot on the heels of a US veterans charity and that flipping burger crew). Have the saucy Mexicans got involved as a result of Chris encouraging us drive away the turd burger merchants by posing NSFW #hmhb lyrics? And is there any way of blocking them?

12 January 2017

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

The NSFW picture is hidden behind a “This may be a sensitive image” warning (at least on my computer) -you have to click on it to see the image. Anyone with a knowledge of Spanish have any idea what #hmhb might mean for a Mexican swinger?

12 January 2017

EXXO

Well trust me the tweets themselves are explicit enough to make the pic’s superfluous, telling you exactly what they would like inserting where, but I guess they are only NSFW only if those around you tend to be able to read at least enough Spanish to know that, and no, no idea why #hmhb.

12 January 2017

Irish Niall

@EXXO Hi Nigel, just resent that email to the dogs FB. Feel free to video away. We’d better get rehearsing! I too endorse the ‘Curating an Exhibition of Songs’ concept …it has a subtle implication that faithfulness to the original is at best aspirational and can neither be presumed upon nor guarenteed. We will do our level best though.

@Chris -thank you sir. Hope you enjoy the tunes.

12 January 2017

EXXO

Nice one Niall, Pauli got the message (he says woof, etc) and now that I’ve got your email I’ll use it.

12 January 2017

dr desperate

Discussions completed, Cork booked.
OBITG!

13 January 2017

Irish Niall

Nice one. At this rate I might be phoning Bórd Fáilte (literally ‘Board of Welcomes’ -the Irish Tourism Office) to enquire as to where I can collect my medal.

13 January 2017

EXXO

@Niall Just don’t tell them I’m on a mission to only spend 36 Euro (that I’ve found upstairs hoping Mrs Exxo has forgotten its hers) while I’m there.

13 January 2017

EXXO

I don’t agree with ANY of Paddy Shennan’s choices on this list, and with TLP he’s certainly not out to win over as many new fans to HMHB as perhaps he could have, but it’s a game of opinions at the end of the day.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/beatles-bunnymen-what-makes-liverpool-12430152

13 January 2017

EXXO

Oh I see – Paddy Shennan only chose the HMHB album on that list – the others chosen by other people.

And I hasten to add that I do regard all the tracks he mentions as utter classics.

13 January 2017

parsfan

Exxo & DD,
I hope you have better luck with your trip to see Niall in Cork than I did in 1999 (The Hitchers). Match abandoned, traveling army given complimentary pint. We had a really good night in the end but didn’t have to go to the wilds of County Cork to do that.

Niall,
Any Hitchers gigs planned, ideally in the summer? We briefly considered a second attempt a couple of years ago but it came to nothing. With a bit more notice it might be do-able.

13 January 2017

Irish Niall

@Parsfan -was that yourself? You’re the stuff of rock’n’roll mythology in these parts. I still can’t recall why the gig was cancelled. The venue Cashmans is long gone alas. They have an arts festival in Kanturk and we (HAHB) were approached about playing it but I’ve heard no more. Now that’s a show that appeals to my sense of the absurd -especially the prospect of dragging a bunch of anglos out there. No Holmfirth or Bilston analogy compares.

The upcoming fixture was nearly in the toilet today as I came off my bike on ice and landed on my wrist but mercifully I’m a crap guitarist anyway so no harm done.

I’d nearly put the house on it* that there’ll be at least one Hitchers gig this year -probably May/June as that seems to work best for everyone, probably Limerick and if you make it -you sir will be celebrated like royalty. No one here believes that someone came from England to see The Hitchers and The Hitchers never showed up.

*qualifications: we’ve one getting married this year, we’ve another with a new baby in the house, we’ve another living in France and in a new job and then there’s me …I’ll work it out somehow.

Just on the upcoming HAHB gig …it is happening. The posters are winging their way to Cork. We’re on.

13 January 2017

Paul f

That best Merseyside album list has some great albums, plus a couple I don’t know which I will “check out”. TLP is a long way from my favourite HMHB album but it sounds like Paddy has made a very personal and sentimental call there. It would be TOB for me. As for others I think The Teardrop Explodes’s Kilimanjaro is the most unforgivable absentee, closely followed by Deaf School’s Second Honeymoon.

14 January 2017

EXXO

I’ve mellowed overnight and think ‘Revolver’ is an OK choice. But ‘Ocean Rain’ just shows lack of feeling for what was great about earlier Bunnymen, especially HUH, and like you I think the lack of Teardrops is criminal. Some very over-rated albums in there, notably The Coral, the classic teenage grammar school band who got over-rated ‘cos they were actually very good musicians but who have nothing interesting to say about anything. If you want a Wirral box-room masterpiece then it’s surely ‘Giant Steps’ by the Boos.

14 January 2017

hendrix-tattoo

TLP album cover for me is the best ever.
“I’ll throw your tyre round a lamp post as a tribute to youth.”
When I was young boy one of the boys in my little gang decided to retrieve the tyre, He did manage to do so, But left three of his fingers on the top of the lamp post.
@Exxo, I also agree there are better Bunnymen albums than OR. Revolver along whith Rubber Soul should have been The Beatles white album.
Can’t believe there are no Elvis Costello album’s in the list especially Armed Forces.

14 January 2017

parsfan

Niall, or from Scotland even.

14 January 2017

hendrix-tattoo

Just found out that I’m not in work after the HAHB gig in Cork on the 10th of Feb.
So a trip to Cork could be on the cards for me also.

14 January 2017

dr desperate

Double-check your calendar first, Tony – HAHB gig is on the 11th.

14 January 2017

hendrix-tattoo

Correction HAHB is the 11th Feb.
Cork here I come, Fly out on the 10th arrive home on the 12th.
So I will see you in Cork John and Nigel.

14 January 2017

dr desperate

Grand. Anyone else?

14 January 2017

Paul f

@exxo – I actually quite like The Coral’s debut. Cosmic Scallies plus Sea Shanties is a great combination. My favourite Beatles album changes monthly but it is often Revolver.

14 January 2017

Paul f

A little bit of a stretch to include Elvis Costello, although I was impressed that he said some nice stuff about Geoff in his book.

14 January 2017

hendrix-tattoo

Armed Forces in my opinion is a great album.

14 January 2017

hendrix-tattoo

This review for Fred Zepp’s from lonely planet sold it for me.
“There’s a hard edge to this dark den of a bar, popular with goths, rockers and anyone who feels uncomfortable leaving the house without a packet of Rizlas”.
@Irish Niall please be careful on your bike.
Here’s a little irish joke to get us in the mood
https://youtu.be/m0Ng9q9LDR0

14 January 2017

Irish Niall

@Parsfan doh! Like the goodyear airship went the hint in the handle

15 January 2017

Bobby svarc

The Half Man Half Biscuit Information Service

16 January 2017

hendrix-tattoo

@Svarco you were right Jeggsy Dodd and tSoHC have just blown me away can’t believe never heard them earlier, Cheers man.
C.D arrived today kindly provided by Geoff.
God bless Ken Hancock.

18 January 2017

BOBBY SVARC

Ah, Good one. 8000 miles away is still very haunting. I shall be at The Robin btw, so see you there.

18 January 2017

hendrix-tattoo

Hubba, Hubba, Hubba.
“He’s the leader of the jolly jet set”
“With his Cliff Richard tape in his car cassette”
Priceless….
See you in Bilston, Geezer.

19 January 2017

Irish Niall

@Hendrix Tattoo. Thanks HT. I’m taking extra care on the bike, wearing scarves to help prevent chills, colds and throat infections etc. One of the knees is still a bit gammy -neither of them have been exactly show ponies for years anyway but that spill didn’t help. But the wrist is fine. We reheased for the first time in an age this evening and it went very well -which is to say we were shite but we’ve three weeks to rectify that.

19 January 2017

alan

Think on when you’re capturing the zeitgeist they’re widening the motorway on today’s Daily Star text forum (Sat Jan 21) page in a text about modern protest movements, if anyone knows how to upload pic

21 January 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Well played, Observer readers.

22 January 2017

dr desperate

The online betting forum OLBG’s Radio Quiet Chatroom (” a place for lonely souls to chat about any old rubbish they like”) has a 1998 interview with NB10, conducted by Dammo Qwirky of that parish:

Too Many Cookies Spoil The Broth

QP: Why is your first album, ‘Back In The DHSS’, rated so memorably?
Nigel: I suppose in 1986 everyone needed a fillip musically – it was the post-Smiths era. I was bemused by all the attention the album received, I didn’t have a clue back then. It was the only light-hearted music at the time, which is a lightweight reply, but there you go.
QP: Is it a millstone being lauded as one of the great songwriters?
Nigel: I don’t mind, I love it. I’m not too aware of it as I don’t mix with people from the industry. The harsh truth is that I’ll visit my mum in Rhyl who’ll ask me when I’m going to get a proper job – she doesn’t realise how popular we can be. She’s got more of an idea than others who’ll say “My uncle Ken will let you play at his pub, you’ll get your ale for nothing and he might slip you a tenner”. That keeps my head on the ground.
QP: How have you managed to remain together for so long?
Nigel: Simply because we’ve turned down things we’ve been unable or not wanted to do. People accuse us of not being ambitious, but all I want to do is play and do what we’re doing. I don’t have musical ambitions, which makes me sound negative, but I’m not.
QP: Your music mirrors realism, what normal people are like…
Nigel: I really don’t have anything to say for myself. I just write and someone, somewhere identifies with it. People latch onto us that would never latch onto any other band. Just a title like ‘Monmore, Hare’s Running’ has been seen in bookmakers. If only two people latch onto a phrase, then that’s enough.
QP: Do you write from a Northern stance?
Nigel: I’ve always maintained that if I lived somewhere like St. Austell or Penzance I would have written the same thing.
QP: Surely the gritty realism is Northern?
Nigel: People think we’re pissed off with the way things are, the way the country is or the way the government is. We’re not. Most of it is a cheap play on words, along the lines of ‘Turned Up, Clocked On, Laid Off’ (Turn on, tune in, drop out). The people I hung around with then were lathe-operators and welders, who got laid off. It’s just phrases I hear.
QP: Have you become more bitter as you’ve grown older?
Nigel: I’m dead happy-go-lucky, I don’t feel bitter. I’m still a boring twat on stage. I just stand there playing and I’m like…
QP: …‘If I knew you were coming I’d’ve slashed my wrists’?
Nigel: I always push lyrics to one side once they’re written. Sometimes I think about ‘This Leaden Pall’ and think “Christ I’m getting a bit involved”. We call that our ‘Unknown Pleasures’ for the Nineties. Next thing we’re back to our stupid songs.
QP: There’s so many references in your songs…
Nigel: I’ve got a sponge-like memory for trivial things. It’s not that I celebrate it, I just chuck something in.
QP: Have you introduced any phrases into the English language?
Nigel: Maybe. I used “Go home, your mum’s got cake”. I don’t know whether it was national until I’d written it. It was one of the great phrases that existed due to peer pressure in a gang.
QP: Have you ever had a problem wanting to be taken seriously?
Nigel: Yeah, I’m a tragi-comic figure in my own flat. I find that dead funny as well – there’s not even the sad face behind the clown’s mask.
QP: You’re no Tony Hancock?
Nigel: I’m too cynical to slag Hancock off. He was a miserable bastard and shouldn’t have pretended otherwise. I’m just very shallow. People think there must be a really deep side to me, but if you come around to my place, you’ll find me washing dishes.
QP: Are you aware of any Half Man Half Biscuit tribute bands?
Nigel: One of our promoters in Redditch told us that he knew of a tribute band. They’d be ten times better than us. They had a funny name, I think it was something with ‘albatross’ in the title, I haven’t heard them. Nowadays many young people haven’t heard of us at all. We did a gig in Reading the other week and the support just thought we were a wacky bunch of Scousers, they didn’t know who we were.
QP: You have a particular affinity with fanzines? (“I dream of occasional fanzine mentions…” – 4AD3DCD)
Nigel: I’ll read them by the dozen if I’m sent them. I love reading them with a cup of tea and a sandwich. I came here tonight wanting one of those booklets in the foyer, and got a funny look. I’ve got a thirst for knowledge.
QP: What’s going through your head at the moment?
Nigel: Loads. We were going to do an EP, but that constitutes three or four songs, which would have cut down what we could have put on the album. As it is we’ll release ‘Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral’ and see what happens next.

25 January 2017

Jodrell Banksy

I’ve always maintained that if I lived somewhere like St. Austell or Penzance I would have written the same thing.

Is Cornwall the north of the south?

25 January 2017

EXXO

Ta for that John. I’ll reply about the song in the other thread.

Solid bit of interviewing which gives a surprising amount of insight given how concise it is. Most questions taken seriously, as tend to be in F2F situations (and often less so in the email interviews NB tends to prefer these days). And most of the answers would probably be the same today.

But it must have been edited down from a somewhat longer chat, resulting in a few times where you wonder if a mis-hearing or slip in transcription has occurred. Did he really say 1986 was “post-Smiths?” It was the absolute height of the Smiths.

And “it was one of the great phrases that existed due to peer pressure in a gang” doesn’t quite make sense – I bet that’s been transcribed wrong – but we get what was meant.

Then there’s the gig in Reading “a few weeks ago”. There was no gig in Reading during the previous 2.5 years. Is it about Redditch again? Would make sense when you look at reviews of the latter on Gez’s site, where Andy tells us that
“the support band, who’s name is Mud (or something) changing into their stage clobber (baggy shorts) before they went on. One member asked Nigel what he did for a living and Nigel told him he was a producer on Dwarf Porn videos and would one day take over the family business. The boy just said “oh, right” in a midlands twang and finished getting changed. The rest of us tried not to laugh. Or maybe Oxford that same spring?

25 January 2017

dr desperate

From Andy Kershaw:
“I’m honoured to be performing my one-man show, The Adventures of Andy Kershaw, tonight (Thursday 26 January), at Cecil Sharp House in Camden Town. Naturally, in the cathedral of English folk music, I will be making a most persuasive case that the finest English folk-rock band since Fairport Convention is the mighty Half Man Half Biscuit.
I’m on stage at 7.30. Tickets are available from the CSH website, or on the door tonight. Hope to see lots of you there.”

26 January 2017

paul f

Does that mean they’ve overtaken the Clash?

26 January 2017

hendrix-tattoo

Did Kershaw also champion The Jam?

26 January 2017

wobbly-jelly

In response to Chris The Site Owners link to the Observer Happy List – I’d missed they’d included my suggestion

“…and wjelly suggests, ‘even better, treat yourself and go see them live’.”

But everyone on here knew that already.

26 January 2017

dr desperate

Link here to a blog by Canadian Alice, who came to the Bilston gig after falling in love with HMHB in Montreal six weeks ago.
She totally gets it.
https://0902friends2017ontheroad.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/the-gig/

4 February 2017

GIpton teenager

Article about restless legs on ‘Trust Me I’m A Doctor’ just now.

15 February 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Is Brian Bilston one of you lot? https://twitter.com/i/moments/833943143288541184

22 February 2017

dr desperate

For anyone who hasn’t already seen it on FB, here’s Neil Tennant’s Thribbesque review of BAITDHSS, from Brian McCloskey’s excellent ‘Like Punk Never Happened – A Smash Hits Archive’; this week celebrating the issue of 25.2.87.
You know what you can do with the magnifying glass.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/51106326@N00/24652239141/in/album-72157664194051355/

26 February 2017

Dave Wiggins

Nige Tassell’s excellent ‘The Bottom Corner’ contains a 5-minute interview with Nigel Blackwell. Headlines are the frontman comparing following Tranmere with John McCarthy “chained to the radiator”, and speculating on just who killed Julia Wallace in Liverpool’s most infamously unsolved pre-war murder. The author also weaves in some clever HMHB lyrical nods throughout the tome.

7 March 2017

dr desperate

****UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE SPOILER ALERT*****

Two HMHB references in a set of bonus questions on hill forts on last night’s semi-final between Emmanuel and Wolfson Colleges, Cambridge. I won’t say which they were in case Exxo has accidentally read this far down.

28 March 2017

JITSU_G

I was lucky enough to get on Danny Bakers Sausage sandwich game on radio 5 this morning. I managed to sneak in a Biscuits reference. Have a listen on iplayer and see if you can spot it. On from just after the 930 news, 32 min in.

Oh go on, here it is – CtSO

13 May 2017

The harbinger of nothing

HMHB live set on Gideon Coe tonight. Usually starts at about 11.30

6 June 2017

The harbinger of nothing

Actually, more like 11.15

6 June 2017

dr desperate

Coe-o also played ‘Ubu @ Eric’s’ from JD Meatyard’s new album ‘Collectivise’ the night before (just after 1 hour 20 here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08s3k9n ). I understand CDs will be available at Clitheroe on Thursday, following a launch gig at Fred’s Ale House in Levenshulme tomorrow night.
See how many PU song titles you can spot.

7 June 2017

dr desperate

Clitheroe on Friday, that should be.

7 June 2017

TOASTKID

Gideon Coe show is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08t0k8x

Session is at 2hrs 20.

7 June 2017

TOASTKID

Tracks: (A mostly music industry themed collection, from John Peel’s Meltdown Festival in 1998)

A Shropshire Lad
Four Skinny Indie Kids
Bad Review
4AD3DCD
Yipps (My Baby Got The)
Running Order Squabble Fest

7 June 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Different selection from when Mr Coe last pulled out that gig from the archives in 2013. I’ve put what he played on YouTube here. The whole gig as originally broadcast can be found as an audio file on the HMHB Live! site here.

7 June 2017

Bobby svarc

Geoff Davies once said when I enquired about a launch date.. “it’s not a fucking boat”

8 June 2017

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

Pretty certain this wasn’t a deliberate reference to the band, although Paul Gambaccini does have a pretty good knowledge of pop so it may have been, but on Saturday’s Pick of the Pops he introduced a song thus “I love you because you’re like Jim Reeves, and here he is at number 15…”

26 June 2017

dr desperate

Anybody likely to be in a position to video Some Men All Biscuit 2 at Edinburgh in August (see Breaking News banner)?

29 June 2017

parsfan

I imagine I’ll be going. I’ll make no promises other than to enjoy it.

Is it really going to be three hours this time?

30 June 2017

Chris The Siteowner

“I could never trust Jacob Rees-Mogg because he will always back the rich over the poor, scabs over strikers, Wagner over Half Man Half Biscuit.”
Robert McNeil in The Herald

7 July 2017

Ron

Cabinet Minister live on radio 5 wearing a DPAK bought for him by his wife .. at 08:58 mins on iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08xy7pq#play

16 July 2017

Ron

And there’s more: 1 min 38 secs in http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08yj01k#play http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/heres-unexpected-reason-tory-damian-10808434

Apologies if this is already familiar

16 July 2017

paul f

I’m guessing that’s the first use of the phrase “sarcasm-punk” to describe any band, never mind Nigel and the boys.

17 July 2017

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

The Guardian has followed up the story with what can only be described as Mail Online headline/sub head (cram as many words as possible for search engines)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/2017/jul/17/half-minister-half-biscuit-how-a-dukla-prague-shirt-outed-damian-green-as-an-indie-fan

17 July 2017

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

Oh, and the article reignites the debate about whether it was a subbuteo team in DPAK colours or a DP away shirt worn by the other boy. (Sorry CtSO you may need to merge my comments)

17 July 2017

paul f

It was a Subbuteo team – I will brook no debate on this matter. Jack Sharp’s sports shop in Whitechapel, Liverpool, supplied most of my Subbuteo gear.

18 July 2017

OLD BOney

Rather randomly came across this Mumsnet thread about HMHB. It’s a bit old but does purport to show the band partaking in rock groupie type activities – who’d have thought….

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/other_subjects/112204-words-to-time-flies-by-when-i-m-a-driver

18 July 2017

Chris The Siteowner

This probably needs a more prominent reference, which I’ll do when I get the chance, but in the meantime, Tommy Mackay, Editir Genrul of the Daily Reckless, writes:

As a fan of your HMHB website, I just wondered if you were aware of a “Scottish version” of the band called Half Bam Half Whisky. They’ve just released an EP here…

Top work, fellas.

21 July 2017

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

Not quite sure if this constitutes being “in the media” since it seems to be blog post on a music website, but worth a read none the less, not only for the mention of our lads but also the Jim Morrison putdown: https://beat.media/the-importance-of-song-lyrics

24 July 2017

Chris The Siteowner

I put a couple of bits on to YouTube from what must now be known as The Damian Green Incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WJZKpu5NAM

27 July 2017

parsfan

The SMAB2 show details have changed. It’s now in The Liquid Room (just like a proper Biscuits gig) with new time of 6:35.

