The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

D’Ye Ken Ted Moult? is, shall we say, not one of the band’s most complex songs, musically or lyrically. However, unlike this one, few other HMHB songs caused their subject to shoot and kill himself within a few months of its release.

Sealclubbing lifts the title and the bit at the end from the poptastic David Essex’s 1982 Me And My Girl (Night-Clubbing). Of course in this day and age the term makes more headlines for (not) being an iPhone app.

Arthur’s Farm tells a tale as curious as any in the songbook, which I’m sure someone’s going to explain here. I’d certainly appreciate it. The end of the second verse also presciently describes the vuvuzelas many years before they’d even been invented, never mind inflicted on the world. I may regret writing that though, as it’s going to mean nothing after summer 2010. I hope.

My, how everyone laughed at the “hope your plane back home’s a DC-10″ at the time. Of course, those of us of a certain age still do. Albert Hammond Bootleg failed to finish off the artist of that ilk, and indeed, the man himself even went on to produce an equivalently-poptastic son of the same name as if to prove there is no such thing as the curse of HMHB. Stanley Rous barely lasted a year, mind.

A song with a slightly chequered history, Carry On Cremating is said to have been left off the first album (or was it the second?) although I can’t believe it was “for reasons of taste” despite apparently originally having been called The Continuous Cremation Of Hattie Jacques. Anyway, it eventually popped up on ACD as the only original (non-live) track on that strange bastardisation of Back In The DHSS.

Reasons To Be Miserable (Part 10) is an early example of a song with a spoken-word verse in it, of the kind we’d come to know and love a lot more later. “Reasons To Be Miserable” is also the title of an earlier, unrelated (and terrible) song released on the back of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and an even worse version by Stephen Fry released when his quality control department was on holiday.

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).

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 handwritten lyrics, which aren’t quite correct, are published here.

I haven’t done any of the real oldies for what seems like ages! Anyway, I Was A Teenage Armchair Honved Fan is another homage to eastern European football, which I just rediscovered when listening through to the delightful complete Peel sessions stuff (complete with Peel!) which, if you haven’t heard it, is here, all 48 tracks from Ted Moult to Oven Gloves. Enjoy.

Of course The Best Things In Life is best remembered for the refrain there is nothing better in life than writing on the sole of your slipper with a biro but I’m rather fond of we’ve seen the prices at the zoo as well.