76. Half Man Half Biscuit - The Trumpton Riots (Probe Plus)

Two weeks at number one from 22nd March 1986

If you love neatly splicing things into sub-genres, and you feel very strongly that groups and artists have clear "neighbourhoods" which cannot be disputed, here’s where things get awkward. Way back at the end of 1984, The Toy Dolls climbed to number one in the indie charts with “Nellie The Elephant”. Not only was that the last major punk hit in the National Charts, I was also going to argue that it was the last big gasp of the Punk Pathetique sub-genre of Oi! Except…

There are critics and punk fans out there who will argue that Half Man Half Biscuit are part of that Gary Bushell adjacent patch. I can’t find any evidence to suggest that the group referred to themselves as such, but even if they didn’t, these views exist. The counter-claims against them are obviously numerous; the differences between The Toy Dolls, The Test Tube Babies, Splodgenessabounds and Half Man Half Biscuit couldn’t be more obvious. The Splodges looked quite striking in their own way, but indulged in facile dingbattery. The Dolls were/are hyper, whacky, squeaky and cartoonish, overgrown excitable children kicking each other’s tricycles whose handlebars were smeared in melted chocolate. 

HMHB, on the other hand, were – and are – another prospect altogether. Dour, scruffy, despondent, moping and despairing they may have been, but they often churned out comedic lyrical phrases which seemed anything but lazy and effortless. Their debut album “Back In The DHSS” was a shambling cornucopia of observations about children’s television, ageing comic actors (Bob Todd) and “Give Us A Clue” approved national treasures (Nerys Hughes, Una Stubbs, Lionel Blair), spliffs and snooker referees (Len Gangley). Punk Pathetique? I'd argue their styles and methods bore more resemblance to their fellow city-dwellers and beat poets The Liverpool Scene (give "Baby" a virtual spin to get the idea). 

The album was recorded as the test-run of a new eight-track facility in Liverpool where Nigel Blackwell worked as a caretaker following seven years of unemployment. “The caretaker’s band”, as they were somewhat disparagingly known by his colleagues, were allowed to give the desk its first dummy run and the album was recorded for the mate’s rate of £40. They handed the resulting tape around to record companies more in hope than expectation; Factory Records politely and predictably passed on it, but local record store Probe picked it up for their backroom label.

“Back In The DHSS” has a slightly rushed, demo-level sound as a result of its thrifty beginnings, but that only works in its favour. The underproduced sounds collide perfectly with lyrics which provide endless hints to Blackwell’s lifestyle (and possibly the band’s) – his world is one of front room televisions being switched on in the daytime at the height of summer, the heavy curtains fully drawn to stop the sun’s rude interruptions. Spliff and tobacco smoke hang in the air, while he sits on a pouffe passively absorbing the day’s televisual offerings, occasionally getting frustrated but feeling too powerless and groggy to even change the station. Trumpton comes on. He laughs his first stoned giggle of the day, imagining the central characters to be dabbling with drugs. We've all been there. 

As a result, the album felt as if it accidentally found three target markets – students, the unemployed, and stoners. All were able to recognise themselves in these beaten-up novelty folk-punk ditties, able to not only laugh along but rub their eyes in despair. Here’s where the punk pathetique comparisons fall apart; The Toy Dolls and Splodgenessabounds were celebrations of stupidity and passive consumption. HMHB seemed, consciously or otherwise, to be wanting to walk away from it but found they were snookered at every turn, empty-pocketed prisoners to the worst of eighties light entertainment culture.

They were also strangely obsessed with the gentle stop-motion children’s programme “Trumpton”, which besides forming part of the album in “Time Flies By (When You’re The Driver Of A Train)” (“speeding out of Trumpton with a cargo of cocaine”) now became the backdrop to their debut single “The Trumpton Riots”. In many respects, it’s more of the same, except perhaps even more lo-fi. 