– Thanks – CtSO

1 August 2017

dr desperate

The latest “HMHB crossword” is the cryptic from Monday’s Independent (9,616, by Scorpion), which has thematic entries for all the across clues.

Here it is, extracted from their site.

Scorpion is Mike Warburton, who also sets for the Financial Times as Aardvark and the Daily Telegraph as Osmosis. Are you there, Mike?

11 August 2017

Chris The Siteowner

That really is quite something. Well played Scorpion/Mike, and well spotted, Dr D.

12 August 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Today’s New European newspaper has a proper article on Dukla Prague, as extensive as anything I’ve ever read. And there’s a mention of the song for completeness, of course. Well worth tracking down a copy.

http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/home

24 August 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Peter Ross, of the 2016 Big Issue article fame, has had a second volume of his journalism published, including the HMHB article.

The Passion of Harry Bingo: Further Dispatches From Unreported Scotland is available now via the website of the publishers Sandstone Press and presumably other quality outlets.

29 August 2017

Peter Mcornithologist

Chris perhaps there is avanue for the greatest line

30 August 2017

parsfan

HMAB2 Edinburgh

After last year’s sold out (free entried out?) gig at The Voodoo Rooms, Alexis Dubis went for a larger venue at The Liquid Room (there’s no ‘s’ it’s just The Liquid Room as revealed to St John on the sign).

I wondered beforehand, as SLF were playing there later and their doors due to open less than half way through the show, and it turned out to be in a different room, one of many, despite its singular name. This room was much larger than last year’s and this year’s audience would have fitted comfortably in last year’s room.

Pre-match beers in The Bow Bar. My mate, who declined last year offering “karaoke” as a reason, turned up as did Kenny P, who also reviewed last year’s show. Surprise of the evening was the appearance of Celia & Andy (not of this parish but we’ll known among the travelling army).

I didn’t take notes as I expected Alexis to issue a definitive list (as last year) and for me to be doing this long before now (half pished on train to Gatwick over a week afterwards).

First up was a choral version of Vatican Broadside, harmonies, everything, it was brilliant…and it finished with a more traditional version.

In the intro Alexis asked who didn’t know the band. Only two people forward of me owned up. They left after the next song, which was probably one of the best things done (though I forget just now what it was, lots of high and lows).

Atilla The Stockbroker more than showed up at the last minute this time, it was almost his gig. Four songs, or parts thereof, over a range of styles. First up Chatteris in serious poem style, there was another on a mandola (according to Andy and my memory of what he said) and others.

It was a good laugh, the numbers were a bit disappointing but there was negligible advertising.

I hope Alexis can do it again next year. The lads played there during the festival in 2003 & 2004, maybe a return next year with an afternoon HMAB show as warm up would help boost numbers.

31 August 2017

dr desperate

Excellent, @Pars, thanks very much. I’ll be with Andy among the travelling army at Lord’s next weekend so this may come up in conversation.

31 August 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Interview with NB10 on Coney’s Loft…

(Update – see comment below)

3 September 2017

dr desperate

Goroka?

4 September 2017

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

Bless you!

At least we’ve got our own Birther controversy to keep us amused till the new album – will NB1057(5710?) be forced to produce his birth certificate at a forthcoming gig?

4 September 2017

Chris The Siteowner

UPDATE: just discovered that although only just published, the interview above was done well over a year ago, so read any comments – especially the final one – with that in mind.

4 September 2017

EXXO

Hmm. Given that He drops at least one porkissimo into every interview, I can’t help noting that Champion Spark Plugs didn’t open the factory, which granted was just up the road from the Blackwells, till young sir was in his fifth year.

4 September 2017

D list paul ross

Just about to buy my first bike in 30 years – you guessed it, a Boardman hybrid on the cycle to work scheme. So embarrassed I’m doing Del Boy impressions to get over it.

5 September 2017

EXXO

Let’s all free our inner poseur. I’m saving up for a Birkenhead North End cycling top even though I have no intention of ever wearing any cycling gear when I’m actually on me bike. Might wear it at a gig.

5 September 2017

d List PAUL ROSS

Saltaire Brewery do a nice one but I’m chuffed if I’m spending £40 plus to accentuate the fatness which has led me to getting a bike in the first place.

5 September 2017

dr desperate

Frankly, though Champion Spark Plugs have their own magic (the founder won the 1899 Paris–Roubaix road race and died after being punched by his wife’s married lover) I was more interested in the PNG reference.

5 September 2017

EXXO

In a court of law, I am fairly sure that discrediting one part of the story would be considered a reasonable first step in discrediting the whole thing.

5 September 2017

bobby svarc

Good God, Watch some bugger start knocking em out on Ebay

5 September 2017

Brumbiscuit

http://www.yacf.co.uk caters for all cycling tastes and abilities and offers, from time to time, the opportunity to buy an Owayo-made top in various styles. Many of the topics are HMHB-friendly & cycling can actually easily be avoided. At least one person OTP is over there too.

6 September 2017

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

Wonder if we’ll be able to detect a Townes Van Zandt influence on the new songs? Or will there be a version of Pancho & Lefty in future live shows?

6 September 2017

dr desperate

You may recall he actually played a snippet of P & L at Holmfirth last year – maybe we’ll get the whole thing there in a fortnight’s time.

6 September 2017

gipton teenager

Joke No.881 in The Biggest Ever Tim Vine Joke Book
“There used to be a band called Half Man, Half Biscuit. But they broke up.”
The book was published in 2010. I suspect I’m the only person to get this far.

8 September 2017

Chris The Siteowner

This just in:
“Biscuit Tinnitus” by Half Bam Half Whisky

“Kenny came from East Ayrshire
With one overriding desire
To see Half Man Half Biscuit play
And his dream came true one day…”

25 September 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Hmmm, “Lord Hereford (to give it an abbreviated and obscenity-free title).” Someone should tell the OS.

7 October 2017

JITSU_G

I’ve put him straight

7 October 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Rather odd mention in Mail Online in a review of the Volkswagen Golf GTE, supposedly by Chris Evans.

(Don’t worry, it’s a screengrab, you won’t have to visit their site)

15 October 2017

EXXO

It’s a historic moment really in that it isn’t a mention of the band, but a linguistic use of the phrase, probably the first. Shame it had to occur so meaninglessly in such a juvenile piece of writing.

I hate to say it but tw*tter would probably be the way to get it in the dictionary. If enough of us start using it, with a definite meaning, in it goes.

15 October 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Arthur Salisbury in The Mancunion spots dogs on the pitch in the Hallmark Security League…

17 October 2017

Paul F

Obligatory mention of Gubba Lookalikes in an article about “Tony (of course)” by the excellent John Nicholson on football 365. http://www.football365.com/news/a-football365-love-letter-to-tony-gubba

27 October 2017

Ian A

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-41749447

Korfball coming to town!,,

28 October 2017

dr desperate

Residents of Loughborough might like to turn up for (not that) Paul Rooney’s contribution to next Wednesday’s ‘Sounds From A Small Town’ at the University.
http://www.arts.lboro.ac.uk/radar/events/event/sounds_from_a_small_town

22 November 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Three Gerry Gows in this article on footy stickers by Ian McCawley: https://www.thesportsman.com/articles/world-cup-2018-celebrating-the-enduring-power-of-panini-stickers

1 December 2017

EXXO

And a Gazza and two Alan Brazils.

He’s a very posh Toffee if he calls it a “foil” not a “shiney” (a type of sticker that was well after my time, of course).

1 December 2017

Glen Quickfall

A play for HMHB on David Shrigley’s show on 6 Music tonight. Problem Chimp.

1 December 2017

Chris The Siteowner

The “lush, self titled debut EP” by multi-instrumentalist Adibanti contains one track which may pique your curiosity. Review here. The EP is on Spotify.

2 December 2017

Chris The Siteowner

Thin, seasonal filler in Metro hung on a song title, but hey, at least it linked to a video.

15 December 2017

EXXO

Follow the click-bait to the cute puppy litters, then to the Siberian Grinch Husky, and that’s me that is, all year long. But especially at Xmas and above all when I think of the liberal interpretation of the word ‘Cynical’ by Mr. B and his admirers.

15 December 2017

EXXO

Arthur Salisbury in The Mancunion spots dogs on the pitch in the Hallmark Security League…

Just noticed this one – no dogs on the pitch, but such a good article, and also quotes ‘Friday Night’.

22 December 2017

dr desperate

Liz Kershaw played ‘It’s Cliched to be Cynical at Christmas’ on her R6M request show this afternoon. Which was nice.
The crane at the concrete factory down our road is festooned with bright fairy lights again this year.

23 December 2017

D list paul ross

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42441425 apparently milky drink and sudafed not enough for Mary

25 December 2017

Stuart

I suppose everyone’s seen this, but it’s really not every day that you see a news headline involving the finest band in the country.

30 December 2017

Knackered Man

Stuart – I spotted it also and was putting my comment together when I found your post. Bah – pipped again.

Anyway, here’s the summary from the various Guardian threads for those who wouldn’t be seen near such a pinko liberal rag.

Dr Maureen Tilford got the ball rolling on the 13th December, lamenting the lack of British road songs in the ‘Route 66’ mould. Huh! perish the thought Doc.
This oversight was corrected by Elvis McGonagall (is he one of ours?) on the 18th, pointing out he delights of M-6-Ster, replete with a lyrical snippet. Not to be outdone, Dave Lawlan brings up Botleneck at Capel Curig on the 27th, and in today’s edition Melanie White references 2 Chevrons Apart.

30 December 2017

CHARLES EXFORD

The good doctor’s original letter (and judging by her history in that letters column, she really is a good one) in fact asked about the romanticism of the road names themselves.

Why do American road and place names sound so much more romantic than those in the UK, as in ‘Get Your Kicks on Route 66’? Getting kicks on the M66 just doesn’t seem to cut it. Quite the reverse I’d say. And how about 24 hours from Stevenage? Does anyone have an explanation for this curious phenomenon?
Dr Maureen Tilford

I’m not sure how anyone can interpret the HMHB song as ‘advice’, but it does seem that an unexpectedly high proportion of citations of HMHB in the media are in some way mistaken about who in the songs is and isn’t saying what.

30 December 2017

transit full of keith

As if to prove life really is a PBR, the letters page on the 27th mentioning ‘Bottleneck at Capel Curig’ also features someone moaning about the postman dropping elastic bands on her drive.

1 January 2018

dr desperate

If you’re into the whole Facebook thing, my attention has been drawn to a new HMHB page, apparently there for the past month or two. Some of those here are already all over it like a cheap suit; I’ve only just seen it.
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=the%20half%20man%20half%20biscuit(hmhb)%20appreciation%20society

16 January 2018

hendrix-tattoo

Love the photees of Ron in N.Y. John.
Hope you and Elizabeth had a good un’….

16 January 2018

Chris The Siteowner

If it’s good enough for Wordsworth or Blackwell…

18 January 2018

dr desperate

Nice. Shame she didn’t mention the weekly rates in early September though.

18 January 2018

dr desperate

” ‘Go Long’ is also very funny. Not in a Barron Knights way, but more Half Man Half Biscuit.”
Jonathan Roscoe describing Canadian folkie Scott Cook’s fifth album in ‘Shire Folk’ (not to be confused with the late lamented Manc fanzine ‘Shy Talk’).

18 January 2018

The harbinger of nothing

I’d say that Mozzer (q.v.) also played a part in Grasmere being famous.

18 January 2018

Chris The Siteowner

“…Tranmere Rovers’ second-most famous fan…”

20 January 2018

EXXO

They mostly have their own very distinct demographics don’t they though: Adderley, Blackwell, Dean, Dimbleby, Jackson, Routledge, Ward, Warrior, Welsby, Stubbs, Jackson), for which reason I’m always a touch sceptical when I hear it whispered (at half-time near the kop end of the Johnny King stand) that only a prime-time phone-in vote-out with them all locked in a house baking cakes on ice can ever sort this one out once and for all. I’m fairly sure, however, that one of them has been to about ten times more games than the rest put together.

20 January 2018

EXXO

Talking of demographics, on this week’s 6Music ‘Round Table’, someone called Justin from an outfit called The Vaccines dropped possibly the most inappropriate, ill-informed and downright erroneous HMHB name-check of all time. Here it is.

20 January 2018

transit full of keith

Just noticed that David Gaffney (Manchester-based writer of very short stories) tips a hat to HMHB with the title of one of the stories in his Sawn-Off Tales, ‘Some Call It Loungecore’. (Lots of Fall references too). I really recommend his stuff (Sawn-Off Tales and Aromabingo particularly) – he writes very concise, funny, surreal and dark stories, quite Blackwellian in some ways.

20 January 2018

gipton teenager

Blackwellian or Blackwellesque?

20 January 2018

transit full of keith

Surely nobody on here would be picky enough to argue the difference …?

I’ll go with Blackwellish. My new year’s resolution is to annoy less pedants.

20 January 2018

The harbinger of nothing

I think you mean “to annoy fewer pedants”…

(You tee ’em up, Keith – CtSO)

20 January 2018

The harbinger of nothing

I’d go for Blackwelly.

20 January 2018

GIpton teenager

Anyone for Blackwelllike?

21 January 2018

alan

It’s a Sad Day in the Park – there is no Golden Biscuit award. (600) (549) (548)

I was greeted with awkward silence
Chris The Site Owner had lied to me
He had lied to me on his post

21 January 2018

Phyllis Triggs

I love Blackwelly but it has more limited use than the ‘esque’ or ‘ellian’ forms. No doubt some grammar wanker could tell us why. And I reckon Harbinger Of Nothing deserves the Order Of The Black Welly for that “to annoy fewer pedants” comment – superb!

21 January 2018

GIpton teenager

I thought it was an amazing example of bad auto correct and should have read ‘Les Pedants’, the notoriously fastidious French cyclist.

21 January 2018

transit full of keith

As a grammar wanker, I just want to place on record that I was aware of the comic potential of “annoy less pedants” when I wrote it. Also, I stole it from that Richard Osman off Pointless.

Les Pedants were an art-school trio from Toulouse, did a Peel session in 1987 I think.

21 January 2018

Phyllis Triggs

Nice one, TFOK. It completely passed me by – but then, I’m not much of a pedant. Well played!

21 January 2018

dr desperate

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7CULzCgN9JA/Vryu0boZXLI/AAAAAAAAdYM/Vh7-SHIIhx8/s1600/Cartoon%2Bof%2Bthe%2BDay-Pedants%2527%2BRevolt.jpg

22 January 2018

transit full of keith

Nice cartoon Dr.D. To bring this wandering thread back to Biscuit matters, the best ‘pedant’ joke still has to be the cover of “Those Bones” by the Correct Speech Gospel Quartet …

22 January 2018

alan

“to boldly annoy less pedants” by splitting the infinitive as well

22 January 2018

Cygnus

@ Dr D: My old history teacher would often trot out the joke about Which Tyler and the Pedants Revolt, we used to smile dutifully but I never understood it until years later. To digress, we had history on a Friday afternoon, he would always start by discussing the Saturday footie fixtures (he was a Coventry fan), most of the class followed the dark side from Witton but there were three of us Baggies and my best mate was Leicester mad. After that he would then set us a text to read through, sit back at his desk and puff away at his pipe! We knew if we were very quiet for 10 minutes or so he would probably close his eyes and have forty winks then we could continue the footie chat amongst ourselves as long as we weren’t too loud. Those were indeed the days my friend… Ofsted inspectors (and smoking bans) were many, many years away.

22 January 2018

EXXO

I love the super-inclusive way they’ve reproduced the 15th century illustration the wrong way round (if you magnify you can see John Ball & Watt Tyler have their names written back to front), to make sure art history pedants can get stuck in too. And it’s a good job I’m not enough of a history pedant to point out that we aren’t seeing two opposing groups in the pic, but in fact a sermon given to all the revolting Kentish by one of their own.

22 January 2018

Carrie anne

Nice for Hair Like Brian May Blues to get an airing on Gideon Coe’s show this evening, given the maudlin atmosphere in these parts. RIP MES

25 January 2018

Alice van der meer

Particularly as it was paired with my other favourite band, the Bonzos.

Did you know Henry Rollins is a Bonzos fan? He’s hard…

27 January 2018

BOBBY SVARC

I’ve just been talking to Sir Geoff and he’s informed me that the band are currently in the studio producing some new material. Don’t know what the new album is going to be called or when it hits the shelves but I did suggest that ‘2016 and all that’ is would be acceptable…….. Total silence. Anyhow, it looks like the long wait is finally over. Also, more gigs are to be announced soon. That’s all folks!

31 January 2018

Mr. abelazar woozle

Just come across this on the BBC website https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/08bd3359-cc88-4930-bbe8-26cde41a1c27 – ” Stunning places that have inspired classic songs” , and Lord Hereford’s Knob has managed to slip in there….

31 January 2018

Chris The Siteowner

Someone’s claiming to be working on a “list of songs inspired by local government finance”. “At number two, Half Man Half Biscuit’s Trumpton Riots, a tale of the consequences of spending cuts at the Trumptonshire Fire Brigade.”

1 February 2018

TRANSIT FULL OF KEITH

A new album in the offing is excellent news … More song-based than bongo-laced, I trust.

1 February 2018

EXXO

I notice that Lammo’s show is coming from Parr St. Studios today, where our Lads’ last LP was laid down. Would have been interesting if they’d been in an adjacent studio in some sort of legendary coincidence type scenario.

2 February 2018

davidc

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09ply4y – 1 minute in, as part of the intro.

(As this’ll probably scroll off iPlayer eventually, if it’s gone by the time you read this, it’s a broadcaster quoting “slipper/biro” without any credit. Grr. – CtSO)

6 February 2018

EXXO

I knew I wouldn’t be the only one in recent years, as clever female folkies with the word ‘kit’ in their band names gradually came to dominate the airwaves, to have thought of sending RadMac a Tea Time Time with a First Aid Kit song, a This is the Kit song (inevitably Emmylou), and then ‘DPAK’. Well someone had – in fact it was Robert in Ankara – and (as more or less predicted by the dynamic duo when they introduced the item yesterday) a listener got it within the first song, immediately texting in to predict what the next two acts would be. Stuart was concerned that the fact that the link was between two band names and one track title might irk some purists, who might ‘baulk’, until Mark pointed out that well phonetically our lads’ band name does contain /kit/, which had never even occurred to me.

In other news, Wallasey’s wonderful Martin Carr, first man in Wallasey to release a single about the bench outside the newsagent’s at the end of my road (in Wallasey), was also interviewed on the same programme about his solo stuff, sounding very sensitive and lovely both in conversation and song.

6 February 2018

EXXO

Apologies for posting that simultaneously with the previous unrelated item, creating more thread disconnectedness.

What can I say about Simon Evans that won’t make me appear too tribalistic? Well nothing that wasn’t better said by Stewart Lee, writing a few years back:
Will anyone make up the right-wing stand-up comedian numbers? Since I started in the late 1980s, there have always been stand-ups who appear to be right-wing, but usually are upper-middle-class liberals who, realising that they can’t help their accents, have chosen to take on the role of a kind of out-of-touch, paternalistic Tory “posh boy”. The slit-eyed Simon Evans, whom you may have seen on a big TV stand-up showcase, is the funniest and the most committed of these, hating football fans, working-class women who dress like prostitutes and anyone who has more than two children. Particularly good over short distances, Evans nevertheless inhabits his stage persona so completely, convincingly and hilariously that I assume it must on some level overlap with his beliefs. Whether he is a real Tory or a pretend one, Radio 4 could do worse than make the unflinching Evans the official voice of the comedy opposition.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/04/where-are-all-right-wing-stand-ups
Lee basically helped make the case for winning the robbing get Tory boy this whole series.

6 February 2018

alan

No idea if the lads were asked to spare a tune for Revolutionary Spirit: The Sound Of Liverpool 1976-1988 but Jegsy Dodd has.

Either way glad Nigel/Neil turned down the coin as it’s one bad compilation. Most of it is as revolutionary as Fiddlers Dram, third rate copyists of the bilge that made the charts 80-83, the type of stuff even Peel played just once with a pithy remark.

I could have put my head in a bucket full of porridge
And moaned about the hospital parking scheme
I would have saved 34 pounds
That I just splashed out on your compilation album

13 February 2018

CHARLES EXFORD

Sorry to hear of the massive let-down. If they did ask, I’d like to think Mr. B gave a geographically pedantic reply. “Don’t be mistaken, don’t be misled…”

13 February 2018

Paul F

That song was the highlight of my one and only trip to Prenton Park.

13 February 2018

FLINTLOCK

There is s Biscuit link though, assuming it’s the same Attempted Moustache.

14 February 2018

dr desperate

The Manc one is better, with 26 more tracks including Crispy Ambulance.

