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.

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.

I’ve always felt that 1966 And All That is a standout from the earliest days of the band, because in style and sentiment it presages so much of what was to follow. But then again I may be talking nonsense. The song originally comes from The Trumpton Riots EP, which was released a few months after the debut album Back in the DHSS. Later, when CDs became trendy, the album and the EP were combined, which is why nowadays we tend to attribute it to the album. Lev Yashin went to mind the great sticks in the sky within five years of the song being written, but Ferenc Puskas soldiered on for nearly 20 more years, despite the namecheck.

Well, despite Hannu Mikkola and Miriam Stoppard being OAPs, Architecture and Morality, Ted and Alice singularly failed to finish either of them off, although the same can’t be said of no-longer-early-but-now-rather-late Diana. And I can’t find any record of Jane Scott, a business I’m led to believe.

On the home stretch now, with (mainly) golden oldies to be done, but who knows what surprises they might throw up for those of us who turn out to have been singing the wrong words for twenty-three years? Anyway, I Hate Nerys Hughes (From The Heart) probably set the gold standard for disliking certain figures from the world of entertainment, something which was to feature regularly over future albums, but never less subtly. If only Nerys Hughes had actually been a Liver Bird, we may now be referring to her as, ooh, NH58 or something, but she is of course from Rhyl, and at the time of writing, quite alive, it would appear.

Bit of a PBR, this one, because I met an ex-teacher of mine in our city’s swanky new library the other day, and she was paying the fines through the groovy automated machines for a couple of books which appeared to be nine weeks overdue. Anyway, I Love You Because (You Look Like Jim Reeves) wasn’t as successful as many other HMHB songs at seeing the back of its protagonists: Jim Reeves had already been dead for many years, Peggy Mount soldiered on for another 15, and Tony Bastable managed over 20, although at 62 you could say his passing was an unexpectedly early walk back to the pavilion. The song also features a rare example of some NSFW language (well, a word) which NB57 appeared to get out of his system very early on.

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.

On the day when England actually beat the bloody Aussies at Lords for once, it seemed appropriate to add a cricket-related song, of which there are surprisingly few in the Half Man Half Biscuit songbook. Fuckin’ ‘Ell It’s Fred Titmus refers to the former Middlesex and England off spinner who would have plied much of his trade at Lords (not a fiery Yorkshire pace legend, take note Kevin Sampson) and I guess is probably one of those early songs which permeated more widely into the public consciousness (as in “Half Man Half Biscuit? Aren’t they the ones who did…?”).

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.