The Trumpton Riots probably remains HMHB’s most famous song to this day. Although associated with the band’s first album Back in the DHSS nowadays, the track wasn’t on it originally, coming out as a single/EP nearer the time of the second album, Back Again in the DHSS, on which it featured in the “7-in remix” format. However, the EP version was subsequently added onto the CD release of the first album, and the song reared its head for a third time in a live version on the ACD update of the second album. Someone may want to tell me if there are any lyrical differences between the three!
Other than that, having argued about the lyrics and just about settled on a consensus when we discussed the 2003 remake of the song here, I can now present the lyrics to the original version without, I hope, too much argument ensuing. There are some tiny differences between the two. The original printed lyrics, which aren’t quite correct, are published here. We also now have these handwritten lyrics to The Trumpton Riots (see comment 21 below).
See lyrics to The Trumpton Riots
Bill Stow
Line 4 – I’m pretty sure that it’s ‘to’ get rid of
and the final chorus starts with an ‘oh’
19 May 2009
Chris The Siteowner
Hi Bill
Cheers. I’ve always felt he misses out the “to” in “And the lads are going to launch a scheme (to) get rid of Captain Flack” even though it obviously should be there. Anyone else hear it? Always happy to be voted down.
Chris
20 May 2009
Ben
I’ve been singing “ANIMATE” instead of Elevate, and “on their toes” instead of “arm themselves” for 25 years.
For shame.
20 May 2009
JohnCooper
I always thought:
“And the lads at Oakham Lontus keep getting rid of Captain Flack”
“Chigley Militant Socialists can storm the market square”
7 April 2010
cliffy
We’ve had crap performances since 1966 (footie reference I thought
15 June 2010
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
‘We’ve had Cant conformism since 1966’ could be entered into the Eurovision Song Contest of Spiffingly Clever Lyrics, should such a contest ever be held. It acknowledges Brian Cant, who narrated Trumpton, whilst describing said conformism as empty and uncritical. Also sounds like a rude word when spoken with a Cockney accent. Or possibly refers to an eighteenth century Prussian philosopher, noted for his predictable lifestyle, to the extent that his neighbours would set their clocks by his daily walk.
30 January 2011
Charles Exford
Glad someone else gets it, Vendor. The scorn with which my (partly self-parodying but mostly just typically pretentious) arguments in the other Trumpton Riots thread were greeted by the fellow Biscuiteers left me feeling lonely and isolated. The pun works even better in lower case, as it does for paradise lost, etc.
30 January 2011
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
On being awoken from my dogmatic slumbers, I’ve just gone a searchin’ for the other Trumpton Riots thread, which to my shame I don’t think I’ve read before. Thoroughly enjoyed your tangential musings Charles and I’m sure that you can bear the Cross of loneliness and isolation with no perceivable effort. The point which needs to be made to the doubters and non-believers is just what do you expect from this site? To slightly twist the old Stiff Records tag line – If it ain’t pedantry it ain’t worth a fcuk. If you don’t want to discuss the furthest terminus of a feortan this ain’t the place for you.
Cant because of Brian, cant because of the suffocating staidness of stop motion animation towns in Britain in the 1960s. Yes?
30 January 2011
Martin
Doh! Of course, Brian Cant narrated it. I never made that link before, I’d only thought of the empty and uncritical meaning (beautifully put by the way, VOQN). A once weak lyric is now rather marvellous. I feel I should go and find myself a cafe bar and a pigeon.
Incidentally, back in 1985/86 when I discovered HMHB I wrote a letter (remember them?) to Probe Plus asking for lyrics, and a week later I received a stapled-together set of photocopied hand-written lyrics to Back In The DHSS. Oh how I wish I’d kept that. I think I’d better make that a double cafe bar and pigeon.
1 February 2011
Dave Kirby
Because of this song, for years, all through my teens and well into my adult life, I thought “erstwhile” meant something like “steadfast”. It doesn’t. Do you think Nigel’s aware of that these days?
6 January 2012
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
The times in Trumpton, they were a changing back in ’85. Revolutionary forces were busy overthrowing the previous regime. The days of former glories were fast disappearing. The reactionary guard, unsurprisingly, resisted this wind of change. Out of touch, born of the previous generation, ghosts of a time fast fading; hence erstwhile.
6 January 2012
John Burscough
Well said, VQN. If you live in this world, you’re feelin’ the change of the guard.