14 February 2018

alan

yesterday’s Big Job: Set alarm for 9.50am to buy Liverpool tickets

today’s Big Job: Buy Liverpool tickets

Avoiding proper work since 1986

14 February 2018

Paul F

On those compilations, for those of us who enjoy music of that era from both ends of the East Lancs, you could do worse than the Paul Morley North by North West compilation.

14 February 2018

warden hodges

Best £23 I’ll spend today. Yeah.

14 February 2018

Cream cheese and chives

Money well spent.
Unless you end up on that Viagogo site where they are £43 each.

14 February 2018

warden hodges

Nah, makes a change. Being a native Merseysider, nice walk up London Rd/Hotham St and seeing the man behind the counter with the metal tray device thing.

14 February 2018

CHARLES EXFORD

Hmm. Could be an excuse to pop into Ma Egerton’s on me way to the match on Saturday.

By the way, HMHB are confirmed as a “major international act” and a case where “local and international combine” by the blurb on the Academy website.

14 February 2018

CHARLES EXFORD

Soz, that was in fact from a random blurb on another site
https://www.list.co.uk/place/54858-o2-academy-liverpool/

14 February 2018

Gok wan acolyte

A double reference here, not only do the band get included in this list but so does Irish Niall, albeit not in his tribute act capacity. There’s clearly a fan working on the BBC website as this is the second recent mention on one of these lists…

17 February 2018

Alice van der meer

Ta for confirming that, I spotted it on Arsebook, and wondered.

18 February 2018

Chris The Siteowner

I realised we didn’t have Andrew Harrison’s 2009 Word magazine piece on the site, although it was mentioned, so I’ve scanned it and added the link here. I had to buy it (again) off eBay, mind, after having thrown my copy out long ago.

12 March 2018

PeeJaygee

I noted the chorus of ” Everything’s A.O.R. ” being quoted on BBC Radio 6 music this afternoon . The Radcliffe and Maconie show was featuring lyrics that were popular with listeners of the show . Funnily enough I’d been whistling the aforementioned tune barely an hour earlier at work .

16 March 2018

Chris The Siteowner

The new album’s cover is wangling its way into culture even before it’s released: http://www.eadt.co.uk/ea-life/martin-newell-essex-the-wladyslaw-mirecki-waj-art-exhibition-1-5438584

19 March 2018

dr desperate

So are the song titles.
https://www.abctales.com/collection/no-one-cares-about-your-creative-hub

19 March 2018

transit full of keith

Quite like those stories … Wonder if “Terrence Oblong” has ever frequented this site? (Looks like it – CtSO)

The “Emergency Locksmith” one is a little bit David Gaffney.

The “Every Time A Bell Rings” one borrows a plot from “Sponsoring the Moshpits” …another bright idea from Gabriel.

20 March 2018

EXXO

Following his links as one does, I’m somewhat relieved to deduce (with reference to another set of short stories he wrote in 2014 all based on the theme of ‘offal’) that he didn’t have early access to the song titles of that album, and therefore has no inside info, is not a band member in disguise etc.

Doesn’t give away too much biographical info in his tales; certainly there’s no evidence that his pseudonym is inspired by the beautiful Oblong of Dreams. He has more probably named himself after a small coffee table.

20 March 2018

jodrell banksy

Re: the Martin Newell article (above): seeing the Cleaner from Venus mention the Biccies makes two normally-segregated bits of plutonium in my brain smash together over a lovely, doomed Pacific atoll.

20 March 2018

Chris The Siteowner

Of course. Shoulda mentioned that. My segregated brain always forgets that EADT Martin Newell and Cleaner From Venus Martin Newell are one and the same.

20 March 2018

gipton teenager

Whilst trawling through the BBC radio 4 i-player (the best thing since bread?), I came across ‘The Right Time’ which featured a song by Ronnie & the Rex (probably Neil Innes) containing the lines
“Stannah Stannah stairlift
She’s shooting up to the stars”
first broadcast 18th April 2002.
Does this count, or is there a statute of limitations?

22 March 2018

Alice van der meer

Goodness, Martin Newell is what my Mum always turns to first in the newspaper – somehow I doubt she’ll make the connection.

Thank you for posting that link, Chris, I now know far more aboout him than I ever intended to, and I may have fallen in love with Wivenhoe Bells combining, as it does, my love for my natal Essex (County Champions, no less) and my hobby of bellringing. Especially as the recording at the end is real church bells, not studio tubular jobbies. Intriguingly, they may not be Wivenhoes – it might be two recordings stitched together as some of it is definitely ringing on six bells, and then in the middle it briefly seems to be eight bells – Wivenhoe has six.

OK, I’ll get me coat now.

22 March 2018

Chris The Siteowner

In an exclusive extract from his new book, Going for a Song: A Chronicle of the UK Record Shop, Garth Cartwright tells the story of the Cartel and Probe Records…

25 March 2018

EXXO

Thanks Chris. The author was on 6 with Cerys Matthews this morning, a long interview about the book, so I guessed he would have covered Probe. Said he’d researched for years, but maybe that was when Geoff was ill, ‘cos that’s all very second-hand stuff and I notice that The Quietus editor has (very professionally, I must say) put in a correction at the end that at least goes some way to dispelling the confused non-sequitur in that third-to-last sentence.

25 March 2018

dr desperate

This is more The Media in HMHB, but I can’t think where else to put it.
Someone on FB has just posted a picture of an original cassette of ‘Back In The DHSS’ (Probe 4C), side 1 of which says “All tracks mixed by Dorothy Sleightholme”.
She was the presenter of YTV’s ‘Farmhouse Kitchen’, the programme on which Nigel once said he hoped the band would first appear.

26 March 2018

EXXO

Just noticed that your front-page “HMHB on the Chain” feature doesn’t have a comments section – in fact sudden sense of déjà dit – have I noticed the same thing and commented on it before?

But anyway I’ve just noticed that while I was in Ireland last week, not only did I get ‘Asparagus Next Left’ played on Lamacq on Friday (by having asked for it when I was listening on Tuesday, when it was clearly the best suggestion for that day’s ‘National Anthem’ but just a little too late) … but also by being away from my wireless and so not mithering RadMac to get HMHB on the Chain, which under normal circumstances I tend to do without any hint of success several times a week, this meant that they played ‘Squabblefest’ at about 1.24 pm on Wednesday. This was ‘cos after Crispy Ambulance were chosen for the Chain at about 1.20, they said it that the HMHB track would have made an excellent follow-up .. except it’s already been on The Chain. So they played it anyway ‘cos it’s just 1:21 long.

After which a fella texted or twittered to say he was a massive HMHB fan but had never previously realised Crispy Ambulance were a real band.

Anyway still no HMHB on the actual Chain for nearly two years!

28 March 2018

GIpton teenager

The boys just referenced on BBC4 Arena program about Dylan.

31 March 2018

GIpton teenager

Sorry, that was just a cheap clip show, didn’t realise as I only caught the end of the program.

31 March 2018

Cynical uncle charlie

Adrian Chiles interviewing Bob Wilson about Lev Yashin yesterday (from 1.38:55). Great bit where Chiles asks Wilson if he’s ever been celebrated in song…

“The only time I’ve had a song was in my broadcasting career. It wasn’t terribly complementary”

31 March 2018

transit full of keith

Thanks for posting that. As well as the Biscuit reference, the song about Yashin was by the brilliant Soviet songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky, last person I’d expect to hear on 5 Live. Not his only football song either: this one (in which a defender ponders the merits of following a centre forward home after the match and giving him a kicking) is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrI9HFYGHr0

2 April 2018

CHARLES EXFORD

The other Wilson in that clip (Jonathan, a respected football writer) says he couldn’t find the 1930’s melon-saving keeper film on youtube; I can’t find anything in English or even with subtitles about Vysotsky either, although a Danish chap apparently did a film about him in about 1983, after his death. I suspect someone’s trying to cash in by keeping it off youtube, but if you know of anything Keith let me know. I can’t even find a translation of those football-related songs, though I found poor literal translations of many others – fascinating subject matter.

2 April 2018

transit full of keith

^ (On a closer look, it seems to be a tricky right winger from his own team he’s considering doing violence to. The narrator, who can only play on the left, is watching him score from the subs bench).

2 April 2018

transit full of keith

@Exxo, I tried to translate some of his songs a few years ago, but found them pretty impossible to render in English – you can find quite a few bad translations online. (Maybe I’ll have another go sometime with the football ones). Vysotsky was great though. Come to think of it, he had a song about bad losers in the World Chess Championship as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vysotsky (Should this migrate to the Other Bands thread?)

2 April 2018

dr desperate

On the other hand, there is a band from Guisborough called The New Lev Yashin.
(I say ‘is’; this album was released in 2003, and their profile is on Myspace.)
https://www.allmusic.com/album/new-lev-yashin-mw0000719104

4 April 2018

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

Not really a new mention, but Word #52 is up on the “Whole Hogg” blog, which is trying (slowly) to digitise every edition of the late and much lamented Word magazine.
There’s a quick recap of a Sinead O’Connor interview which also features a comment from Nigel https://wholehoggblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/10/word-52/

10 April 2018

Transit Full Of Keith

There’s a mention of Geoff Davies, the Probe shop and Pete Burns at the till in this Quietus article, and much else of interest about Merseyside music in the 80s (but no mention of HMHB). Perhaps because the article is partly a puff for a Cherry Red box set which also omits them (although it includes Attempted Moustache). http://thequietus.com/articles/24366-liverpool-eric-s-history-revolutionary-spirit-pete-wylie-jayne-casey-gayna-rose-madder-joe-mckechnie-will-sergeant-interview

11 April 2018

Chris The Siteowner

Tangential reference in an article about emojis, of all things. (Fixed)

14 April 2018

dr desperate

Tate Liverpool has an exhibition coming up later this month called ‘Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour 1950 to Today’, for which merch includes a tea-towel featuring 66 Liverpool-related colour samples (Yellow Submarine, Red Rum, Cilla Black, etc).
The beige one second from the left on the next-to-bottom row is Half Man Half Biscuit.
https://shop.tate.org.uk/the-colours-of-liverpool-tea-towel/21408.html
The exhibition starts on 29.5.18, but unfortunately finishes on 13.9.18, a fortnight before the Liverpool gig. Shame, too, that Flux of Pink Indians were from Bishop’s Stortford.

15 May 2018

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

“you’re so beige, I bet you think this tea towel’s for someone else”

15 May 2018

Chris The Siteowner

Anyone know who’s behind the “Half Man Half Biscuit Official” YouTube channel, which looks like it’s being updated to include the new album? The channel launched last summer and contains audio-only videos for just about everything the band has done. With custom images for each album and song, it’s far too sophisticated to be anything to do with Probe Plus. Every track has well-organised links to the major online retailers (and Probe Plus in the most recent case). It’s very well done, presumably by some organisation which is doing this on behalf of lots of bands, I imagine with a business model of collecting affiliate commission on sales, topped up by some advertising revenue.

If it’s approved by the band/label, I’d be happy to link to it from this site. Other people are already uploading tracks to YouTube – I shan’t be linking to those though.

19 May 2018

Carlosfandangowidewheels

Proper Records are behind it. No probs.

(Thanks! – CtSO)

19 May 2018

The dynamic entrance

I’m watching a wedding, AND they played us some Tallis. Shoop Shoop shong would blow my mind now.

19 May 2018

Dr Desperate

There was also an Amen injection (Etta James’, not The Winstons’ version).

19 May 2018

Chris The Siteowner

I’m hijacking this thread as the general HMHB watercooler thread to see if anyone’s got any information about the missing exact release dates of the first four albums. All we have here is the same as Gez’s site and Mick’s Probe Plus history site, namely:
• Back In The DHSS (PROBE4), “1985”
• Back Again in the DHSS (PROBE8), “1987”
• ACD (PROBE8CD), “1988”
• McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt (PROBE30), “1991”

We must be able to to better than this. I’ve always taken the 1985 release date of the first album as correct, but it didn’t start its chart run until February 1986. Was it really released a month or more before charting? BAITDHSS had its week in the charts one year later, February 1987, so it’s likely it was released in Jan/Feb of that year.

Anyone got any leads?

24 May 2018

BOBBY SVARC

As I said to Peter Ross in that interview that the first I heard of them was April 1986 when Annie Nightingale played DPAK on her Sunday night show. It was announced on R1 by Annie that the song was the B side of “The Trumpton Riots”, I scribbled down on the dash of my van, went straight over to Nervous Records in Hinckley and asked Gordon to get it for me, he then told me that there was an LP already out because he’d sold some copies. That is as much as I know.

24 May 2018

Flintlock

I’m pretty sure the first album was already out when I first heard them, which would have been the 9.12.85 repeat of the first Peel session.
I bought BAITDHSS when it came out, February 1987 sounds right. Many more people would have bought in release week than the first one, so it would be more likely to chart immediately.
McIntyre, Treadmore & Davitt would have been (late?) October, I think.

24 May 2018

EXXO

You could buy Back in the DHSS before the band’s first Peel session – the exact October 1985 date – can’t remember the day – which I put up on this site in the 25th anniversary thread was absolutely correct the 5th springs to mind, but it was definitely whatever day I said then. I remember researching it well in 2010, but that would have been about ten crashed or smashed crap computers ago.

I recently re-read the Jan or Feb 1987 NME review of ‘Back Again’, which, true to form, will be a couple of weeks after it was available to buy.

24 May 2018

EXXO

if in doubt just google “Mayor of Cirencester + congratulate.” I’m fairly certain he will have got the day right.

24 May 2018

EXXO

Looking at that date now – 7th October 1985 – I’m sure that Geoff confirmed it to me after I found it in 1 or 2 other places.

25 May 2018

ROGER GREEN POSTER ON THE WALL

That October 1985 date can’t be far out. I first had the privilege of seeing HMHB perform live at The Leadmill in Sheffield on 2 February 1986. I was there with my mate, Mark, to celebrate his 22nd birthday. We have just exchanged texts where we agreed that we both knew a load of the songs that they played that night, implying that the album was already out. They started off their set with Busy Little Market Town and finished with The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine. I knew then that this was the band for me.

25 May 2018

ROGER GREEN POSTER ON THE WALL

Sorry can’t do better than this with Back Again In The DHSS. I have very vague memories of a review of a HMHB release, tied in with a review of a Bogshed release (they used to do it like that in the old days). That may be what Exxo refers to. I remember praise for HMHB who had called it a day for the time being, combined with a slating for Bogshed for carrying on as they were. Unjustified. They were a great band. The review might have been for their album Brutal.

25 May 2018

EXXO

The date is 100% definite. 7/10/85. I wouldn’t have suggested that thread to Chris in 2010 if it wasn’t.

And yes, that’s the same review I re-read in the NME in the British Library a few months ago. I’ll dig out my notes later.

25 May 2018

Chris The Siteowner

Thanks all. One down, three to go.

25 May 2018

Paul f

Simon Mayo’s HMHB references continue to be Chatteris-centric. Tonight’s quiz contestant was from Chatteris, and was regaled by Mayo reciting the song’s first verse to his (and Jo Whiley’s) utter bemusement. He suggested they might play it tomorrow before rowing back, presumably when he remembered the prick barriers.

29 May 2018

Dr Desperate

Marc Riley just played ‘The Announcement on R6M. No post-play announcement.

4 June 2018

Dawlishian

Amy Lame played See That My Bike’s Kept Clean yesterday, apparently celebrating World Bike Day:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b4zk2j

4 June 2018

Bobby Svarc

Fat Latch Radio have just played What Made Colombia Famous at 7.04am…..world’s gone mad!

5 June 2018

I scanned in an old interview with Nigel for your delectation (hope it’s readable). From around 2003, it contains what may be the first mention of ‘Trad Arr Tune’.
(I also note that in the week that Snow Patrol kept the band off no 1 – well, by 16 places – in the Record Store chart, this comes from issue of the magazine with Snow Patrol on the cover, just before they got proper famous).
https://www.isthismusic.com/half-man-half-biscuit-3

(Thanks! That’s a new one to me – CtSO)

5 June 2018

paul f

It was ringing a few bells, so I tracked it back to where I might have first seen it. It’s been on Gez’s site for years (just a copy and paste of the text rather than a scan).
https://cobweb.businesscollaborator.com/hmhb/news/2004.htm

5 June 2018

Dr Desperate

Plenty of interest in that itm? interview, @S, including Nigel’s now-thwarted wishes to request ‘The Laughing Policeman’ from Lou Reed and not to have hung around with Ian Curtis.

5 June 2018

Oh Cheers @Paul F, I’d completely forgotten I’d sent Gez the text to that at the time, I’ve long since lost my own files. Considerably easier to read!

8 June 2018

John Anderson

The current Private Eye’s entertaining page on the retirement of Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre contains the following observation:

“Dacre was always particularly angry after returning from one of his holidays; as he strode towards his office every executive he passed had to endure a blizzard of profanities for their uselessness durng his absence. As revealed in Eye 1334, these became known as drive-by shoutings.”

13 June 2018

Chris The Siteowner

Excellent. Attending the Hammersmith gig a couple of years back in the company of a national sports journalist, I was amazed as she introduced me at the bar to an almost endless succession of national newspaper journalists. It seems the band has quite the following on the Street of Shame.

13 June 2018

Transit full of keith

A shame none have them have reviewed the album…

Meanwhile, an interview with the Viz cartoonist behind ‘Real Ale Twats’ reveals it was partly inspired by CAMRA Man: https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/davey-jones-the-man-behind-the-real-ale-twats

13 June 2018

hedley verity

Pat Nevin gets his dream final in 6Music’s Football Anthems World Cup on Steve Lamacq’s show.

Dukla Prague v Sunshine On Leith.

21 June 2018

brumbiscuit

Sorry everyone, but I work with a Hibby & after seeing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3b_lw7t2TE Craig & Charlie get my vote too.

22 June 2018

EXXO

The ‘features’ on Lamacq are always so ill-thought-through, lazy and obvious, but that was particularly daft that in two ways. (i) Neither song is about football -a club anthem (with no reference to football) v. a song about subbuteo. (ii) the club anthem will always win on a massive fanbase vote.

HMHB have several songs about football, but DPAK isn’t one of them, is it? In the subbuteo world cup, however, it thrashes the Undertones in the final.

Which HMHB song, though, would you put up against Niall’s jobbie in the real world cup final of songs about watching football? Between ‘Bad Wools’ and ‘Friday Night’ for me.

22 June 2018

EXXO

Although since ‘Bad Wools’ is about watching appallingly crap football-related TV, I guess it’s ‘Friday Night’ that loses to The Hitchers in that particular final.

22 June 2018

Excavated Rita

There is such an unparalleled array of gems to choose from that it is impossible to be definitive. Each have merits in their own way. For what it is worth, The Referee’s Alphabet is the apogee for me. What it lacks in whistleability, is more than made up for by the skewering of the popular representation of the motivations and performance of referees and, by association, the appreciation of the modern game. Somewhat compensated by some great bird noises and references to How Green Was My Valley which beat Citizen Kane to Best Picture at the Oscars.

22 June 2018

IdristhechiselleR

Until the Terminus/Umberstone/Locksmith triple whammy, the Referee’s Alphabet was the only HMHB song which made me cry. In an entirely good way, I might add.

23 June 2018

Chris The Siteowner

6Music’s Marc Riley suggesting on Twitter that “They (HMHB) have a new LP out but won’t do a session coz ‘we have no new songs’.”

https://twitter.com/marcrileydj/status/1015997258943393793?s=21

8 July 2018

Chris The Siteowner

Simon Mayo (q.v.) on the Word Podcast reckons ‘there’s a direct link from Gilbert & Sullivan through Flanders & Swann to Half Man Half Biscuit’.

17 July 2018

dr desperate

Maybe not a direct link, but I mentioned a while ago that the verse form of 1966AAT is that of ‘The Lord Chancellor’s Nightmare Song’ from G & S’s ‘Iolanthe’.
And, of course, TDSN has
“Follow me, oh follow
Down to the hollow
And there we will wallow …”
from F & S’s ‘The Hippopotamus Song’.

18 July 2018

dr desperate

Stuart Maconie just played ‘Man of Constant Sorrow (With a Garage in Constant Use)’ as one of his ‘Recommends’ tracks on R6M. Hoping for ‘Mod. Diff. Vdiff. Hard Severe’ on “Lammo”‘s ‘Friday Free-For-All’ later.

20 July 2018

EXXO

You requested that one bro’? Me too. Sent him the lyrics just now an’ all, as I’ve no doubt the producer isn’t sure if it’s clean or not – surely no other reason why it’s been broadcast on nowt but Radio Cymru yet.

