The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

Busking this at Embankment Tube tomorrow

179 pop songs picked over by pedants

“Are you knackered, man?”

I’d saved doing the lyrics to Tour Jacket With Detachable Sleeves because it’s one of my favourite Half Man Half Biscuit songs, and I always thought the lyrics would look great, transcribed in full. I assumed others might have thought likewise, but how wrong I was – whereas there are hundreds of (bad) transcriptions of, say, The Trumpton Riots material on the web, Tour Jacket was nowhere to be found – so this is yet another first for this site. And what a first! A cautionary tale, in prose, full of marvellous references to obscure footy, prog rock and more, spoken in a way which would put many professional actors to shame (try reading it out loud yourself). And once again, an everyday tale which we can all relate to. Well, until the end. Genius.

See lyrics to Tour Jacket With Detachable Sleeves

12 Letters Sent:
  1. 1

    Daryl

    fantastic job

  2. 2

    Munich

    Love it! Well done.

  3. 3

    Bill Stow

    ‘Tour Jacket’ lyrics need an addition

    After ‘..a Dogs D’amour concert’

    add ‘ ..which she went to with her …’

  4. 5

    Bill Stow

    Third verse line 7 – ‘it seemed like’ should be ‘ it seemed that’

  5. 6

    Daryl

    I like to think that Nigel only had the knackered man/Jan Akkerman pun in the beginning. He then had to construct a convoluted tale about going to see prog rock tribute bands so he could get that brilliant line in and not have it be a complete non-sequitur.

    Still would have been a fantastic non-sequitur, though…

  6. 7

    Shirley Dimensions

    he trims his hedge with non-sequiturs. Now, where did I put that coat?

  7. 8

    Ceri

    Since it’s a Kubrick reference, “real horror show” should read “real horrorshow”.

  8. 9

    Mr Larrington

    I’d like to think it’s Burgess rather than Kubrick.

  9. 10

    Ceri

    Of course.

  10. 11

    Dagenham dave

    I can’t quite believe this but I’ve only just made sense of the ‘Travis by Cartel’ line, I really must pay more attention.

  11. 12

    Rubber Faced Irritant

    The June issue of The Word has a letter from ‘Chris H’ citing Jan Akkerman as a noble and righteous cause that deserves championing. His website reveals he played Southampton in April and was an “intense and exciting treat”. I hope the attendees checked the credentials of the driver before boarding the bus home. More Jan Akkerman news at http://www.janakkerman.nl

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