6 January 2012
Charles Exford
They were the fire crew; they got rid of Captain Flack; they ended up falling for the ‘come-not-to-praise-Flack-but-to-bury-him’ charisma of Snorty and his mob. Foreshadowing the way the miners were used in Romania? Shivers down the spine as another utopian revolutionary dream is hijacked.
6 January 2012
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
Snort was a shifty character as befits one who ran a military academy for young boys.
As Cant commented at the time;
Captain Snort is a soldier man,
Scarlet and gold a soldier man.
He’ll work a boy as hard as he can,
To turn him into a soldier man.
Captain Snort is a soldier man,
Who lives in Pippin Fort.
Wouldn’t get away with that type of approach these days. The modern Army Cadets promise youngsters the opportunity to develop through fun, exciting and challenging opportunities. Not allowed to work a boy until he is an unthinking, killing machine any more. Today the whole shebang would be doomed from the off. Besides the boys would be too busy canoeing, abseiling and caving. They wouldn’t be allowed to bring about a military coup. Elfin Safe Tea, innit.
6 January 2012
John Burscough
Without wishing to appear pedantic, when it kicked off in Trumpton PC McGarry would have been the mate called in as back-up from Camberwick Green, rather than the local law – that was Policeman Potter.
One assumes the rioting must have spread to the Green, as that was where Dr Mopp’s surgery was, as well as Mrs Honeyman’s husband’s chemist’s shop (though he was never seen in either series).
7 January 2012
Mac
So, after all these years, we’re saying it would have been more accurately titled the “Trumptonshire Riots”? 😉
8 January 2012
Dave Kirby
VQN makes Snorty’s crew sound like the Bridgeburners in the Steven Erikson novels. It’s The Trumptonshire Book Of The Fallen!
9 January 2012
Dave Kirby
(And yes, I do have Omni stacked, ten-fold, under the bed.)
9 January 2012
MIKE IN COV
And here’s me been singing “Hello mates!” all these years (“Hello playmates!”, CP of Arthur Askey, God I feel suddenly old, ‘scuse me while I kiss this guy).
The main tune reminds me of “Johnny I hardly knew ye”/”As I went down to sweet Athy” or whatever you want to call it, albeit a tad speeded up and the rhythm tweaked. Am I talking out of my usual unusual vocal orifice?
6 July 2012
Chigley Skin
I imagine it’s probably been mentioned elsewhere, but I don’t have the stamina to trawl through twelve months’ worth of PBRs; just got through watching Martin McDonagh’s film Seven Psychopaths, and was naturally delighted by the all-too-brief snatch of Trumpton Riots that got played in the one scene. This surely must be the first time a Biccies song has ever graced a Hollywood movie?
4 May 2013
Chris The Siteowner
You’re going to like this. Sent in by Carl H, who writes: “Thought you might like to look at or share the attached – a pal wrote to Nigel all those years ago when he first bought Back in the DHSS, enquiring about the lyrics. The Great Man put pen to paper as you can see!”
Handwritten lyrics to The Trumpton Riots
24 June 2013
Dr Desperate
Like.
25 June 2013
Paul F
Great stuff.
25 June 2013
Acidic regulator
Has it ever occurred to anyone else that The Trumpton Riots sounds like Industrial Disease by Dire Straits turned into music, and with better words?
25 October 2013
Vendor Of Quack Nostrums
Can’t say I have and I’ve always rather liked that particular slice of Knopfler knobheadery. But having tried to sing one to the other, so to speak, I’m beginning to see your point.
Try it for yourselves:
Ner- ner-ner-ner ner-ner-ner ner
Ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner
No! Oh oh oh!
Elevate!
Warning lights are flashing down at Quality Control
Somebody threw a spanner and they threw him in the hole
There’s rumors in the loading bay and anger in the town
Somebody blew the whistle and the walls came down
There’s a meeting in the boardroom they’re trying to trace the smell
There’s leaking in the washroom there’s a sneak in personnel
Somewhere in the corridors someone was heard to sneeze
Goodness me could this be Industrial Disease?
It then goes on in a similar vein for another 5 verses.
I was always rather fond of the line ‘ Philosophy is useless theology is worse’, as I was studying for a combined degree in these 2 subjects at the time this song came out. Did consider submitting it as my dissertation, but figured it wouldn’t even be worth a Desmond.