20 July 2018

dr desperate

I did – never got off the ground tho’.

22 July 2018

Paul F

Did anybody else notice that Saturday’s weather watcher photo on BBC Breakfast was from “Neil from Prenton”?

23 July 2018

EXXO

No, but if we were all having guesses of things that will be scathed about in a future live version of A Country Practice, weather bloody watcher bloody photos would be right up there for me.

23 July 2018

biscuitear

Stuart Maconie towards the end of the Freak Zone yesterday: “My guest next week, hurrah, Nigel from Half Man Half Biscuit.”

23 July 2018

EXXO

Thanks for the heads-up. Listened to nearly the whole programme while washing & cooking but must have missed that final link while actually eating me Sunday tea!

Quite a coup for Mr. Maconie, and it seems highly likely it was his triumph on ‘Pointless’ and then immediately afterwards playing ‘Knobheads’ on his show what done it.

24 July 2018

careful with that spliff, eugene

Just listened to NB on Stuart Maconie’s Freakzone. Could have been longer

29 July 2018

Chris The Siteowner

If you missed the interview, I’ve put it on the album page here.

29 July 2018

paul bickle

“pointless” interview neither said anything of interest very disappointing

30 July 2018

dr desperate

See what you did there, @Paul – discussion of Richard “Osmond” Osman and Alexander Armstrong’s CD did take up a disproportionate amount of the nine and a half minutes. Some course material for students of Wirral psychogeography (the M53 acting as an isoposh separating Bhead from Westside), the suggestion of a “Swiftian Moralist” pushbike and a late apology to Nerys Hughes were about the only points of interest.
At least it was better than Liz Kershaw’s effort.

30 July 2018

BOBBY SVARC

“At least it was better than Liz Kershaw’s effort”

I wouldn’t go that far.

30 July 2018

Paul F

Some of these are better than others. The HMHB effort is a fairly obvious one.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/gallery/2018/jul/30/bands-fc-where-music-and-football-badges-collide

30 July 2018

EXXO

Excellent interview, uncharacteristically focused and relevant, and pretty insight-rich compared to any random ten minutes of 6Music. The final 88 seconds (15½%) is about ‘Knobheads’, yes, but with little of the irrelevance that the previous comments caused me to expect – it was fascinating to learn that the song really was focused on that particular programme more than any other show, to the extent that he would actually write to Osman about it! No self-indulgence, and whatever NB must surely have said about Stuart’s own appearance on Pointless was edited out, presumably self-deprecatingly, by Maconie.

30 July 2018

paul bickle

Insight rich ?!!!! it was like two old women talking at a bus stop get a grip !

30 July 2018

EXXO

My grip is intact, based on realistic expectations. If it had been billed as some kind of track-by-track examination of the themes of the new album, I might be disappointed (though not as surprised as I would have been to hear that in the first place). It wasn’t billed as anything and it provided far more insight than Mr. B’s self-deprecatory, obfuscating, deflecting style usually provides to the general public, certainly in nine and a half minutes anyway. The last time he agreed to go on the wireless for a decent chunk with a decent knowledgeable presenter, (Roger Hill), it seemed to be on condition that he didn’t have to say a word about his own latest album. I actually assumed when I heard Maconie mention this interview last week that he would be talking to Nigel about his tastes in other people’s freaky stuff, so rare is it that Mr. B can be prevailed upon to talk seriously about his own stuff, lest it sound like promotion of the band or himself.

I say to the general public, because that’s who the interview aimed at, but there were a few snippets for the knowledgeable fan too. And the stuff we already knew was generally expressed in a slightly different way to how we’ve heard it before.

I must admit the one slight disappointment for me was the implied consensus between them that the sales of the album are somehow related to an increase in quality over some previous output (rather than other key factors such as accessibility, for example).

Interesting that Maconie went to Liverpool to record it, for ten minutes on the show. I wonder if there was more material recorded for any other project.

30 July 2018

EXXO

Anyone notice by the way that Mr. B’s somewhat eccentric and expansionist definition of the population of Magna Birkonia includes 52,000 people west of the M53?

30 July 2018

dr desperate

According to the Wirral Compendium of Statistics, in 2015 the population of the Bhead constituency was 89,431 (beating Wallasey by 9). Adding in all of Wirral West would have brought that figure up to 155,756; the whole of Wirral was 320,900.

31 July 2018

EXXO

That’s just the Wirral Borough Council area. The whole Oblong is about half a million.

The point I was making is that the only measure of Birkenheadness by which the population is 140,000 (actually 142,000) is something very strange called the “Birkenhead Urban Subdivision” (not to be confused with the altogether vaster “Birkenhead Urban Area”).

The B.U.S. (as, mystifyingly, nobody else has ever called it until now) includes Woodchurch, Upton, Greasby and (wait for it Frankby). Which, in that order, are progressively more “West Wirral” on the isoposh. But only the first of those four places is in any sense geographically or culturally part of Birkenhead. So yes, I am, yes, accusing Mr. B of rank self-contradiction in this regard.

…though sometimes such things work in one’s favour. I was born in Upton but my birth certificate puts me in “Birkenhead North”, one of the hardest pedigrees on Merseyside. Upon seeing my passport, officials worldwide avert their gaze and hastily wave me through.

31 July 2018

Chris The Siteowner

I often get correspondence aimed at the band (usually gig requests from venues!) which I pass on to Geoff. I realise that the band don’t give a stuff about having a website, and good for them, but I’m not sure they realise it ends up being a chore for someone else. Still, after the mention of Ipswich Town Reserves, I will forever be in their service. Anyway, this preamble is just to say that today I was asked for a photo for the next issue of Mojo magazine, so look out for something there if it transpires.

31 July 2018

dr desperate

I’ve got loads if they’re running short. Perhaps they’ve done a ‘Hello Goodbye’ interview with Ken.
Speaking of Mojo, one of their reviewers Ian Harrison wrote this piece on VTTBOTR in 1997. I particularly enjoyed the album title, and the hilarious caption to the photo.
http://selectmagazinescans.monkeon.co.uk/showpage.php?file=wp-content/uploads/2014/03/albums7.jpg

1 August 2018

EXXO

How uncanny that Niall’s lyrics get the adjacent bad review there. You can only love Ben Gilbert so much, but you can hate him all the way to hell.

1 August 2018

Phyllis Triggs

4 August 2018

dr desperate

‘JDOGs’ was on Tom Robinson’s ‘Now Playing’ on R6M tonight, the topic being “No Joke! A playlist of songs that make listeners laugh”. Unfortunately, having checked my diary I discover I was watching television at the time – anyone here requested it?

5 August 2018

EXXO

Zillions of people asked for all kinds of HMHB for that hour, as will be seen from looking at the advance response to their pathetic plea for “content”. One twitter merchant even ironically predicted that it would be “hmhb hour”. I basically hate ‘themes’ on radio programmes. Laziest excuse for predictability, and predictability we always get (except for Radmac’s Chain, which is just inanely, pointlessly random, proving that you can connect anything with anything, so why bother?). The worst offender is Gideon Coe who trails his occasional ‘themed’ shows for weeks, like they will be exhibitions of the greatest genius the world has to offer, and then the results are no more interseting than when people text in spontaneously to Lamacq, with some obvious suggestion for the ‘National Anthem’ after an early pint at 4.15 pm.

Mrs. Exford even correctly predicted the final track (Idle’s).

5 August 2018

Transit full of keith

Not so many years ago, Tom Robinson did a ‘Now Playing’ on ‘funny songs’ and played … Joy Division Oven Gloves. I remember, because was the moment that introduced me to Biscuit, later in life than should have happened – they had just been a vaguely known band name to me till then. So I’m eternally grateful for that, but it’s disappointing to hear that with the same theme, 200 HMHB songs to choose from, and no doubt an army of fans with better suggestions online, he picked exactly the same one again.

6 August 2018

Chris The Siteowner

Decent-enough, largely photo-led article about Subbuteo in the Daily Heil today which mentions DPAK and links to the song on YouTube. Read at https://donotlink.it/AYZL.

15 August 2018

aiwacat

ETABR makes an appearance on the Mojo cover-mount CD this month. If they’d left the title at ‘Mersey Paradise’ without feeling the need to append ‘the fab sound of Liverpool’, I wouldn’t feel slightly irked.

Still, explains their request for a photo.

17 August 2018

dr Desperate

They do admit they’re “from the west bank of the Mersey” on the track listing.
“Birkenhead’s Half Man Half Biscuit have spent a good third of a century setting droll social commentaries to robust indie rock. This highlight of their 14th album sees Nigel Blackwell critiquing the values of the artisanal bread and Strava set…”Get your fuckin’ hedge cut!””
The photo shows Nigel and Ken, with hair.

17 August 2018

EXXO

That blurb makes me want to set up one of those hybrid tribute acts. We’d do a heady mix of tracks from LA soft rockers, art college punk bands and locally-famous Brighton comedy punk acts. We’d be called Art is Anal Bread.

17 August 2018

EXXO

The more you think about the title the worse it gets. A song by a Manchester band about drowning yourself/your girlfriend in the river in Stockport. Reminds me of that old pub quiz question: “which league ground is closest to Mersey?”

17 August 2018

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

Not sure if this is the appropriate place (but couldn’t find another) – the lads now have their own official Spotify playlist https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/37i9dQZF1DZ06evO3HXmxv

I assume it’s auto-generated based on the songs streamed there but it’s a good sign that enough people are listening to them for Spotify to consider them worth a playlist (which they promote to people who listen to ‘similar’ artists)

24 August 2018

dr Desperate

EAOR just played on Steve Lamacq’s ‘Good Day, Bad Day’ on R6M, courtesy of Graham (Jitsu_G of this site). Good Day.

29 August 2018

Jitsu_g

Surprised how easy it was to get on. Only emailed him last week. It was always going to be a good day

29 August 2018

EXXO

‘Grocer Jack’ last record on the Chain – which can mean only one suggestion on the ODAM 03700 100 600. The only question is how many of us will ring in?

(This is definitely not a campaign though. Oh no)

19 September 2018

EXXO

Why do I ever waste time and energy on the flipping miserable old HMHB-snubbing Chain? They haven’t featured Our Lads for well over 2.5 years now.
I don’t send them anything like as many suggestions as I used to, ‘cos I haven’t been able to text since a phone got smashed at the Sheffield gig well over a year ago, and the SIM just won’t do outgoing texts in another phone for some strange reason, so it’s always email or ODAM. Too much information, I know. But note to self: let’s try to change that to not bothering, ever.

Although I am slightly tempted for BBC music day, just as an annoying art experience, to use the Chain ODAM for 206 separate increasingly drunken messages starting at midnight that day, showing that you can in fact connect any song by anyone to any HMHB song. Like the pleading, increasingly pathetic messages of an obsessed ex. That would be one way to retire from several years of Chain rejection.

20 September 2018

Gipton Teenager

ODAM? Whaddat?

20 September 2018

EXXO

Soz for assuming everyone’s a Radmac listener. Overnight Drunken Answering Machine is how the first chain suggestion is done each day.

Just had my hopes dashed for work this autumn or winter. Again. Imagine that and the change to Mary frickin’ Anne frickin’ Hobbs in the daytime on 6Music this winter. I’ll be lucky to make it to my 59th Spring.

20 September 2018

EXXO

Meant 56th. Everything is spinning today. As ever, it’s the hope that you didn’t even really knew you had so strongly that kills you.

20 September 2018

Gipton Teenager

@Exxo I don’t listen to Radmac much, as I work outside and DAB requires industrial quantities of batteries. It’s 4 for me, usually for a laugh, although on Wednesday there was a repeat of ‘The 56’ (about the Bradford City fire ) which upset me greatly. Football supporters of whatever stripe should give it a listen.
(I’m still getting the ExxonMobil problem, how do I stop it?)

21 September 2018

paul f

Yes – one of my ODAM messages was played back in their Radio 2 days causing much hilarity due to my message referencing my location (Berkshire) in sharp contrast to my accent (Scouse). Thankfully very few of my work colleagues were regular listeners.

21 September 2018

JUST MARK

@EXXO : 2.5 years? Surely 2½. I heard someone use the decimalised version in conversation once. But I was in Knutsford.

25 September 2018

EXXO

On this laptop I only know how to do ½ by either writing this in word – can’t normally be arsed – or nicking it from another post – like yours.

25 September 2018

JUST MARK

Laptops don’t make it easy. If you have an Alt key and a keypad then Alt+0189 should do it. Or if you’re using Windows press the Win button type charmap and copy+paste the blighter. At least you didn’t resort to 1/2.

25 September 2018

dr Desperate

Nice quote-filled gig preview by Paddy Shennan (Likes: Pubs, Everton and Half Man Half Biscuit. Hates: Everything Else) in today’s Echo: “Let’s hear it for these fine words of wit, wisdom and wonder.”

26 September 2018

Frank Hovis

Ode to Joyce in the latest LostCousins Newsletter

https://www.lostcousins.com/newsletters2/endsep18news.htm#Joyce

29 September 2018

hendrix-tattoo

Here’s a review by Peter Guy….

http://www.getintothis.co.uk/2018/10/half-man-half-biscuit-o2-academy-liverpool/

17 October 2018

Paul f

Posting this here even through it has nothing to do with the band, merely because this is the thread where the sheer god-awfulness of Liz Kershaw was previously discussed.

I’ve just started listening to her Album Day Dark Side of the Moon show with Nick Mason and she has introduced the show by noting that Nick Mason was involved in creating the best selling British album of all time, Darkness on the Edge of Town.

18 October 2018

Bobby Svarc

33 years tonight since JP introduced HMHB to the nation… I think!

22 October 2018

EXXO

Is right. A boring, dry Tuesday night at about twelve minutes past ten, I seem to recall, between a jaunty session track by the Woodentops and something depressing by Ted Hawkins.

When you look at the dates of someone called Julian’s other tapes (mostly 1982, and nothing within 2 months of this date), it is a miracle that this isolated one survived, via Kev and then “bbrbr57” (Bill?) who had it uploaded to some torrenty thing about ten years ago. Somebody, somewhere could probably be persuaded to re-upload the entire show to something or other.

22 October 2018

EXXO

By a strange coincidence (or was it?), that 22/10/1985 show also included a track by someone who used to live with Geoff Davies and had been briefly Peel-produced on the Dandelion label more than a decade earlier… and who recently shared a platform of sorts with HMHB … and who went to my school (which is a miracle in itself). Any guesses?

22 October 2018

dR Desperate

Assuming that platform came with a music magazine, then I believe they also shared one (HMHB appearing twice) in the 1999 ‘Peelennium’.
I also note that Peel’s publishing company was called Biscuit Music, named, at the suggestion of Marc Bolan, after one of his hamsters. No band link, as the rodent was mentioned in a letter to Tom Robinson in 1968 and the company was launched in 1969.

22 October 2018

EXXO

Correctomedico. I’m not sure it can have been a coincidence, when Peel played a Mike Hart track an average of about every 6 years! The next play after the 22/10/85 one may have been in 1994, when Peel said:

“Mike Hart made an LP for Dandelion Records, which was the label I had at the end of the 1960s/beginning of the 1970s. Catastrophically unsuccessfully financially but artistically sound – not always I have to admit, but a lot of good stuff nonetheless, and few things better than this, which is a song called ‘Artie’s Wife’. Pay particular attention to the way he sings “She lives now in Belgium” and even more so “Reads a book on plastics”. And I think “plastics” is delivered with more venom than any other single word in all of recorded popular music.”)

Tom Ravenscroft never mentions his dad on 6M, and never plays HMHB, but a few minutes ago (in Lauren’s slot) he played a very pleasant indie-Kraut record by a band called Fun Fare from Leipzig, so I took the excuse of praising that one to send him an embarrassing message of love about our ‘anniversary’ today, as well as his dad’s sad one this week.

22 October 2018

EXXo

I wasted much time today trying to get HMHB on air for the anniversary, and it turned out Lammo was going to play them anyway without being aware of HMHB33, just ‘cos he says he was randomly listening to CSIA last week. Played ‘Bad Losers’ and big-upped ‘Petty Sessions.’

It might be 33 years, but I’ve just remembered that Peel started ‘God gave us Life’ that night at 45 rpm instead of 33.

22 October 2018

dr desperate

Right Time, Wrong Speed.

22 October 2018

Bobby Svarc

Google

23 October 2018

A middle aged huw

C4, get your fuckin’ hedge cut.

https://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/c4-confirms-leeds-as-national-hq-bristol-glasgow-creative-hubs

31 October 2018

transit full of keith

Totnes Bickering Fair getting played right now on RadMac’s The Chain (following on from a Vashti Bunyan track).

12 November 2018

Charles Exford

Well played Chris Morris (not that one, but the manager of the Great Britain men’s basketball team, no less), for getting HMHB back on the Radmac Chain at about 14.19 this afternoon, after over two and a half long years.

For the spreadsheet, it’s 7744 – Totnes Bickering Fair.

Full name-check for all current band members too. Twice. Including a musing, a whole ‘nother song later, on the presence of both a curly Carl and a kicking Karl in the same band.

12 November 2018

Charles Exford

Incidentally I did send Mr. Maconie details of a couple of Emma Goldman’s most famous mis-attributions (“If voting changed anything…” and “If I can’t dance …”) in response to his query about that line in ‘Totnes’.

12 November 2018

Gipton Teenager

This was a bit odd, my weekly 5 minutes of 6 music coincided with the last 2 minutes of Vashti Buryan followed by 3 minutes of Rad or Mac saying how much he liked her stuff and giving her a plug for a gig at the Brudenell. You off Nigel?

13 November 2018

Gipton Teenager

Bunyan

13 November 2018

Flintlock

Not Rad, sadly.

13 November 2018

Chris The Siteowner

HMHB Not In The Media (probably):

The Guardian has started its countdown of the top 50 albums of the year. As in 2014, it’ll probably ignore HMHB completely (it didn’t review the album on release on either occasion), so stand by for the announcement of a readers’ poll where we can point out the obvious omission. Again.

4 December 2018

GORDON BURNS

@CtSo: Was that hyperlink above a level of irony that’s way above me, or a mistake?

(Ooops, good spot; now corrected – thanks – CtSO)

5 December 2018

EXXO

I liked it, assuming it to be part of the coded signal to (at your signal) unleash hell.

It would need to be coded really, or we’ll get accused of an organised hi-jack. Again.

5 December 2018

Chris The Siteowner

Matthew Eland, Getintothis: “Ultimately, the real test of a new HMHB album is how many of its songs can stand alongside the trusty standards in a live setting; on this basis, I can confidently assert we’ll be shouting lines like “Ground Control to Monty Don/The testimonial silver’s gone” for years to come.” (No.50 in ‘Top 100 Albums Of 2018’)

10 December 2018

Eric t’viking

Listening to Aquaman film review by Mark Kermode on Radio 5live:
“So there’s this mermaid, who’s saved by a lighthouse keeper, they fall in love and have a child, who’s half-man and – ”

” – half-biscuit?”, Simon Mayo interrupts.

Kermode acknowledges: “Ah, ’90’s reference, eh?” then continues with his verbal flow.

15 December 2018

dr desperate

Bijoux bi-juxtapostion in this month’s Mojo gig guide, the February 2019 one (yes, I know).
The ad for the HMHB tourette (7 dates, running from the 2nd of February to the 22nd of June) sits directly beneath one for an 8-date, 10-day tour by that Glenn Hughes off Deep Purple. The last date on his list is Nottingham Rock City, which is followed by the logo for Planet Rock.

16 December 2018

dr desperate

Chapeau to Parsfan for spotting that Mojo have given the wrong date for the York gig. It’s the 1st of Febbers at Fibbers.

16 December 2018

parsfan

I did what now?

16 December 2018

CARRIE ANNE

Turned Up Clocked On Laid Off on RadMac’s ‘The Chain’ today. Someone might want to update the spreadsheet. Will this thread survive the schedule changes on 6 in the new year?

17 December 2018

Alan

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/dec/21/tell-us-what-was-your-album-of-2018

Let it happen bass player. Shame the guardian, again.

21 December 2018

cream cheese and chives

Is it me or do an awful lot of the ‘best 50’ have a distinctly Buena Vista Social Club feel about them?

21 December 2018

dr desperate

“But a list of 50 inevitably misses out out dozens of brilliant albums, so we’d love to hear from you about the recordings you think were unfairly overlooked by our vote.
Tell us about your favourite album of 2018 and why you are voting for it in the form below. You have until 24 December to make your case, and we’ll publish a selection of readers’ contributions before the end of the year.”

