The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

The quiet desperation that is the English way (thanks Neil). OK, let’s get one thing straight: if it’s the man who wrote about the last train for the coast, it’s Don McLean, and if it’s the one-time Peter Glaze sidekick, it’s Don Maclean, and we’ll never know which one is being referred to, although you lot will argue about it, without doubt. Turned Up Clocked On Laid Off is one of the most beautifully gloomy songs HMHB have ever recorded, especially the coda after the last chorus. Magnificent.

God Gave Us Life is the song which I always think disproves any “curse of HMHB” theory, because most of the extensive roll-call of wonderful people are alive and well nearly 25 years later. Even the, er, more senior ones lived on into the next century. Anyway, some nice distortion.

Quality Janitor is about old janitors/parkies/grandads who presumably “put Nick Straker on the floor” when the seventies one-hit-wonders went for a walk in the park and had a trip in the dark. Maybe. Anyway, I thought this one was going to be difficult when five correspondents sent in five quite different first lines, but it got easier from there on in. That line may generate some discussion though.

Malayan Jelutong is a type of wood, apparently, but doesn’t feature in the song. Then again, it’s one of those songs where there are lots of intriguingly amusing references, but if there are any connections between them, they’re too obscure for most of us. Many years on, there are still adverts for The Original Breton Shirt in the back pages. Guardian readers never change.

Whiteness Thy Name Is Meltonian has two or three individual lines in it which I know are amongst the favourites of several people. And that coda – it’s almost pop music… Meltonian, by the way, still exists. It’s a brand which, despite being sold to the Americans, is so achingly traditional it apparently doesn’t need a proper website – and you won’t see much of a mention of it anywhere from its current owner, the mighty Sara Lee Corporation.

This one always makes me smile. It’s just a list of management-speak gobbledegook, culled mainly from job adverts, but what’s striking about ITMA could well be how few of these terms have become quaint since 1997. I suppose most of the people who were writing business bullshit back then are still writing it today.

Despite the legendary curse of HMHB, the one song which mentions “all those people who you romantically like to still believe are alive, are dead” didn’t have any of the four it namechecks let the side down until almost twenty years after it was written. Oh the irony. And even now, over 22 years since the song’s release, three out of the four are still with us. Dickie Davies Eyes is one of those early songs which is known to the “Half Man Half Biscuit – didn’t they do that song about…?” brigade, mainly because it still gets the occasional national radio airing (he said, just having heard it on BBC 6 Music).

You didn’t really think that Song Of Encouragement for the Orme Ascent was going to be about “Llandudno’s Mountain”, did you? Thanks to the magic of Peel Sessions, another song, like Trumpton Riots, available in both guitar- and banjo-flavoured varieties.

And yet another album joins the completists’ factory, as Faithlift finishes off T-shirt favourite Some Call It Godcore. Clan Of Xymox actually did a couple of real 4ADCDs, you know.

With the Peel/BBC Sessions material being so readily available online nowadays, it’s the EP-only obscurities which are probably the least well-known HMHB songs. Ecclesiastical Perks can be obtained – expensively – online if it somehow passed you by! There are a couple of guesses towards the end, which some of you might have thoughts on.