26 October 2013
Dr Desperate
From Tim Harford’s ‘More or Less’ statistics programme on BBC R4, 7.4.11 (MP3): the effects of the fiscal multiplier in Trumpton, in which Fireman Dibble gets the sack (10.20)
7 April 2014
Dr Desperate
Any Biscuiteers going to the Burning of Trumpton at Great Torrington, Devon on 29th?
19 August 2015
EXXO
Ghost Poet’s ‘The Pleasure in Pleather’ getting a bit of play on R6M these days, making me scream “Elevate!!” at frequent intervals.
Elevate, a vision of you, a vision of me
Nobody cares who you’ve got to be
Elevate
Elevate, a vision of you, a vision of me
Nobody cares, these days, my dear, who you’ve got to be
Elevate, elevate
Don’t worry, I don’t treat the MMP with the awe that they do (some of them)
18 November 2015
Peter Mcornithologist
Gordon Murray , creator of Trumpton , has passed away and risen to the fire station in the sky.
3 July 2016
brumbiscuit
Having forgotten about post #20, I too was delighted to hear a snippet of TTR in Seven Psychopaths; a film I’ve had recorded since, well far too long. I had to sit through the credits to be sure it wasn’t a hallucinogenic experience. Good film too. I’m sort of wishing that NSD appears on the In Bruges soundtrack…
12 November 2016
Igglepiggle’s socialists
The Night Garden Riots:
Someone get a message to the Tombliboos
That they’d better start assembling those great big Haahoos
And keep Upsy Daisy right out of sight
‘Cos there’s gonna be a riot in the Garden tonight
3 March 2017
Brumbiscuit
Well, NSD didn’t appear in In Bruges, but the above post reminded me of this snippet from Viz: http://viz.co.uk/letterbocks-bagpuss/
3 March 2017
Bobby Davro’s Left Arm
Being a bit of a nerd and seeking out some alternative versions of early songs. Did the 7″ Remix / Top 20 Mix ever turn up on CD?
12 February 2018
TRAPPED IN TEXAS
#33 BOBBY DAVRO’S LEFT ARM
Good question … why is the community suddenly quiet. Have you stumbled upon something ominous? Dont … dont … donnnnnnn.
23 March 2018
nightofthedemon
I have never enjoyed twenty minutes so much as reading this thread. Always loved ‘Trumptonshire’ – being born in 1966 I had this and ‘Pogles Wood’ to watch and that was pretty much it! Some good thoughts on the meaning of the lyrics and to contribute I always heard ‘Cant’ as ‘High’…
22 July 2018
Bobby Svarc
Come on man, I was six in sixty six and there was a plethora of great children’s TV in that brilliant age of ‘Watch with Mother’ innocence. The Gordon Murray trilogy was by far the best of course but I did like ‘Joe‘, a kid whose parents kept a transport cafe, I hated ‘The Pied Piper’ though, he frit me shitless and scared me for life.
23 July 2018
dr desperate
Oh Joe. Joe began to cry.
(If you’ve got a few more minutes to spare, @NOTD, see if you can recall any more of these programmes.)
http://www.thechestnut.com/index.htm
23 July 2018
Eric Olthwaite
I liked Joe, I’m sure I got a Joe album for Christmas one year. There was also the Clangers, Bagpuss (which I was watching with my three-year-old daughter at the weekend, she loves it), the Herbs, Mary Mungo and Midge, Magic Roundabout, Hector’s House, Michael Bentine’s Potty Time, Rhoobarb and Custard. The late sixties into the seventies was a fantastic time for kids’ TV.
23 July 2018
Matthewwigan
I think ‘Cant conformism’ is a pun on Kant’s conformism (because the narrator of the show was Brian Cant). I could be wrong though.
25 February 2019
JUST MARK
@MATTHEWWIGAN I think you’re correct – 8 years late but correct (see post #6 near the top of the page).
26 February 2019
EXXO
I think the pun is Cant the man and ‘cant’ the uncritical repetition of meaningless nonsense. I still don’t know why ‘cant’ is not listed by dictionaries as an adjective (some list it as a modifier). The 1985 Blackwell would have given himself a slap if he’d found himself punning on eighteenth century philosophers, if he hadn’t already had one from someone else. In other words I’d agree with first two meanings of the pun in Vendor’s comment #6 above, probably not the third and unlikely the fourth.
27 February 2019