21 December 2018

Chris The Siteowner

*Sigh*

Here we go again. Looks like we need to encourage some input over the weekend. If you want to jump the gun, use Alan’s link above or go straight to the form here. Questions 2 and 3 are optional, and just to make the copy and paste easier for question 4, the answer is:

“No-one Cares About Your Creative Hub So Get Your Fuckin’ Hedge Cut” by Half Man Half Biscuit

21 December 2018

paul f

Buried in the long list of nominations, it seems a certain Eamonn Forde is the one person at the Guardian with some taste.

21 December 2018

Alan

I want my golden biscuit

21 December 2018

Chris The Siteowner

Applause please for Kevin Buckle in the Edinburgh Evening News for mentioning Creative Hub in a list of “recommended albums … that haven’t featured much in other people’s lists for 2018”. I know that we didn’t expect to see the album all over the year’s festive fifties, but even so, its absence is striking.

23 December 2018

WARDEN Hodges

Us chosen few know this was album of the year, album of next 4 years I’d guess.
Greetings and all that Biscuiteers, maybe asking too much for another Liverpool gig in 2019 so I’ll just look up Huddersfield B&Bs instead.

23 December 2018

Paul f

Congratulations to Chantelle Bennett for being the selected review out of (I assume) many to be printed in the Guardian’s “readers favourite albums of 2018” follow-up article.

26 December 2018

Chris The Siteowner

Well, we got it a brief mention. Well done all.

26 December 2018

SPT

There was a plaintive bit of the Dickie Davies’ Eyes intro before Football Focus showed the Spurs goals from last night.

5 January 2019

Paul f

I could have sworn there was a Friday Night and the Gates are Low reference on the BBC news report on the game on Saturday morning but I wasn’t really concentrating.

6 January 2019

dR desperate

I don’t know which is the more insulting suggestion in the last paragraph of this review: that I didn’t exist, or that I stood at the back. (AB start another tour this week, you know.)

15 January 2019

Howard J

Dominic O’Connell (Today business presenter)Re: Sainsburys and Asda merger difficulties:
“Unfortunately for them [Sainsburys], the light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be an oncoming train.”

Nice one.

20 February 2019

Chris The Siteowner

Pirx The Purist has provided a full translation of Nigel’s interview on BBC Radio Cymru: it’s now got its own page and I’ve moved the conversations there.

21 March 2019

transit full of keith

I may not be as conversant with Merseyside geography as some folk on here, but flipping heck, even I can tell this is all over the place: https://twitter.com/BBC6Music/status/1108767565994774531

21 March 2019

Warden Hodges

Boss that.
Would have had Crosby’s Shipbuilders in there (where FGTH have been placed).

21 March 2019

wobbly Jelly

Going for the oblique…
The last episode of S6 of Endeavour – Degüello

One of the key plot parts is the death of the “borough surveyor”

And Fred Thursday calls a baddie a “shitehawke”

30 March 2019

Dawlishian

I was listening to the 1999 John Peel Festive 50 today. After playing ‘Twenty-four hour garage people’ John says that the HMHB Christmas song he had played the previous week was probably not going to be released. Does anyone know what it was?

15 April 2019

EXXO

he’s referring to a white label of It’s Cliched, which he played on 21 December 1999.

15 April 2019

Dawlishian

Thanks EXXO. Do you know if it was the same as the version on TOB?

16 April 2019

EXXO

Yes. I checked back with the ‘News’ pages on Gez’s site https://cobweb.businesscollaborator.com/hmhb/index.htm
It was indeed the album version, sent to radio sympathisers like Peel, Lamacq, Roger Hill etc, as a seasonal taster of the album that would come out just 4 months later. Peel’s comment I assume was in response to enquiries from listeners, and the answer he got from Geoff or Nigel would have presumably meant ‘no plans to put it out separately as a single,’ though misundestanding/partially mis-remembering/garbling this message would have been typical Peel.

16 April 2019

Dawlishian

Thanks again

16 April 2019

dr desperate

Next month’s Mojo magazine will feature HMHB on their ‘How To Buy’ Top 10 LPs page.
Send your selections to mojo@bauermedia.co.uk with the subject “How To Buy Half Man Half Biscuit”. They print the best comments (tending to be into the whole brevity thing, generally 15 words max).

18 April 2019

Chris The Siteowner

18 April 2019

EXXO

So are they asking for one selection or a whole top ten with reasons? And does it act as a popularity vote or just as some reader generated content they can input snippets of if they deign? (Nobody say “it’s just a bit of fun” ‘cos clearly it isn’t).

18 April 2019

transit full of keith

That Fall article doesn’t include ‘Slates’, so this whole exercise is obviously laughably flawed and I will be boycotting it.

(This bloke’s got the right idea: https://youtu.be/1totDTfuMQg)

18 April 2019

dr desperate

The rubric reads, “This month you chose your Top 10 Eric Burdon/The Animals LPs. Next month we want your Half Man Half Biscuit Top 10. Email your selections to mojo@bauermedia.co.uk and we’ll print the best comments”.
I assume they rank the LPs by popularity, though how they choose the best comments is a mystery. They didn’t print any of mine about Warren Zevon or Loudon Wainwright III, so it’s obviously not based on merit.

18 April 2019

EXXO

Will they print the best questions though? My first one will be HTF they claim to know which the best comments are, unless they’re already sure what they think the best 66.66666666% of the albums are?

18 April 2019

Chris The Siteowner

Interesting addition to the Cambridge Folk Festival lineup.

24 April 2019

Alice van der meer

Doubtless I am about to make a tit of myself here, but is there an HMHB relevance to the Bar-steward sons that I’m missing, or do you just like a good piss-take act occasionally (seen them at Cropredy (qv), and they are certainly a good piss-take. They also wandered round the festival in their stage garb for three days, rather than vanning in and vanning out again).

24 April 2019

EXXO

I think Chris is just mentioning them because their name owes something to HMHB.

24 April 2019

Bobby Svarc

Did they appear at the last Birmingham gig? I can remember a some folk type band parading around the O2.

25 April 2019

Alice van der meer

You wouldn’t have been able to miss them if it was, dayglo chunky knit tank tops…

25 April 2019

dr desperate

Saw them supporting Roy Wood a few years ago, and quite enjoyed their song about a bloke whose wife transitions into a seal: “Since You’ve Been Ron”.

25 April 2019

Gok WAN Acolyte

Radio 3’s The Verb featured HMHB last night, its theme was “Rivers” and journalist Jude Rogers selected “Hair Like Brian May Blues” as one of her examples of rivers in popular music. You can find it here from 40:25 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00051sn
Presenter Ian McMillan concludes that “there isn’t enough HMHB on Radio 3” so perhaps we might hear them more often

18 May 2019

Eric t’viking

@ Gok Wan Acolyte – by ‘eck, Radio 3!
Virtually part of the Establishment now…

18 May 2019

dr desperate

Good spot, @GWA. She once suggested that Radiohead (q v) might do an HMHB covers album.

18 May 2019

aiwacat

Received the new MOJO this morning, and had access to the elderly works’ scanner this afternoon. So, for those who are interested…

https://flic.kr/p/2fWHMuB

https://flic.kr/p/2exKuAH

18 May 2019

dr desperate

Excellent work, @Aiwacat. Also @Jitsu_G, @Carrie Ann, @probably others here and Nige (Mr Gig) Tassell, whose comments were printed.
(Mine, as ever, were overlooked.)

19 May 2019

Transit full of keith

Not the first time for Biscuits on R3, I’ve heard Ian McMillan on The Verb put in a word for them before. And I think the makers of Late Junction sometimes put them on, between the Stockhausen and the Tuvan throat singing, to irk the purists.

Nice Mojo article, ta!

19 May 2019

dr desperate

Andy Kershaw interviewed Nigel and Geoff at the Brampton Live festival for his R3 programme in 2006 (see the sparsely-attended Video Miscellany page).
I recall Mark Lamarr telling Wreckless Eric that he (Lamarr) would donate his spleen if he (Eric) ever appeared on R3, so the first night he was on the channel Kershaw played ‘Whole Wide World’.

19 May 2019

EXXO

Many thanks, Aiwacat. Just in time to prevent me having to swipe a copy from the Smith’s at the station, which has gone self-service and so deserves everything it gets (especially as regards the publications that have tokens for the current Northern Rail offer). Their usual 11-album format was always going to make two albums feel more than a bit left out, like reserve goalkeepers at the cup final. The omission of Godcore was expected and that of the recently-neglected Urge for Offal was dreaded. Neil’s tune-smithery throughout the canon also neglected in predictable fashion, especially in the “others wax and wane” sentence. L’enfer c’est les auteurs.

19 May 2019

EXXO

Soz that was me on auto-moan on a bleary Sunday morning, trying to remember a train of lamentation from another bleary Sunday several weeks back. Three albums
were always going to be benched, and it does seem that it’s the long players who try something a bit different that fall out of favour…

19 May 2019

Transit full of keith

Agh, just winced at the mention of reserve goalkeepers at the cup final there. Harsh.

19 May 2019

dr desperate

Anyone who has bought/swiped a copy of Mojo (that’s not how I would spell “Fuckin'”) could do worse than turn to the ‘Hello Goodbye’ feature on the inside back page, where Barry Wom describes how he joined, then left The Rutles. “It started with a search for sandwiches. Litigation and a week in Butlin’s ended the dream.”

21 May 2019

Alice van der meer

When the Cambridge gig is rescheduled, you could go and have a pint in Barry Wom’s pub, y’know…

21 May 2019

dr desperate

Last Friday’s Elis James and John Robins R5L podcast mentions DPAK during a whinge about the demise of the iPod Classic.

10 June 2019

EXXO

Was it you Dr. D who nominated KoHV for Lammo’s National Anthem last week, when the story was binmen’s shorts (for this summer heatwave)?

It’s a pity that there’s no record of all Lammo’s past <i<National Anathemata, as I’ve no doubt HMHB have had that honour way more than they have featured in The Chain.

Talking of which, I note again that the Project’s Chainlist
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oWWNf1qJ60a0N9R47IJOP96ABTHmoq2xXFxWeT2f6L0/edit#gid=0
hasn’t as yet been updated with the last two HMHB picks which came in quick succession in midwinter, one just before RadMac went to weekends and one after. They are mentioned separately in this thread, sometime around midwinter (one in Dec and one in Jan if I had to guess?), but to get the chain numbers I guess we’ll have to look on their archive page….
https://www.thechain.uk/tag/half-man-half-biscuit/

11 June 2019

EXXO

To be fair, the January appearance of TUCOLO on The Chain was not in fact mentioned in this thread, though I’m sure it was mentioned on the site.

11 June 2019

dr desperate

KoHV wasn’t me, I’m embarrassed to admit. I did get a hit on Tom Robinson’s Dr John tribute on Sunday though.

11 June 2019

EXXO

Another 6Music ‘feature’ featuring HMHB last week which might have particularly interested one particular Projectista was when Keaveny’s whatjumacallit feature thrust Dickie Davies eyes into some sort of pointless popularity contest with a Hendrix track, for no apparent reason.

No features,
No features,
No features for me…
In England’s dreaming.

12 June 2019

Two fat feet

Podcast listeners note that the latest Afterword podcast is about the band; only listened to part of it so far but given that there’s been no mention of the Lyrics Project or the LFC so far, although the other website has been mentioned for its references section, suggests none of the participants are on this site. Sounds like they’re all big fans (of course they would have to be if they’re taking part) apart from the host who admits to have only just started paying attention to them, probably in preparation for the podcast, but is now a fan. Sounds like a good discussion for those not so familiar, but if you have ‘I’m a bigger fan than you’ tendencies you might find yourself getting a bit frustrated and wanting to correct somebody every two minutes. Definitely worth [ahem] checking out though.

13 June 2019

Chris The Siteowner

I think they did a pretty good job. Are any of the contributors here? There’s an oblique reference to this site just before the ten-minute mark, and they’re clearly referencing it throughout the show.

13 June 2019

MALCOLM of arimathea

I’m one of them, not sure about the others. I thought we referred to this site quite a lot, and was planning to add a link but I see Chris has done the honours already.

13 June 2019

dr desperate

There were several goes on the Random Lyrics Generator, and references towards the end to the sort of academic research that goes on here.
Kudos to @MoA and the others for recalling so many lyrics on the fly, and for mentioning DPAKs, JDOGs (and of course HVJs) spotted at gigs.

13 June 2019

Chris The Siteowner

Malc: cheers – it was only referred to as “the band’s site”, which I’m sure would surprise the band. I’m sure people will find their way here if they want to though, so thanks.

13 June 2019

Two fat feet

Listened to most of it now; it did sound to me like the early website reference was to the other site which explains the references rather than listing (and discussing) the full lyrics, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find this one was being accessed while recording. I just find myself wanting to keep correcting insignificant factual errors, but that’s probably why I shouldn’t ever attempt to participate in these things if the opportunity arose.

13 June 2019

MALCOLM of arimathea

That’s a fair point, Chris – too many mentions of “the website” rather than “the Lyrics Project”. Still, anyone interested is now easily diverted here so all’s well that ends well. Overall I’m happy with it, an hour sounds like plenty of time but afterwards it felt like we’d barely scratched the surface. With hindsight, there’s inevitably stuff we missed out; we could have spent more time on “Creative Hub” for one thing.

13 June 2019

MALCOLM of arimathea

Oh, and yes TFF – I for one was constantly checking the pages here while we were recording. Hence the delay while I clicked through to reach the lyric to ACP – reciting the odd line off the top of your head is one thing, but for quoting several lines at once I wanted to make sure it was accurate.

13 June 2019

BOBBY SVARC

I gave it 10 minutes.

13 June 2019

Chris The Siteowner

You should have given it longer, Bobby, it was fun. Turning to other matters, I don’t normally post here whenever someone mentions the band in a review of someone else’s album (it happens far too often), but it intrigued me slightly to read on God Is In The TV about Quiet Marauder, “A Cardiff-based wacky collective of musicians, quirky British pop experimenters in the best tradition of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Frank Zappa and Half Man Half Biscuit.” I think the stylistic connection with HMHB is tenuous to say the least, but they’re on the Bubblewrap Collective label, so they warrant a mention for that anyway.

21 June 2019

dr desperate

And we’re back! Well done CtSO, and the LP elves.

26 June 2019

Peter Ross

Hello. I don’t know how many folk on here are into Richard Dawson, but his excellent new song Jogging seems quite Biscuit-y to my ear, so thought I would draw it to your attention. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGiQ_-Ktpvc

10 August 2019

cream cheese and chives

My daughter recommended this to me from Vietnam. ‘It’s a bit HMHBish,’ she said.
Not sure about that but a good tune all the same.

10 August 2019

dr desperate

Very Biscuity, @Peter, especially the line about the busker.
Shall we be seeing you up the Devil’s Arse, btw?

10 August 2019

EXXO

Mr. B has mentioned that he’s an admirer of Mr. Dawson’s work, so it’s certainly Biscuity in that sense Peter. Well sensed!

10 August 2019

Peter Ross

I would dearly love to be at the Devil’s Arse, but I’m seeing The Cure/Twilight Sad/Mogwai in Glasgow on the same day. It is a source of some regret to me, though, I must say.

10 August 2019

Ferenc puskas to you

Interesting article on the Wirral music scene mentioning HMHB, and the only other use of “wool” that I’ve come across (since I come from the south).

https://thequietus.com/articles/26949-bill-ryder-jones-future-yard-2019-interview

15 August 2019

EXXO

Thanks for posting. At least it draws attention to some young acts that may need “checking out,” and to the festival. But if ever an article was in dire need of a bit of a socio-economic exposé of how privileged bands from West Kirby and Meols have f*ck all to do with Birkenhead,never mind Liverpool, it surely has to be that one ….And anyway, what’s going on with his sock there in that first photo? It looks like he’s got a ball of yarn that won the Worst Coloured Wool of 2019 award, instead of an ankle. If ever a singer in a Quietus article was in dire need of an admission that he had in fact been knitted for the kids by their great-granny, based on a Jean Greenhowe pattern, it surely had to be Bill Ryder-Jones.

Which brings us to the last sentence. He doesn’t know that the two best song-writers on the Wirral are both in HMHB? And the song in the clip is not even in the top three best songs about bus travel by a Wirral song-writer in the last few years?

15 August 2019

Chris The Siteowner

Half Man Half Biscuit and the depths of Tranmere Rovers loyalty

11 September 2019

dr desperate

That’s very good, Chris. One for the list of Half Decent Articles?

12 September 2019

brumbiscuit

I think the author rather misses the point of Swerving the Checkatrade, but it’s a good advert…

12 September 2019

EXXO

How so, Andy? I think he misses the point of Friday Night more, conflating it with the 1986 Tranmere he starts with, rather than the much-changed post-Taylor 1994 Skyball that Mr. B is writing about. I could make a pretty incontrovertible argument that Friday Night is Mr. B’s purest protest song.

Looking at the blog as a whole it is pure terrifying what some young people these days feel they need to do to promote themselves.

12 September 2019

paul f

Sadly, but not surprisingly, no Biscuit albums in the Guardian’s Top 100 albums of the 21st Century. Rather more surprising is the absence of anything by the slightly more mainstream Wirralites, The Coral.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/13/100-best-albums-of-the-21st-century

13 September 2019

Brumbiscuit

@Exxo: The author propounds that the lines in question denigrate the competition. I’d argue that the main thrust is that the relationship is much more significant. I think both our clubs have been successful in the equivalent cup – mine more so than yours in 1991 – and even I have to admit it’s a Mickey Mouse trophy, but BCFC were so in the doldrums that any success was welcome, so swerving a tie would be a major sacrifice. ‘You are so wonderful that I’ll give up a seemingly tedious tie – which in reality means a heck of a lot to me – to see you instead.’

13 September 2019

Embrace the margin

@BRUM agree that there’s no sense of anti-Checkatrade protest in the song. I’d also taken the choice of trophy to be pointing up a certain romantic caution or even half-arsedness that characterises a lot of men’s efforts. Implicit in being prepared to swerve the least of the trophies is a “…but maybe not the League Cup, and definitely not a league match.” But I’m probably just applying my own standards. Both romantically and in my total inability to remember any details of Forest’s three Johnstone Paints campaigns.

15 September 2019

EXXO

I just think he ignores the ‘love’ element of the song (not because it isn’t obvious, but because he’s writing about Tranmere), but gets the anti-Checkatrade element right. Don’t forget that she is swerving the Checkatrade before he is – he just gets the courage to swerve it with her. We need to picture her as a season-ticket holding left-wing campaigner on all kinds of football and non-football issues. Like the woman in Tour Jacket she stamps her Doc Martened feet independently as she walks down his street ranting, about the evils of the current FL Trophy format. And forget your nostalgia for past glories, Andy – it is that current format we are talking about. The Leasing.com trophy as is and Checkatrade trophy as was (but is in the song) are definitely NOT the Leyland DAF as was.

The character in the song is obviously not Mr. B. Although Mr. B would probably deplore the current format of the FL Trophy, he would be allergic to any sort of campaign or boycott. And as he’s been “happily married” for the best part of 30 years he isn’t any of his comically lovelorn characters, is he? But inspired by real strong match-going women he knows and rants he has heard from supporters passing by his house and the general area? Undoubtedly.

The voice of this character is, as has been pointed out, very George Formby, very much over-shadowed by stronger women, like so many of Blackwell’s pathetic infatuated fools.

Anyway, for sure, like I say, the author is wronger about Friday Night.

15 September 2019

Alice van der meer

Whilst watching Britain at Low Tide last night, I caught a very brief glimpse of one of the diggers at Tankerton wearing what looked like a “Satisfying the bloodlust…” T-shirt.

If anyone is desperate to confirm this, here’s the link: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/britain-at-low-tide/on-demand/68593-001
(I used to look for bones on Long Rock, so got my knickers in a knot when they date the worked timber to the Bronze Age, should probably get out more…)

Has the HMHB Information Service Fartbook page owner collapsed under the weight of bad tattoo and mis-spelt things again?

18 September 2019

Chris The Siteowner

Well now, sneaking in at number 42 in the Readers’ Digest article “45 of the Funniest Song Titles” must make everything worthwhile, I guess. They could have tried harder with the photo though. And the writeup. And the entire article. • Dani Walpole is an Editorial Intern at Reader’s Digest.

25 September 2019

paul f

https://www.planetfootball.com/nostalgia/graeme-le-saux-bullying-chelsea-nearly-bottling-blackburn/

Passing reference to Pat Nevin playing Graeme Le Saux his HMHB records.

17 October 2019

John Anderson

Hi all.

CtSO has kindly allowed me to make a shameless plug for my latest experimental side project which, given the twin HMHB vanguards of music and sport, may be of interest.

