The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project

Busking this at Embankment Tube tomorrow

160 pop songs picked over by pedants (in 2,784 comments!)

Here’s Judie Tzuke to take us up to the news

When The Evening Sun Goes Down is one of those great songs which brings together a stack of brilliant but unrelated lines. Almost every one is a gem. Thanks to Patrick, gnick and eskimoeric

See lyrics to When The Evening Sun Goes Down

19 Letters Sent:
  1. steve

    Isn’t it

    I’m ending on this rhyme deep in injury time.

    Maybe not but that’s what I always thought it was what with that being the end of the song

  2. Bob

    I hear “attending on this rhyme” ??

  3. “sending on this rhyme” over here. Connotations of sending on a substitute in a foopball match.

  4. Andrew Daley

    This was used as the theme tune for Ross Noble’s Radio 4 series. He is a fan.

  5. Paul F

    I’ve always heard it as “ending”.

  6. Definitely “sending on” IMHO. As in sending on a sub deep in injury time.

  7. paulie

    “sending” – imho

  8. Informant

    The “deep in injury time” points towards “sending” I’d say. As in sending on a sub deep in injury time in a football match.

  9. Neil G

    How do the road gritters get to work? That’s a question I’ve been asking quite a few people recently? One suggested that they sleep in their lorries all night. I hadn’t thought of that.

  10. TWO FAT FEET

    Don’t the road gritters get to work BEFORE the snow to grit the roads in preparation?

    Actually no, they probably don’t and it shows.

    Had this song as my ringtone for a bit, then I changed my phone and couldn’t work out how to program it in again.

  11. Norbert D

    I always hated that road gritters line, as it really did seem like the kind of whimsical, bad-stand-up line HMHB usually manage to steer clear of (hence the radio DJ patter that comes after it, maybe).

    But it’s a fair point, isn’t it? I still don’t know how the road gritters get to work.

  12. Charles Exford

    Given the contents of the adjacent lines, I’ve always assumed it’s a piss-take of people (particularly people like stand-ups & DJs) who think it’s original to say things like “How do the road-gritters get to work ?”, which you hear every bloody winter from people who think it’s original, when it’s fairly obvious that the gritters usually go out before the snow falls, and that if the roads were truly impassible they wouldn’t get to work.

    After all, NB57 himself is not actually in a position to give out a cruise, wheras the kind of DJ who plays Judy Tsuke might be.

  13. TWO FAT FEET

    I have to say I felt much the same as Norbert, the road gritters line seemed like a rare slip from Nigel. It was only when I heard him do the song on an Andy Kershaw session that it clicked, that the whole verse was a send-up of crass DJs. Pity Judie Tzuke had to be denigrated by association though, I quite like that song she had.

  14. Norbert D

    Yeah, that’s what I thought/hoped. Still grates a bit for me, though, anyway.

    It’s that “questions in corners of my mind that lurk” bit too, like the bad comic on an episode of The Simpsons – “I think about weird things. Like what if ET married Mr T? Then you’d get Mr ET, wouldn’t you? ‘I pity the fool that doesn’t phone home’.”

    I’d have thought NB57 would be quite into Judy Tzuke. Not sure why.

  15. TWO FAT FEET

    Probably cos it’s a great name.

  16. Dave Cooper

    Utterly pedantic but I think “Judy” Tzuke should actually be “Judie”.

  17. Oh bloody hell, thank you. What a howler.

  18. Dave F.

    After the Pat Boone line he sings it as “dow-wow-wow-wown”

  19. Indeed he does. But I’d still contend that’s spelt “down”.

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