The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

And so we bid a fond farewell to the magnificent but now completed McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt with Hedley Verityesque, which namechecks no fewer than three celebrities in their sixties, who must be taking each day as it comes (if they’re aware of the frequent consequence of getting a mention in an HMHB song). I’ve never fathomed out what might be described as “Hedley Verityesque” (a certain bowling action, perhaps?). I’m sure you’ll tell me.

The title of A Lilac Harry Quinn defeats me, I have to say, although apparently Harry Quinn had a cycle shop in Liverpool, so maybe he sold “Harry Quinns” and maybe you could get lilac ones. Or something. Anyway, a few cycling references in this one, as well as an obscure athletics one. This must be a popular song, as five people have sent in the lyrics to it – and no two sets were the same (and my final compromise takes bits from all of them).

Girlfriend’s Finished With Him is another good song about being in a band which also manages to shoehorn in a football reference, and something or other about dolphins. And that chorus at the end is one of those things which gets inside your head and refuses to leave for days.

Yipps (My Baby Got The) is best remembered for the golfing stuff at the end, but actually, it takes over three minutes of keyboard noodling to get going. Very odd. Still, the Nicklaus and Norman references retrieve it from the rough eventually.

Our Tune not only had the first-ever mention of a former Ipswich Town player in the HMHB songbook, but it also referenced the A47, which isn’t a million miles away either. So I liked this one.

Let’s Not was a surprisingly sophisticated choon which features a relatively rare cricketing reference and several (fortunately less rare) references to irritating TV persons.

Christian Rock Concert undertakes the tricky but ultimately necessary task of taking the piss out of Christian rock. Which is uniformly terrible. I have no idea if Wendy Wimbush is, was, or ever has been, associated with evangelical Christianity, or whether she’s just one of those people they had to get into a song somewhere, even if there was no obvious connection.

File Prag Vec At The Melkweg under the “please don’t ask me to explain this one” category. Some baffling references – I can’t find any reason to reference (presumably Craig) Stadler’s caddy, but hey, somehow the whole still manages to be amusing.

My favourite memory of Everything’s AOR is performing a word perfect rendition of the song with fellow Brit Jon G, walking through the streets of New York late one night, after far too many expensive weak American beers.

We’ll kick off with Outbreak Of Vitas Gerulaitis. This was probably the one which started it all off for me. Sometime about 1990 I took my girlfriend to a comedy gig at a tiny venue in London’s swinging Covent Garden (what was I thinking?).