Myself and fellow sports reporter Chris Skudder (ex Sky News) have come up with the Rock’n’Goal podcast, wherein sports stars discuss their musical obsessions and musicians reveal their sporting passions.

So far we have published three episodes: Cocteau Twins bassist Simon Raymonde, soccer superstar Trevor Francis and snooker legend Steve Davis. The first is a bit of a rough-cut pilot which but does contain a bit about HMHB, while the other two have proper production values. We’re especially pleased with the Davis one as it features his modular synth playing with his experimental band Utopia Strong and explores his obsession with obscure prog-psychedelia. Trevor is surprisingly well connected with big music names and has a great Bruce Springsteen story.

We are travelling to Liverpool next week to record the next edition which will feature Pete Wylie who’ll talk about his beloved Reds and has promised to play us a song.

The podcasts can be found here: https://audioboom.com/channels/4995596 We’re also on Twitter @rock_goal

Thanks for your support, it’s much appreciated. Hopefully it won’t end up being dismissed by the most unlikeliest of cable stations.

18 October 2019

Paul f

Just listened to the Trevor Francis one John. Very enjoyable (although I was a little irritated at the suggestion that the choice of ends for penalties in the 2001 League Cup Final was due to the Police chief being a red, rather than the actual reason of multiple pitch invasions during City’s semi-final – the penalty not given against Henchoz however…)

19 October 2019

John Anderson

Thanks Paul. Glad you enjoyed it. As you may have gathered, my partner in crime Chris Skudder is a dyed in the wool Birmingham City fanatic who may have seen it through blue tinted spectacles. Also, it may have been a bit of frustration on Trevor’s part as the losing manager.

19 October 2019

brumbiscuit

We wuz robbed!

19 October 2019

cream cheese and chives

Richard Dawson on sparkling form here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkSvn23fbAg

27 October 2019

John Anderson

There are no specific HMHB references in our latest Rock’n’Goal podcast but I hope you don’t mind me plugging it nonetheless, as it features another Merseyside legend Pete Wylie. He told us he was mates with NB and sees him quite regularly. Hopefully he’ll mention the podcast to him and one day we may get an HMHB/Tranmere themed episode. Until then, you can listen here: https://audioboom.com/channels/4995596

4 November 2019

EXXO

Enjoyed that. Shame no digs at the evil scum rag while he was talking about the Justice Tour though, ‘cos I know you lads have plenty of S*n Radio & NewsCorp links that he could have wibbed you mercilessly about 😉 Amazing gigs those were in 2011, with The Farm, Mick Jones, etc. The first one at the Olympia was one of the greatest gigs I’ve ever been at. Anyone who needs further confirmation that Pete sure can talk would be well advised to see him on his current tour, which is partly anecdotes &Q&A as is sometimes the way these days – I was at the first night in Hebden Bridge last Friday and well worth the trip, as if the 7.9% Black cat mild were not enough reason for the pilgrimage. Most of the tour is next year, plenty tickets available – get tix for your mates for Chrimbo, Biscuiteers:
http://www.petewylie.co.uk/gigs/
Pete might even be at Karl’s (punk covers) gig at New Brighton on Friday if anyone’s around – it’s his g’f’s local.

4 November 2019

EXXO

Got to say though I bet I’m not the only Red on here (eh Paul) who was cringeing about Pete responding to all that ‘title talk,’ just a quarter of the way through the season!

4 November 2019

transit full of keith

I’m mindful of the first line of CAMRA Man, but I’d say 7.9% is stretching the definition of ‘mild’ a bit.

4 November 2019

John Anderson

@exxo Glad you enjoyed it. When we met him at the cafe in The Florrie for the interview, the first thing he said to us was “you must promise me that none of this interview will end up in The Sun”. He’s an absolute diamond, took us out for a pint and then a Greek meal in Bold Street. As you say he knows how to tell a story. I’m just hoping Eric Cantona and John Power don’t sue us for revealing a couple of secrets. I’ve never seen him live but am going to go to the gig in Farncombe in February.

4 November 2019

Bobby Svarc

Mané of a diver, effortlessly….

5 November 2019

transit full of keith

Stuart Maconie mentions on Twitter that his forthcoming book (“The Nanny State Made Me”, out March next year) includes a tour of Birkenhead in the company of Nigel Blackwell.

6 November 2019

Phyllis Triggs

Cammell Laird Social Club featured in the All Killer No Filler slot of Liz Kershaw’s 6 Music show last Saturday (2nd Nov). TLATEOTT was played and this site and CtSO got a mention.

7 November 2019

EXXO

Not a time of the week when 6Music is on at ours, ‘cos of wall-to-wall footy of course, so thanks for the heads-up Lou. A really nice ten-minute piece that was on Saturday (available for 25 more days)
1:39:25 to 1:49:40
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0009zww
Perhaps Pat from Woodford Green will make himself known – I have my own theory on which Biscuiteer he may turn out to be – he certainly proselytises with aplomb for the band and the site, and is keen on that Cup voting thingy that some of you like. Even Liz far exceeds her usual levels of perspicacity, and the little medley of the whole album is superb.

7 November 2019

Alice van der meer

I can rule me out of being Pat – Woodford Green used to be in Essex, but it’s not me.

And seconding Exxo’s thanks.

7 November 2019

EXXO

Also thanks to Keith for the heads-up on the tweet from Maconie. When Roger referred in his recent review to the forthcoming Maconie book, I found Stuart’s tweet of 7th October, just saying that Mr. B would be in there somewhere, but this tour of Birkenhead in yesterday’s tweet is a fascinating prospect.

What a great little feed to browse down too. I don’t follow anyone on tw*tter, just go on when I need to see something/get some info/harass some evil dickhead/etc, but that almost makes me wish I did. Nothing but total respect, etc.

By the way, I can see what he’s doing with the title, and I hope it doesn’t lose him too many sales, but to me it should be a sub-title with inverted commas at best!

Ooh and what about a bit of ‘told you so’ too – anyone remember me thinking aloud (somewhere up there ^^) that there must be more to Nigel doing that little Maconie interview last year, and Stuart wouldn’t have left it at just that?

7 November 2019

dr desperate

More thanks to Lou, might have missed that. Perhaps someone could archive it on, I don’t know, YouTube?
Only slight disappointment was that she didn’t include ‘Stavanger Töestub’ in the medley. It’s her bro’s 60th on Saturday, you know.

7 November 2019

Chris The Siteowner

Oh, go on then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKvnVOeeITU

7 November 2019

Chris The Siteowner

Probably the most exciting picture find of my life. Together at last!

8 November 2019

EXXO

That is a fab picture. Do you know when and where taken? Ipswich have never played Dukla, not even in a friendly I’m thinking. Town were of course knocked out of the UEFA Cup in ’74 by FC Twente ’65, who went on to beat Dukla in the next round in Dec ’74 on their march to the trophy. The only time Twente have met Dukla.

I’m thinking that the pennant in bottom right could be another Twente one, too. So is it possible that the manager actually went back to Enschede for the next round to scout Thijssen & Muhren, who had played so impressively in knocking out Town, even though he didn’t succeed in actually signing them for 3 more years? I guess you will have a detailed biog of Mr. Robson somewhere that you can consult? If so, what vision and persistence from teh great man (and what a tribute to Mr. Cobbold’s belief in him too).

8 November 2019

EXXO

Ok, silly me, I can date the grey sideys and the number of wrinkles to around 1978 through FA Cup photos – in the days when you only got your picture taken for big cup matches – so it must be when he went to Enschede to scout/sign them in 1978?

8 November 2019

dr desperate

Tried searching Google Images for more info on that picture: it came up as ‘Gentleman’, with the first two related images being of Stalin and Pelé.

8 November 2019

Chris The Siteowner

Here’s the full original photo, Exxo. It’s from the programme for Bobby’s testimonial in November 1979, and I guess would have been taken in his office at Portman Road? If Ipswich never played Dukla Prague, the provenance of the pennant is indeed a mystery. I must make enquiries. The “Dutchmen” were only scouted in a pre-season tour of Holland before the 1978/79 season, according to one of the three Bobby Robson autobiographies I own (no mention of our Czech friends in any). Of course they were nearly only the warm-up, but in the end, who wants a coloured midfield player? He’ll never cut it on a wet Tuesday night in…, etc.

8 November 2019

EXXO

Thanks, brilliant, and very fortunate that the quality allows it to be blown up. Yes, the other pennants confirm it as being at Portman Road, including one European Cup match played under Alf Ramsay (Milan, 1962).

The fact that some of them are from youth tournaments overseas, and a couple are not even club sides (eg Swiss FA & a very small badge of the Dutch “PFA”) does throw up all kinds of possibilities, so probably it’s just a coincidence that Dukla & Twente are juxtaposed behind Bobby in your picture.

But it suddenly feels like Friday quiz time and I’d better take this to the other thread.

PS- I need to get turn some football memorabilia into cash and if anyone has any space on their own wall for a small collection of a dozen authentic international football pennants, say about 15, including a v. small Dukla Praha and a couple of genuine Soviet ones, I can do it you for £39.95 incl P&P email via siteowner for details.

8 November 2019

Chris The Siteowner

Update: (sorry if this is going a bit off-piste folks, indulge me). Yes, I’m told Ipswich used to play in international youth tournaments, and the pennant may well have come from one of these. Apparently Ipswich played Dukla Prague in one such tournament in 1981, so it’s quite possible they’d done so back in the 1970s too.

8 November 2019

John Anderson

Coming soon to a podcast near you; Jon Moss on The Referee’s Alphabet.

18 November 2019

John Anderson

Hi all. At the risk of appearing like that Jehovah’s Witness who bangs on your door every other Saturday, I have a new Rock’n’Goal podcast out which features Premier League referee and record shop owner Jon Moss.

Lots of good music chat and an interesting VAR discussion from the ref’s perspective. I also ask him about The Referee’s Alphabet which he is a fan of.

Thanks to those of you who have been supporting this, it’s very much appreciated. You can listen here: https://audioboom.com/dashboard/4995596 and follow us on Twitter @rock_goal If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts it would be great if you could give us a rating and put up a review.

Very envious of those of you who’ll be in Oxford tomorrow night; have a good one. Sadly out of town Fridays aren’t great for me but I’m hoping to get up to Nottingham in May.

21 November 2019

Chris The Siteowner

With its Christmas playlist appeal, for once The Guardian hasn’t ignored the lads.

24 November 2019

GRATTAN CATALOGUE SS92/93

I was listening to a record by the Bolton band Total Victory the other day when one of the lyrics caught my ear. The song is called ‘Mistakes Upon Mistakes’. Bit of a non-sequitur in the tune but the line “the ghost of Nigel Blackwell haunts this room / even though he’s yet to pass” is clearly audible. Anyone heard this before? Here’s a link to the song in question: https://totalvictory.bandcamp.com/track/mistakes-upon-mistakes

27 November 2019

EXXO

Thanks for the heads-up to a very interesting record. The full lyrics to the song are:

Recovered several documents from a local house fire
All of them had my name written at the top
And underneath several errors
About where I was from and my real age

Don’t want to compound the problem
But these are mistakes upon mistakes

Gary piloted his Clio into a reservoir and has not been seen since
Outdated instruments and an overexcited local
Sent the search party the wrong way

And the footwell was full of blood
And the steering wheel – covered in blood
And the boot – full of blood

You know it seems mistakes beget mistakes

The ghost of Nigel Blackwell haunts this room
Even though he’s yet to pass.

There’s a very full, if hyperbolic, review of each song on the album here:

https://colourhorizon.wordpress.com/2017/06/16/total-victory-english-martyrs-2017/

28 November 2019

Transit full of keith

Intriguing stuff, especially with that “head in the footwell” in the ‘Mandy’ cover. Although that was a Toyota. Both 2017, but which was recorded first?

28 November 2019

dr desperate

Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing
11.00 4/6. On reaching the Wensum in Norfolk, Paul and Bob go fishing for roach.
(This week’s Radio Times, TV listing for Wednesday 4 December)

1 December 2019

Colourhorizon

Thanks Exxo for the link to my full, if hyperbolic review 🙂

2 December 2019

John andErson

Bumble discussing HMHB at length to bemused New Zealand commentary colleagues during the test in Hamilton.

2 December 2019

Chigley skin

Watching a recording of the Test just now, Bumble really does seem to love his HMHB! Namechecks Dukla Prague Away Kit, Dickie Davies Eyes, Joy Division Oven Gloves and CSI: Ambleside, while recommending their albums as a Christmas gift.

3 December 2019

Gipton TEENAGER

Open Country today on Radio 4 was about pigeon racing. Of course the song used as background was “The King Of Rome”. But whose rendition do you think they chose?…

6 December 2019

Gipton TEENAGER

That’s yesterday now.

6 December 2019

transit full of keith

Cheers for that! I was vaguely aware of that song, but no idea HMHB had covered it. Brings a lump to the throat, doesn’t it?

6 December 2019

eXXO

It can do, slightly.

Whereas the overblown orchestration and solemnity of the Unthanks version just makes me shout “shut up, it’s only a bloody pigeon. There’s been two dead ones on our street just this week.”

6 December 2019

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

For anyone who missed it, it can be found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000c0c0
The song kicks in about 35 seconds in.

Incidentally, where is the recording taken from? I know that the band do plenty of live covers but not aware of many recorded ones (in fact I can only think of Old Tige from the Peel Sessions)

6 December 2019

EXXO

Andy Kershaw show 26-09-04
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auyESx92gj8
I always thought it was a shame there was no aside about the guitar effects along the lines of “nice storm noises there, Ken” or “but he didn’t expect those mating foxes to be passing.” There is however, a fine little aside in ‘Paintball,’ a cracking version without Annie Lennox (out of respect for Phil Collins?), and good convo at the end featuring two mentions of Glydr Fawr and one of Glydr Fach – I say that for the benefit of Mr. Keith.

6 December 2019

transit full of keith

Ta – I’d heard the Paintball version, but none of the rest.

6 December 2019

Chris The Siteowner

“The protests in Valletta calling for Joseph Muscat’s immediate resignation have been strong, consistent and attracted nationwide appeal. Now they need to ramp up the musical onslaught…”
Spearheading a revolution!
(To be fair, that’s some pretty august company in that list)

11 December 2019

EXXO

I’d be interested to hear if anyone else agrees that in NSD “Nigel Blackwell sends up pathetic daily problems.”

Actually, I bet Edward and Tubbs (from the Oxforg gig) think that too.

11 December 2019

Paul f

August company indeed!

11 December 2019

gipton TEENAGER

Bit of a stretch this, but Grauniad Christmas crossword 23 d. ” It’s about time rich teas are distributed in the Fens.”

24 December 2019

dr desperate

“People from all walks of life, like Sir Cliffs Richards, Wayne Sleep, Anita Harris, Barry Cryer, The Duke of Edinburgh and Hinge and Bracket all stood up to tell tales of how they loved reading this mans’ (sic) books. Phil Collins from the top pop group ‘Genesis’ was down to speak but was too upset, so Nigel Blackwell from ‘Half Man Half Biscuit’ took over.”

(From ‘Codename Rattlesnake’: “The first in what he hopes may become a series of novellas from the pen of renowned criminologist Count Arthur Strong”.)

1 January 2020

Max ViscouNt

it’s almost eighteen years old, but here’s an extract from interview with your man from The Yummy Fur that I came across the other week.

Interviewer: Such comedy is frightening: Often the write ups took a “comedy” interpretation to your early stuff. Was there ever any truth in this?

John McKeown: No, no. It’s the same as The Fall – there’s humour there but it’s not like Half Man Half Biscuit or something. It’s not just jokes.

Link here: http://www.mcgazz.co.uk/yummyfur/interview.htm

9 January 2020

Clown in a yaris

RIP Derek Fowlds.

Was once married to Lesley Judd ya know.

17 January 2020

royden Park

Nigel had it right – interview with Pet Shop Boys this morning:

“I’m quite looking forward to that actually,” nods Lowe. “Running out of ideas.” He grins. “Because that’s when you go and work with Brian Eno.”

24 January 2020

dic aberdaron

Was havin’ a sort out and came across these! Enjoy!

Great find; thanks! – CtSO

26 January 2020

dic aberdaron

nice one chris 😉

27 January 2020

Alice van der meer

One wonders how long it took to get back to Nigel’s bog from Utrecht and Amsterdam… I guess they could have been formative venues in making that decision? And do I recall correctly that there’s a photo of the band (still with hair) in a cafe somewhere on the WW1 battelfields?

27 January 2020

EXXO

Wow thanks Dic those are ace.

Here’s a more underwhelming flyer for a gig in October ’86 where they were supported by The Wonderstuff.

http://www.45worlds.com/live/listing/half-man-half-biscuit-burberries-1986

@Alice – I think basically it was the whole of 1986 that resulted in Nigel not wanting to do anything like the whole of 1986 again. Are you sure you’re not thinking of the photo in Neil’s flat from the early 90’s – where there’s books about WW1 and stuff?

http://www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk/MagSitePages/Article/7349/Half-Man-Half-Biscuit-Ten-Songs-That-Made-Me-Love

27 January 2020

Alice van der meer

Right you are, Exxo – for some reason I’d tagged that mentally as a caff in France.

28 January 2020

EXXO

Well I dunno about Neil, but I’d be well chuffed if someone mistook my lounge for a caff in France (especially if I’d sneaked a TRFC mug in on the right of the photo 😉 )

28 January 2020

BOBBY SVARC

Pretty sure that Stuart Maconie has referenced the one and only Ron Seal on that House of Games show on Beeb 2

5 February 2020

EXXO

By a not particularly weird coincidence I’d just looked at Maconie’s twitter output when I saw your comment there, Mick. This was because I’d being seriously considering a strategy for trying to cadge a review copy of his book the one with our man featuring heavily, that’s out 4 weeks today (hardback, £14).

So before you even mentioned that Osman show, I noticed he’d tweeted this morning that he was off up one of his local Wainwright fells, but still had to get to the studios in Glasgow for the programme later that afternoon. I thought “respect,” and saw that this was well possible from Penrith station, but it turns out he was joking and all the shows for the week get recorded same day, with different 5 shirts.

Errm, where was I? Oh yeah, to save other Biscuiteers having to fast forward through a week’s programmes, it was 21 mins into last night’s show when three contestants each had to give the fourth contestant one word to elicit the word “seal.” Maconie said “Ron,” Richard Coles (maybe thinking of orcas?) said “floe,” and Lou Sanders (she’s dead funny too) said “clapping.”

6 February 2020

Chris The Siteowner

Gig Cartel organising gigs = ads in The Guardian…

8 February 2020

EXXO

Blimey. Didn’t realise that was allowed.

8 February 2020

Aiwacat

Passing mention of HMHB in the latest FYP Crystal Palace podcast, as Kevin Day looks forward to taking the opportunity to pick up a Dukla away kit during a footballing weekend in Prague, to the bemusement of young, unenlightened, fellow trippers.

(Just shy of 42 minutes into pod 323 ‘Pennies for Ayew’, should you be desperate to hear it.)

26 February 2020

Ghost of cain

Not sure if this was picked up last year, but a nice reference:

https://cityofely.play-cricket.com/website/match_reports/170390?from=news_widget

6 March 2020

EXXO

Many thanks to The Ebury Press for a review copy of Stuart Maconie’s latest book The Nanny State Made Me, with thanks also to the wonderful Anita Sethi who was ‘in conversation’ with the author, on the eve of publication, at the Carriageworks Theatre in Leeds last week. I am indebted to Anita for facilitating my attendance at the event, which (like the book) was otherwise out of my price range. But it turns out that Mr. Maconie owed me a small favour anyway, as he’s taken a couple of his facts for page 111 of the book from my own research on the HMHB Lyrics Project website (see the comments for Surging out of Convalescence), as well as the research of another erstwhile Project regular (hat tip to Ricardo – see the comments for Malayan Jelutong):

“There is considerable erudition in the lyrics of Half Man Half Biscuit. [For example,] references to hymn tune conventions, the poetry of George Crabbe and in the song Malayan Jelutong, a glimpse of Nigel’s love of local history (knowledge of which has brought me to the Wirral on this lovely evening), with its quotation from an 1891 essay by Edward W. Cox in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.”

This is not yet my actual proper review of the book, but this is the version where I tell Half Man Half Biscuit fans about Nigel Blackwell’s cameo appearance in a publication that they really ought to buy, if they can possibly afford it (at an eye-water(stone)ing initial hardback-only price of £20).

“Like so much else in our public realm, ‘the park’ is under threat after a decade of savage cuts. In a HLF survey of 2014, 86% of park managers said their budgets had been cut,” writes Maconie, just after various entertaining observations on the various ways that his generation benefited from their local parks in throughout their childhood and adolescence. He notes the increasing selling-off of sections of our parks by some cash-strapped councils, various forms of neglect by other local authorities, and increasing commercialisation of large swathes of our public open spaces, wherever they can be fenced off profitably for over-priced music festivals and other corporate events. He cites research into the health benefits of our parks, and summarises academic comments on their importance to ‘the character of Britain.’ Then, appropriately, he spends half a dozen or so pages wandering through “the first genuinely public park in the world,” with “Britain’s greatest living satirist,” our very own Mr. Blackwell.

Maconie describes being met by his eminent tour guide at Birkenhead Park station, on a Monday evening – the one evening when HMHB usually rehearse as it happens, but not that particular week. Maconie worries briefly that he is like Samuel T. Coleridge’s “person from Porlock,” interrupting HMHB’s creative flow, but he needn’t worry because these are the summer hols and HMHB are never famed for their dedication to work over that period.

For a couple of years I used to get off the train there every day myself too, and walk through Birkenhead Park to school, if you need any evidence of my credentials to comment on this section of the book. Later on, I would often run home through the park, and then down past and over the docks, sometimes jogging four miles all the way home to Wallasey. It was a route through the stratification of society and the beginnings of the economic decline of an area, which in many ways helped shape my views of British society and politics in the 1970’s. But this not about me, so more of that another time. Nigel Blackwell, who was in many ways very fortunate not to be the second Nigel in my class at that very school near Birkenhead Park, a school which in fact he had quite a narrow escape from attending, tells Maconie that:

“People talk a lot of shite about the 1970’s. It may have been bad for stockbrokers and such, but if you lived round here and you were a working class family, we probably never had it so good. We had a decent holiday in Wales every year and my dad had a Ford Anglia. That seems quite a healthy state of affairs to me. Personally, I had a very enjoyable 1970’s.”

Maconie describes Blackwell as “a ferociously smart and talented auto-didact educated by the BBC, the local library and a moderately benevolent benefits system,” who is not only “a testament to the brilliance of the post-war consensus,” but is well qualified to guide Maconie through the park (“it was my dad who got me into local history”) and to keep him out of trouble (“ see those lads over there fishing, well, they may be otherwise engaged as well …”).

Nigel tells Stuart the story of how Central Park in New York came to be modelled on this very expanse of formerly boggy farmland in what is now fairly central Birkenhead. But that doesn’t make Birkonians as proud as does the simple fact that this 1840’s park was the first, “the forerunner of what became a global parks movement.” As Blackwell puts it “it wasn’t some rich guy’s pleasure ground that we plebs were allowed to use. This has never been privately owned. It was made with public money for the people of Birkenhead and we are very proud of that.”

Later, it’s Nigel’s ancestral Welsh pride that comes across too, as he tells Stuart the story of the Eisteddfod of the Black Chair:
‘Nigel indicates a stone pillar of Celtic design, by the side of the Italianate gates. “My favourite place in the park. They held the 1917 Eisteddfod here [as] a lot of Welsh folk came here to work in the munitions factories. My family, for instance.”
For the dramatic way that Blackwell tells the rest of the story of his fellow bard, Hedd Wyn, who had joined the great fallen of 1917 by the time he was chosen as that year’s lyrical genius, you’ll have to acquire the book. Or stand in Waterstones reading pages 111-117 only. Modesty of course forbids Blackwell from mentioning to Maconie that he himself has contributed to an Eisteddfod, with verse in his ancestral tongue, in a category for learners of Welsh.

Our bard touches on another of his passions (and, together with cycling and family connections, one of the three main reasons he still spends so much time in Wales) as he takes Maconie ‘through some bracken …[where they] emerge at the back of a large, fine house. “This was the childhood home of Sandy Irvine, friend of Mallory. This could be the house of the first man who climbed Everest [Irvine disappeared with Mallory during an attempt on the summit in 1924, only 800 vertical feet short of the summit] No plaque. Nothing.”

When I first heard about the premise of this book, I seem to remember that Maconie trailed it on Twitter six months ago with promises of “a tour of Birkenhead [not just the park, we thought] with Nigel Blackwell.” So I expected the latter to be passing comment too on the role of various other institutions of ‘the nanny state,’ such as the local public library, the local museums, the local public sports fields and the local public baths in helping him develop into the widely-acknowledged (achtung! cliché alert!) national treasure that he is today. Not to mention, of course, the role of the the dole, the ultimate state institution, the DHSS. Of course I might just have misremembered the tweet, so I’ll have to let him off, I suppose.

In order to link with the next section, as he takes his leave of Mr. B, Maconie confesses that he “can’t think of a Half Man Half Biscuit lyric about the phenomenon of the public baths.” Nigel could have helped him out there, filling in further details about “the fearsome hollow boom of the older boys in the deep end” at Woodchuch leisure centre, recalled in those lyrics from Bad Review, or his memories of seeing Flipper the dolphin at Guinea Gap baths in Wallasey, recalled at a gig some while back. Shame, because Maconie’s pages about public baths don’t seem to feature any ‘celebrity’ anecdotes. So we have to be content with just one specialist subject here from our lyrical mastermind. This book is not the only one ever published which features Nigel in Birkenhead Park – see also Kevin Sampson’s football memoir Extra Time (1998), where the author describes playing the regular Friday all-comers match in the park with ‘Blackie’, Hooto and friends – but it is the best (Sorry, Kev).

“I am a child of the state. You are too,” writes Maconie. “We were born into the stern but loving embrace of one of its hospitals, raised in one of its compact, sturdy little houses and educated in its solid, unshowy and decent schools. Our minds were opened and filled by its silent and magical libraries, its draughty museums and echoing galleries, places travelled to on trains and buses that were unsexy and asthmatic but ran on time and went to all the places we wanted to go.” Most of this is true for most Nigels born in 1963, except perhaps the fact that any two Nigels born in 1963 could have vastly different experiences of state-funded secondary education. And the bit about being born in hospitals. Certainly on the Wirral there was a real fad for home births that year, so the stern but loving embrace often came from one of the nanny state’s fine midwives, as it did for Mr. Blackwell and for myself too. But of course this quote, showcased on the book’s back cover and accompanied by a classic image of NHS nurse caring for doting young lad, has never been more relevant than it is today in the spring of 2020, when so many of our vulnerable friends and relatives’ lives will come to depend even more on the creaking old nanny state.

It might be a while before HMHB or anyone else are in our gig venues and theatres again, so I’m glad I spent one of my last nights out for some time in that audience numbering about 185, applauding as Stuart Maconie read extracts from this very timely publication and answered our questions with impressive rants and diatribes against the Cummingses and the coming-and-goingses of the Graylingses, and their ilk. A lot of us will be doing a bit more reading at home over the next few months, and this one is highly recommended.

17 March 2020

dr desperate

Oo-oo – what’s to do? That’s a good review, Exxo. Shame we won’t be able to see Mac next weekend (or Rad in July probably).

17 March 2020

EXXO

Turns out you can get the hardback online from just £11.49 incl. P&P, by the way.

17 March 2020

TRANSIT FULL OF keith

Cheers Exxo – that’s a finely crafted review. I’ve been looking forward to this book (I’m Amazon-averse so I may wait for the paperback though).

18 March 2020

Bobby Svarc

I purchased the said Maconie book in audio format and l’m enjoying so far. I’ve only listened to two chapters but Maconie narrates well and I’m looking forward to the rest of it.

18 March 2020

The harbinger of nothing

Just stumbled across this page on the origin of a selection of band names:

https://www.insure4music.co.uk/blog/2018/12/18/unusual-band-names/

Alongside two outfits referred to elsewhere on this site, it contains a somewhat dubious definition of the origin of the one referred to at the very top. In contrast to most of the other entries, which contain quotes from band members, this one is taken from a source which could hardly be further removed I guess it gave the author something to write, but they should probably stop and go and cut their hedge.

8 April 2020

Chris The Siteowner

‪If anyone fancies a bit of fun, it’d be great to see and hear some HMHB mashups on Rave DJ. I’m sure you can do better than my first effort. Look forward to hearing what you dream up…‬
https://rave.dj/G5KONPWER_rSmA

13 April 2020

dr desperate

Quote from Michael Deacon, Parliamentary sketchwriter in yesterday’s online Telegraph, following the latest government press conference:

“At any rate, Mr Raab didn’t want to leave us feeling downcast. “There is light,” he promised earnestly, “at the end of the tunnel.”
A nice thought – although whenever anyone uses that particular phrase, I can’t help being reminded of a favourite song by the indie band Half Man Half Biscuit.
“The light at the end of the tunnel,” runs the chorus, “is the light of an oncoming train.” ”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/16/dominic-raab-says-light-end-tunnel-still-distant-dot/

17 April 2020

BOBBY SVARC

Peter Hooten on Twitter last night interviewed by John Robb. Very interesting watch.

18 April 2020

EXXO

Thanks Mick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsO3iaONwgI

Mr. B’s expertise on Cheshire executions of the 17th century getting a mention there around 5:50 minutes in.

(see also Gwatkin sleeve notes).

18 April 2020

Chris The Siteowner

I won’t link to it, and recommend you don’t waste your time looking it up, but just for the record, the execrable Richard Littlejohn just mentioned the band in an unfunny, unimaginative Daily Heil column, writing: “(Keir) Starmer is Half Man Half Avatar. (As opposed to that Eighties punk/folk group Half Man Half Biscuit, best known for the Trumpton Riots.)”

26 April 2020

professor abelazar woozle

Didn’t Viz once do a satirical take on of one of his columns and call him “Richard Littlecock”?

26 April 2020

dr desperate

Craig Charles just played JDOGs in the ‘Trunk of Punk’ feature on his R6M show (Monday, 5.25ish). Dave NitMonkey, anyone?

27 April 2020

Chris The Siteowner

Anyone want a Len Ganley article? Personalise it with your own second paragraph.
• BT Sport
• Belfast Telegraph
• Etc etc etc

30 April 2020

transit full of keith

It’s almost as if everyone’s doing … oh never mind forget it

30 April 2020

EXXO

That’s the first photo I’ve ever seen of him and I’ve realised he’s not in fact the one I thought he was. I only really bothered watching any snooker in about 1978-80, so it seems I missed his glory years.

30 April 2020

Parsfan

Is it just me or has this gone a bit wonky on mobile the last couple of days?

– text wrapping at double mobile width
– most of the options missing when click on the banner at the top of the latest comments page

I’ve tried the comments on two browsers, but it could just be my phone’s decided it’s a tablet (but only on this site).

1 May 2020

dr desperate

Me too.

1 May 2020

TRANSIT FULL OF keith

Same here.

1 May 2020

Chris The Siteowner

I shall investigate the inevitable HTML tag misplacement.

1 May 2020

Parsfan

Sorted. Thanks Chris.

1 May 2020

dr desperate

RadMac played The Go! Team’s ‘Junior Kickstart’ on R6M this morning [1:59:30], following it with the observation that “fans of Half Man Half Biscuit will know that mention of it (the programme) is one of the funniest lines ever in the history of music”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000hvmk
(Modesty forbids I suggest you also listen to the shout at [2:41:50].)

2 May 2020

EXXO

Well played John – listened to the programme in its entirety without registering either of those links, because so busy thinking about those “Misters” and trying to find angles on the Belarusian footy betting.

Personally I wouldn’t put it in the top 500 funniest lines of HMHB, unless he puts in the “stupid, stupid bastard” line of the live versions, but there you go.

I can’t be arsed much with the Chain any more but last week’s final record was a 4AD effort so for the umpteenth time I tried the obvious, without success.

On Chris Hawkins the other day I asked for HMHB and got the Thompson Twins .

2 May 2020

TRANSIT FULL OF keith

Gideon Coe show on 6 Music tonight is apparently featuring some live Biscuit,… probably in the last hour.

7 May 2020

TRANSIT FULL OF keith

… From Meltdown at the Royal Festival Hall in 1998 (4 Skinny Indie Kids, 4AD3DCD, Yipps, A Country Practice). I’ve heard it on his show before (& it’s all on YouTube anyway) but good to hear it again.

8 May 2020

TRANSIT FULL OF keith

(And Squabble Fest).

8 May 2020

Ghost of cain

John Robins discovers Half Man Half Biscuit https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08d5prv

14 May 2020

Alice van der meer

“Like Village Green Preservation Society but funnier”

Now there’s a T-shirt slogan.

14 May 2020

EXXO

It’s often occurred to me the other way round, during that song. “The best lines from this could almost be in an average HMHB lyric.”

I guess someone has to contact the other one about Neil still writing half the tunes, etc.

Good to have further bias confirmation that Josh Widdicombe’s a useless unfunny pillock though.

14 May 2020

dr desperate

HMHB influences according to James: Kinks, Smiths, Pulp, Lindisfarne and a bit of The Fall.
Discuss.

15 May 2020

Alice Van Der Meer

I’ve always thought of HMHB as being a sort of parallel-universe Kinks – it’s not really there in the sound very often, but there’s the observational wit. Pulp I think is more that they grew up in Northern England in the 1980s, as did Cocker & co. Maybe the Smiths as well, as they were contemporaries – though it could just be that he’s reading song titles, where the difference is that it’s worth listening to HMHB’s songs as well as looking at the sleeve.

The Fall as an influence I would have thought was a given – the more Fall I’ve heard, the more I spot the similarities – though, mind you, I heard “Where’s me Jumper?” for the first time in years a while back, and realised how much Fall Sultans of Ping FC must have been listening to. I’m sure Nigel has mentioned the Fall in interviews.

15 May 2020

Alice Van Der Meer

Grr, *near* contemporaries!

15 May 2020

parsfan

I’d no sooner finished reading that and WMJ came on the wireless.

15 May 2020

IDIOT SAUL

It seems a little odd to be so enthusiastic about the band and how all their songs are brilliant and then say ‘I don’t think I’ve heard 90 Bisodol’.

15 May 2020

EXXO

Elis James says he was at the Matlock Bath gig, and that made me wonder whether I was at that gig. So I went back and read the reviews. A few things emerged from this:

(i) I wasn’t at the gig
(ii) At the gig they played 3 songs from the album Elis James says he doesn’t know, the interview shows he does know one of those songs, ‘R&R is Full of Bad Wools,’ and other comments make you doubt if he really knows what’s on any albums. I suspect he’s just an Mp3 man, not an album man.
(iii) People are strange. One of the reviews of that gig was by a chap who, when HMHB – his favourite band and apparently the only one he would travel north from London to see – opened with ‘San Antonio,’ was worried about them playing an entire set of songs he “couldn’t give a shit about” and speculated that most of the audience, like him, were there to see them play ‘TLATEOTT(ITLOAOT).’

Incidentally from googling around it does seem that the reason that James was at the Matlock gig is likely to be ‘cos that’s Isy Suttie (his partner of the last 11 years)’s home town.

15 May 2020

Shed 7

I don’t want to be rude about either James or Robins. They are nice folk. James said he was due to see HMHB this year and it was cancelled but they were never due to play Matlock this year. I think he might have been too overexcited.

I like Robins but he has definitely heard HMHB several times before his claiming to be a fan. I have heard several radio shows where he has been played them.

Love to all HMHB fans but when the media lot start getting involved it causes a bit of consternation for long term fans who feel that their long standing loyalty is about to be ridden over roughshod by celebrity adulation. I wonder what Robins will think of the ‘up next live at the Apollo’ line!? He being a definite line up member.

Reminds me of when Frank Skinner became a Fall fan 30 years after they formed.

16 May 2020

dr desperate

Passing mention on RadMac this morning, in an item about Southend band These New Puritans releasing two 504-piece jigsaws. “This is a new item that we’re calling “Half Man Half Biscuit Songs That Haven’t Been Written Yet”: ‘These New Puritans Jigsaw’ “. (I assume this was a reference to JDOGs.)

16 May 2020

IDIOT SAUL

‘Mark Steel’s in Town’ visits Birkenhead. It’s from 2014, but I don’t recall seeing it on here before. Our heroes aren’t mentioned until 23 minutes in, but then they stay to the very end.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b03sztxc

9 June 2020

Alice van der meer

Thanks for that – I’ve moved on to Colchester (being from Essex, innit?), and it’s livening up my home working no end.

9 June 2020

EXXO

I recall it was mentioned in the old media thread on the very day it was first broadcast – but thanks from me too – I’ve been looking for stuff from BBC Sounds to enliven an afternoon in a medical records library, and these are ideal.

9 June 2020

CARRIE ANNE

If you’re in the market for a two grand pair of ‘sneakers’… https://www.thesportsman.com/style/five-luxury-sneakers-for-over-500-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-basketball.amp

10 June 2020

Chris The Siteowner

1986 ‘Rovers Aid’ gig by the band…

12 June 2020

dr desperate

Swelling the coffers with a three figure sum.

12 June 2020

EXXO

Reminds me of when we discovered in 1983 that we could start our own university TRFC supporters group, and would get an automatic £50 from the SU, which we immediately gave in its entirety to TRFC in the form of ‘match ball sponsorship’ for the next two seasons. Photos with Dai Davies in the players lounge and that.

The system for allocating funds to societies was such that nobody noticed or cared that the same three or four exiled Wirral lads were also the mainstay of the university’s LFC supporters group and were getting subsidised travel to LFC away games in the South East.

14 June 2020

TRANSIT FULL OF keith

A forthcoming book called “Unofficial Britain” by Gareth E. Rees has a chapter on the M6, including something about M-6-ster. I’ll claim some credit here, as the author was asking for M6 anecdotes on Twitter a while ago & I pointed him in the direction of the song, which he hadn’t heard. I don’t know if it’s a mere footnote, as it’s not out till September. Looks an intriguing book anyway

14 June 2020

EXXO

Nice work Keith. But sounds like it’s too late to get ‘Mileage Chart’ in, with its verse on various features of the M6.

14 June 2020

dr desperate

Or Tebay, Hilton Park and Junction 16. Not to mention Preston (which it was unaccountably built to bypass, as the first stretch of motorway opened in Britain).

14 June 2020

TRANSIT FULL OF keith

Well yeah, but I’m not his research assistant.

14 June 2020

TRANSIT FULL OF keith

Although come to think of it, I did also mention to him the frequent Biscuit references to motorway services, including the Dickie Davies video filmed at glorious Forton. Maybe I should send him an invoice.

14 June 2020

dr desperate

Ooh yes, Forton! We went there for a meal in the hexagonal Pennine Tower when it opened in 1965 – despite its claims to be “up-market” I recall my mum was unimpressed by their Lancashire Hotpot.

15 June 2020

John anderson

Did she sabotage the hotpot supper?

15 June 2020

GORDON BURNS

I was looking to see if I could find any references to HMHB in soon-to-be-defunct Q Magazine and chanced upon this long and interesting review of Stony Ground:

https://www.backseatmafia.com/reissue-half-man-half-biscuit-fell-stony-ground

Couldn’t find a link elsewhere in this parish, so thought I’d add it. Please delete if my searching wasn’t thorough.

21 July 2020

dr desperate

Posted on FB by Simon Smith, Managing Director at the Dancing Bear Literary Salon, this interview with Nigel from Neal Heard’s ‘The Football Shirts Book’ (2017):
“Originally the Dukla Prague thing, as a song at least, was just throwaway moment, but it seemed to grow legs, as it were. To the point where I now get invited by Dukla Prague’s commercial secretary to their games.
As regards the Dukla shirt and the song: back then the European teams who played against their British counterparts seemed to have some sort of romance about them, not least I feel due to their strange-sounding names. Lokomotiv this, Eintracht that, and my particular favourite, Újpest Dózsa. Even now, I’m not certain if I’ve spelt that last name correctly – and it was that very reason that made me change it to Dukla Prague in the song, as that also fitted the bill of “weird name, they’re all spies” and was of course easier to say. I didn’t really know what the kit looked like but would have even then taken a guess that it was going to be slightly unusual. I think the badge is the best part of it.”
He adds that Nigel’s favourite shirts of all time were 1975-79 Sheffield United and 1971-72 Crystal Palace.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1113869/the-football-shirts-book/9781785036651.html

21 July 2020

John anderson

Amazon has just recommended to me the “John McLaughlin Guitar Tab Anthology” which, I’m disappointed to learn, isn’t a new EP from the lads.

22 July 2020

Brumbiscuit

@ Dr D.: He almost got it right. It used to be Újpesti Dózsa. The ‘i’ is possessive; a little like ‘Hartlepools ‘s’ . Pronounced ‘oy-pesht-e ‘doe-jeu• (roughly) (That is the pronunciation is roughly transcribed, you don’t have to say it in a rough manner.)

• The French for game

And no, I haven’t got anything better to do…

22 July 2020

dr desperate

Tell us how far the railway station’s away from here, mate? Roughly speaking?

22 July 2020

Brumbiscuit

Two bleedin’ miles, guv…

23 July 2020

cArrie anne

Someone over on Facebook has tracked down the fabled BP television ad from 2001 with voiceover by NB10. It’s on here three times, first at about 14:53
https://youtu.be/ylHQulnFcD8

6 August 2020

Chris The Siteowner

Thanks for that – I’ve made a whole page about the advert now that we’ve got the video!

6 August 2020

John anderson

The Daily Mail’s Matt Barlow has posted a picture on Twitter of the Amex Stadium today with the caption:

Brighton fans are keeping two chevrons apart behind Kepa’s goal. Fans back. Good, eh?

29 August 2020

EXXO

As I can’t see anything else in his twitter to indicate that he isn’t the total **** one would assume him to be (and which working for that for that long pretty definitively confirms him to be), isn’t that just one for the ‘motorway signs in the media’ thread?

29 August 2020

dr desperate

Anyway, to get back to Forton (see 10 posts ago): concrete mini-casts now available for the low, low price of £25.
https://www.space-play.co.uk/collections/concrete-minis/products/mini-021-forton-services

31 August 2020

dr desperate

(They’re 4cm tall.)

31 August 2020

cream cheese and chives

Honey! I shrank the service station!

1 September 2020

cream cheese and chives

Sons of Southern Ulster were a lockdown find and have I listened to their two albums a lot since. To hear that they are HMHB fans too was the icing on the cake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9SxdakUlyk

3 September 2020

EXXO

It’s wonderful that there are so many speaky-shouty-ranty bands around at the mo’ inspired by the Biscuits, Fall, Idles,Ludies, Sleafords, etc … but I must say I’d heard the South Ulsters once or twice before and pictured them like the Fontaines, young nihilists about to smash the world apart … and instead it turns out when you see the vids they’re arl codgers like the rest of us. Ho-hum.

(anyone in Leeds wants to start that exact same band with an arl codger like me up front on the ranty-shouty-speaky stuff, let me know, I got plenty and up for one last hurrah)

3 September 2020

Lord leominsteR

‘Cyclist’ magazine, September 2020:
“For cult UK band Half Man Half Biscuit, purveyors of such masterpieces as ‘The Trumpton Riots’ and ‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit’, the attitude to cycling is more low-tech but no less reverent.
Frontman and lyricist Nigel Blackwell, who famously turned down an appearance on 80s TV show The Tube because it clashed with his beloved Tranmere Rovers’ home Fourth Division fixture against Scunthorpe United, has cycled all his life – ‘I’ve never learned to drive’ – but doesn’t record his rides. He says, ‘I did have a very basic computer but didn’t have a clue how to reset it when it got to 10,000 miles.’
He regularly rides to the Clwydian mountains in North Wales from his home in Birkenhead on a Trek 1.7 that he ‘bought for about £800 in 2005, I think’ and follows the pro scene closely: ‘I’m a massive fan of Bauke Mollema – can you get me his autograph?’
Cycling has featured in several of his songs, notably his take on the 1920s blues lament ‘See That My Bike’s Kept Clean’ and ‘A Lilac Harry Quinn’, although he admits, ‘That one doesn’t really deal with riding so much as me just wanting to get Sturmey Archer and Campagnolo into a lyric.’
Rock stars are gods to millions. Hearing them endorse the joys of cycling is the perfect antidote to the ‘cultural abhorrence’ of our sport that the singer of ‘Once In A Lifetime’ detected while riding his folding bike around South America.
Half Man Half Biscuit and British Sea Power will be touring the UK later this year.”

5 September 2020

dr desperate

To give David Byrne (for it is he) his due, he was lamenting, in his book ‘Bicycle Diaries’, the strange absence of bikes in Buenos Aires. Contrariwise, he ventures that “New Yorkers are at the point where they might, given the chance and opportunity, consider a bicycle as a valid means of transportation.”

5 September 2020

EXXO

Thanks for posting that Richard. Nothing that hasn’t been mentioned elsewhere, but always good to see that there’s been no need to upgrade the bike or suddenly start straving.

6 September 2020

Lord leominsTer

I agree, it does read like a re-hash of previously published material. There’s a bit of a clue with the closing “…will be touring the UK later this year” which surely requires further explanation. However, it’s fantastic that HMHB are recognised in spheres other than the usual muso ones. It was a mate of mine who saw this and brought it to my attention, knowing that I quite like a bit of Biscuit.

6 September 2020

EXXO

Don’t think anyone’s given us a heads-up on this interview 2 years ago with the great Steve Hardstaff.
http://livo.co.uk/wp/2018/09/12/livo-lounge-007-steve-hardstaff/
0:58 – 1.06 in particular talks about his friendship with Mr. B, influence on the songs, the covers of Voyage, TLP and the spoof covers. Just after that (1.07-1.11) is the answer to what I’ve always wondered about how he got the trade name Jacuzzi.

19 September 2020

Brumbiscuit

BBC Breakfast this morning. Short piece about a new Birkenhead venue. Mentioned every band except our four lads who shake The Wirral.

19 September 2020

dr desperate

HMHB mentioned by Tom Robinson on tonight’s R6M ‘Now Playing’ programme about misheard lyrics and misremembered band names (at the opposite end of the show to my own suggestion of Hendrix’s “Kiss this guy” line, as it happens): misprinted on a 1990 Reading Festival poster as ‘Half Man Half Bisuit’.
That’s not how I would spell, etc.

20 September 2020

HENDRIX tattoo

I’ll give that a listen later John. To see if my suggestion of ‘Corned Beef’ by Blondie was mentioned….

21 September 2020

paul f

Closer than Johnnie Walker’s “Half Moon Half Biscuit” Dr D.

22 September 2020

dr desperate

Recent tweet from ex-Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen, back home after six weeks on a ventilator with coronavirus.
https://twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1312429184623489026

3 October 2020

TRANSIT FULL OF keith

Now reading “Unofficial Britain” by Gareth E. Rees (see posts 557-563). HMHB’s motorway references get a third of a page. No new research or insights, it’s M-6-ster and other stuff I’d mentioned to him on Twitter (but fair play, he did credit me in the acknowledgements).

Whether you enjoy the rest of the book will depend on your interest in abandoned industrial estates, sinister pylons, haunted car parks, etc… one for the Fall fans maybe

7 October 2020

EXXO

Great stuff. Is a copy to be sent to Mr. B?

8 October 2020

professor abelazar woozle

“Sinister Pylons”…. now there’s a name for a band!

8 October 2020

lord leominster

I caught the end of Marc Riley’s 6 Music show last night. I tuned in just as he said he didn’t have time to play the third HMHB session track and would try to do so on the next show. Here’s a link to the 6 Music website that shows that he played Tommy Walsh and Left Lyrics from a BBC session recorded 11 August 2010.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nn4z

22 October 2020

Alice Van Der Meer

Bugger! I was boning up for an interview, so didn’t have the Boy Lard on…

22 October 2020

lord leominster

I just listed to both tracks on the BBC iPlayer. Click the link in post 592, above, then click another on the BBC website. You will need to set up a BBC account if you don’t already have one. Well worth a listen.

22 October 2020

EXXO

Lard/Coe put those session out fairly regularly. In the thread for the session
https://halfmanhalfbiscuit.uk/theyre-gonna-be-unveiling-some-new-material/6music-session-11-august-2010/
There were various links to the entire session including the chat, but links expire and someone probably needs to upload a currently live version.

There will be various on here who have CDs/MP3s of every R1/R2/6 Music session (often with the chat) and may be willing to copy them if you give assurances that you are a Probe completist. Receipts not usually required.

I myself am not organised enough to offer such services, as every time I try to get my CDs etc in the right place they seem to stampede like particles fleeing the big bang and every time I have loads of MP3s on a device, it dies with them.

22 October 2020

dr desperate

Anybody?
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/HalfManHalfBiscuit

24 October 2020

GOK WAN ACOLYTE

Not quite an ‘in the media’, more a reminder that if you have an HMHB T-shirt (and who doesn’t?) we can hopefully get the band played on 6 Music’s all request T-shirt day on Friday https://twitter.com/BBC6Music/status/1328722147733286912?s=20

18 November 2020

dr desperate

Requested ‘Trumpton Riots’ on Lammo.

18 November 2020

dr desperate

Triple whammy on Lammo’s R6M Tee Shirt Day show just now: he played JDOGs, requested by that Niall Quinn off Half Arsed Half Biscuit, followed by an interview with that Mike Hogan off the HMHB FB page.

20 November 2020

EXXO

Noticed that they’re no longer doing artist’s pages on the 6Music website, so can’t do my regular checks of how many HMHB tracks played at fucksake o’clock in the morning by Hawkins, sessions repeated by Gideon Snoozeface, etc, and most interestingly on the cool alternative music programmes in Wales, etc. When I say ‘checks’ obviously I just looked at it, thought “hmm not bad” (usually) and was too self-conscious to appear bothered enough to comment on it anywhere online or anything, but I kind of wish I’d kept records for the last 10 years now.

FB page you say? Christ on a bike I thought that had gone bust like that Radio 2 station that the BBC used to have.

20 November 2020

dr desperate

It did, this is a new one.
(More HMHB in the Social Media.)

20 November 2020

Alice van der meer

There appears to be two (People’s Front of Judea?) of the things… so I joined the one with names I recognise. I expect I shall post random drivel there too.

20 November 2020

Sad Cathy

Brief appearance from Nigel here, about 04.35…

https://youtu.be/hZNKkjH5txs

21 November 2020

dr desperate

This is the one I use.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/489553495232637

21 November 2020

Alice van der meer

You were the first name I recognised
(desperately tries not to sound like a stalker)

21 November 2020

EXXO

That link should carry a Nick Fucking Knowles warning. Seems odd to have such a detested figure smiling smugly centre stage next to Mr. B. They should at least have him falling off a roof (a VERY high one preferably) or something.

22 November 2020

Lord leominster

That seems a bit harsh on NFK. He’s not my favourite TVP but I wouldn’t wish him dead. Wait a minute, I have him in the death pool, don’t I? But that’s no more than the recognition that someone’s got to be next, so…

22 November 2020

Alice van der meer

I obviously haven’t seen enough NFK to understand the issue – the only thing I’ve ever seen him on was Historyonics which was good fun, and he got to kick the black sheep of my family up the arse.

22 November 2020

CARRIE ANNE

Absolutely charming Danish article about the band. Liked the Donald Trump comparison, and for me, a few laugh out loud moments, possibly lost in translation stuff.
Original • Translated

23 November 2020

TRANSIT FULL OF keith

Brilliant, all the better for the slightly wonky translation. A fitting tribute to Britain’s “most persistent band”.

23 November 2020

EXXO

Thanks Karen. Brilliant indeed. Google translation has certainly made leaps and bounds, and the way it translates so smoothly almost makes me suspect it was written in English and then translated in the first place.

Hardly any more misapprehensions than in your average UK blog article that looks at the writer’s ‘top ten HMHB songs.’ I saw another blog____ the other day that claimed Chatteris was a deeply moving love song. “A wonderful description of the city of Chatteris” is at least as close.

23 November 2020

CARRIE ANNE

I should point out that, despite it’s name, Gaffa is not a football rag, but Denmark’s oldest music magazine

23 November 2020

dr desperate

Excellent GAFFA supplies, @CA.
(It seems that the magazine’s name derives from the publishers’ wish to bind the different parts of the music community together.)

24 November 2020

To whom it may concern

How To Get “It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas” Into The Charts For The Festive Season Without It Costing A Penny

Every 100 plays of a song on Spotify count as the sale of one normal single for the charts. As do YouTube plays, but those have to be from the band’s official account.

However, so long as 30 full seconds of a song are played on Spotify, it counts as a “sale”.

Therefore you can rack up 120 hits an hour simply by hitting the Previous button when they reach the bit of the song which goes “your distain at the crane” (“crane” is exactly the 30 seconds up once finished) – and it costs nothing more than time and electricity. With everyone on lockdown…

Even if everyone did the basic once a day, that’s 1.2 sales a day per person. At the lower end of the charts, the “sales” can be a matter of only 1000, if that. How many people turn up to a HMHB gig? Even allowing for the repeat offenders who must go to every gig, at least 100.

If HMHB can get into the Top 40 of the album chart now with what fans they have, they’ve every chance of clipping the singles charts at least one of the weeks of December (earlier the better before it becomes too “competitive”).

If it enters, more chance of mainstream airplay and media attention as it now becomes “topical” – especially as a song castigating moaning minnies is very much in vogue with the year we’ve all had thanks to Covid.

Furthermore…

If you used your mobile phone’s separate connection for Spotify, or your tablet’s as well, you could be racking up a new “listen” every fifteen or ten seconds if ultra obsessed enough to want to do some real damage. It only takes 7500-8000 “sales” for a song to hit Top 40 on average (Source), never mind the Top 100. Yep, that low.

One of the reasons they started allowing Spotify and other “streaming” plays to count as “sales” is that actual sales (physical and digital) are so poor some weeks thanks to free sharing sites (and contrary to industry propaganda), the lower end of the charts would be full of songs jointly holding a position if they didn’t (there was even a week three songs tied for the same lowly rung!)

Yes, it doesn’t matter if you are using the same account to do it from – hence why Ed Sheeran dominated the charts for a while to the extent of having twelve songs in the top 20 at one time from his sad fans using Spotify to listen to his new album on their mobiles while in the car, going about their daily business, etc.

Are you up for the challenge of getting “It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas” its Yule dues?

1 December 2020

Chris The Siteowner

I thoroughly endorse this idea. So…
1. Click here to find the song on Spotify;
2. Press play;
3. Click the ‘repeat’ icon to the right of the play buttons, twice, so a little “1” appears;
4. Go out and enjoy December. In a week’s time you’ll have racked up over 2500 plays, and made a fiver for the band. If a couple of hundred of us do this, who knows?

1 December 2020

Lord leominster

Here’s a method that seems to be working. On my iPhone 5 I have the Spotify app installed for which I pay a monthly subscription. I’ve created a playlist with just the one song on it which I’ve set to play. I’ve also set the repeat button to ‘on’. I’ve now turned the sound off and I am leaving the phone plugged in and letting the one song repeat ad infinitum. I think that will do the trick.

1 December 2020

FEATURELESS TV PRODUCER STEVE

Because of some odd feeling of moral obligation, I listened to ICTBCAT a few times before turning the volume down and letting it repeat for hours.

Starting at about the 1:51 mark, does anyone else hear “Curse those in charge of plots, curse these forget”? It goes in a different direction at that point, and doesn’t land the “me-nots” bit, but it definitely sounds like Wrong Grave has a little bit o’ self-plagiarisation in it, doesn’t it?

2 December 2020

lord leominster

@TV Steve – I had to listen twice to hear it but yes I see what you mean. Funnily enough I’ve been listening to this song quite a bit today. I did consider this to be my least favourite Biscuit song – I found it a bit plodding but the real reason is that it seems to have been written about me. And, as a rule, I really can’t stand Christmas songs, they always sound so, well, cynical; “just throw in some some jingle bells, mention Christmas and we’ve got our pension sorted” that sort of thing. There are exceptions, of course, 2000 Miles and Fairytale of New York being obvious ones and I’ll even admit to liking Elton’s Step Into Christmas. But I am hearing real beauty in It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas now. The changes in key, the violins, the contrast between the delivery style of the vocals and the underlying tune, the different take on a familiar subject, the return to a traditional song at the end, the children’s choir. I’m wiping away a tear from my eye. There will be no more Christmas cynicism in the Leominster household. It’s a wonderful life, after all.

2 December 2020

parsfan

Are people still doing this? Should we have expected to see some chart activity by now?

Mine’s been on almost constantly for a week or so.

9 December 2020

the current state of play on getting ‘It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas’ To Chart

Yesterday 152 170 plays had been logged by 11 am.

Today it stands at 153 058 plays at the same timespot.

Therefore 888 plays daily, equals about 8 sales daily, equals 56 over a week.

Given that if on continuous play, each person participating would register approx 375.65 plays a day, looks like only three people at best are doing this.

So much for salvaging something good and positive out of this whole, vile, rotten lockdown year, and instead of it being a Covid Christmas or the H5N8 Christmas, making 2020 the HMHB Christmas.

10 December 2020

EXXO

Well I’ve never used Spotify but I do know that now is the time to request that Lammo plays Bob Wilson. The first and probably only time Bob Wilson’s men are in cold rainy Dundalk is tonight at 5.55 during his programme, so please email, tweet text 64046 and request and one play gets the band about £80.

10 December 2020

EXXO

I often seem to say “cold & rainy” when I mean “”cold and hungry”.

10 December 2020

Chris The Siteowner

I don’t think streaming has much effect on the charts, do you? </sarcasm>

(I’m looking back on the glory days of the pop charts and Top Of The Pops a lot more wistfully nowadays).

10 December 2020

dr desperate

You were probably thinking of the days of Curley Weaver, @Exxo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57j0V3x84Uw

11 December 2020

What could have been

Take it you’ve all read in the papers today about the Macc Lads’ support band, Kunt And The Gang currently sitting at No.8 in the midweek charts with “Boris Johnson Is A F**king C**t”?

(The song itself is pathetic, sounds like Black Lace trying to be edgy)

Unlike HMHB, haven’t even charted in the indies, never mind the main chart. What fans they do have did the same plan as above (except their song was only 60 seconds long, so more plays registered in a day.

Could have been HMHB lads, could have been HMHB …

22 December 2020

Parsfan

I noticed on that Reddit page someone suggested to try and get National Shite Day to number one for New Year’s Day.

Great idea, but no mention of it anywhere else from what I’ve seen. We would have to do a bit better than our Christmas effort. Much longer too.

23 December 2020

EXXO

My strong impression is that while it is clearly a campaign spread by social media, the Mike Gibbons thing has achieved wider appeal and has been backed by all sorts of celebs and spread by wider media, hardly surprising when you think about the reasons for that wider appeal/ This was never going to happen with the HMHB song, not least because as soon as it gathered any momentum there would probably have been a message from Mr. B saying “not in our name” which is what happened in the same situation a few years back.

23 December 2020

EXXO

And please stop assuming we’rel “lads.”

23 December 2020

What could have been

The idea of getting National Shite Day to No.1 is just plain puerile though. No merit in it other than “let’s get a song with a sweary word title to No.1.” The sort of thing over 40s people might find shocking and edgy but anyone under that age would find more obvious and beige than an episode of “Murder She Wrote”.

At least Kunt And The Gang has the saving grace their song will piss off the Tories and Ladbaby if it makes No.1.

Why would anyone want to call this New Year’s Day “National Shite Day” in the first place? Most people the world over can’t wait for this year to be over, Had the attempt been for the first week or so of the lockdown back in March, it would have caught the mood of the time, but that chance has now gone.

23 December 2020

Parsfan

“Why would anyone want to call this New Year’s Day “National Shite Day” in the first place?”

Brexit.

I know not all will agree, but that’s what I took it to mean.

23 December 2020

FerencvÁros fan

If we are talking National Shite Day, today is clearly a prime candidate.

Hope you have the best possible Christmas in the circs, everyone. Stay safe and let’s look forward to happier times. God bless.

23 December 2020

EXXO

For me, the far-fetched idea of getting NSD into the charts on any specific day misses the point of the song which is that for people like the narrator, every day has the possibility of feeling like someone’s declared it National Shite Day, because most things round these parts have the potential to be shite, and if you encounter enough of them it can just tip you over the edge.

If you want a specific number one about a specific day, then write one and get a band together. And if you make it shite enough it might happen.

23 December 2020

dr desperate

My own PSN (Personal Shite Night) was on Monday, when my laptop’s soundboard, having worked perfectly for five years, died just as I was logging on to Exxo’s Zoom quiz. I only stopped swearing at it yesterday, because it’s what baby Jesus would have wanted.

26 December 2020

EXXO

I had an idea. If nobody involved has yet told you about any of the questions via any other means of communication, I could actually give you a go at the quiz when you do have a suitable apparatus. Would give me a chance to correct 4 or arguably 5 errors and to record it without those errors. The format of the public release would then be “can you beat Dr. D at HMHB Only Connect?”

We have a sweepstake on how many points you get.

26 December 2020

dr desperate

New laptop (grrrr) set up with Zoom installed and ready to test with a family Taskmaster-based quiz tonight. No HMHB answer spoilers received so far.
I’ll gladly have a go, and hereby promise not to enter into any sweepstake-fiddling arrangements.

26 December 2020

CARRIE ANNE

Mentioned in one of the captions, albeit with a superfluous comma https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-55549609

6 January 2021

Chris The Siteowner

Professional Jeweller proving its readers are a sound bunch.

10 January 2021

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