Blackwell’s lyrics are occasionally blanketed by the rest of the group, drifting in and out of coherence throughout the thicket of distorted guitars and sledgehammered drums. A shame as they’re a step up from the basic daftness of “DHSS” and contain some prize pearls about civic disorder in Trumpton. There have been fewer better opening lines to a comic song than “Unemployment's rising in the Chigley end of town/ And it's spreading like pneumonia/ Doesn't look like going down”, and “We've had Cant conformism since 1966” is particularly witty, mixing up the narrator’s name Brian Cant with the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (sorry to signpost this so heavily, readers, but while I trust you’ve all heard of Kant, some of you may not be old enough to remember Cant).

The chorus is also sharp enough to be something approaching a pop hook, threading itself slightly around the central theme tune of the children’s series, though staying far enough away to avoid lawsuits. It’s one of the most memorable tracks of the first phase of Half Man Half Biscuit’s career, succeeding to push forward the idea of anarchy even in a peaceful idyll like Trumpton, and it also rocks in its own strange way – a nettle rash of crappily recorded guitars over a sweet, innocent childhood memory.

The group’s future was now firmly in place, as their album pushed into the national Top 75 and crowds of their kith and kin flooded their gigs. They were never supposed to be more than a flippant joke, a strange way for a bunch of like-minded souls to pass the time, but they seemed to accidentally strike a chord and recognise the mood of 1986 more than most other bands in the indie chart. A marketing meeting couldn’t have predicted HMHB’s success, nor that they would still be a recording and gigging entity in 2025, yet here they were, on a tiny part-time label in Liverpool and working their way into the lower reaches of the national consciousness. It’s a strange miracle. Was Gary Bushell moved? If he had an opinion, it doesn’t appear to have been recorded. 

Gordon Murray, the creator of "Trumpton", "Chigley" and "Camberwick Green", did have views, however. When asked by a journalist what he thought of this single, he asked "Is it rap? I didn't like it". No Murray, it didn't fit into that genre either, but given his widely expressed view that "There is no crime in Trumptonshire" and that children's innocence should be protected, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised he didn't enjoy his carefully created world being dismantled before his ears. 

New Entries Elsewhere In The Charts

13. Stump – Mud On A Colon (Ron Johnson)

Peak position: 13

Tempting as it may be to draw comparisons between HMHB and Stump, it’s probably futile. Stump’s records may have been shot through with humour, but their sound was much more unforgivable to the average listener; a crosswired cacophony of eccentric chords and competing melody and rhythm lines.

Opening track “Orgasm Way” is almost funky in places, but just when you’re getting comfortable, it shifts gear again, then again. It’s not the wildest thing they’d ever record, but it’s certainly not aiming for mass appeal either – so it’s enormously strange that the group would eventually be allowed into the centre of the music business. One Record Mirror journalist even tipped them for huge success in 1986. 

17. The Wolfhounds - Cut The Cake (Pink)

Peak position: 17

Debut entry for Romford’s The Wolfhounds, whose sixties garage inspired indiepop cut an abrasive noise through the middle of the decade. They would eventually become one of the more fierce and politicised groups on the scene, but “Cut The Cake” exposes some distorted jangle to a rather brighter tune, eventually colliding it with a blurry psychedelic extended ending which owed a huge debt to the low budget Nuggets acts of yore. 

18. The Gents - Give It To Me (Prism)

Peak position: 18

Speaking of which… mod revivalists The Gents were hanging on in there, churning out records to their fanbase while still hanging on to the notion that the year was 1981 and retro dandyism was still a way of making a living.

It wasn’t, obviously, but “Give It To Me” is as good as anything Secret Affair or The Lambrettas were putting out at that time, and viewed from this distance it barely matters. A tootling horn section infests the chorus while the group punch through their core, determined message. Smart enough in both senses of the phrase.

26. The Membranes - Everythings Brilliant (In Tape)

Peak position: 9


27. Inca Babies - Splatter Ballistic Cop (Black Lagoon)

Peak position: 20


28. The Leather Nun - Desolation Avenue (Wire)

Peak position: 23

Bleak Swedes The Leather Nun return with a droning mope about being an outcast and ambling around the dirtiest, most impoverished streets of the city. Actually, for all its pseudo-decadence, this has a compelling atmosphere, using repetition as a hypnotic device which almost becomes uplifting despite the introversion and sleaze. 

29. Heist - Same Way (NV)

Peak position: 29


Week Two

13. Psychic TV - Godstar (Temple)

Peak position: 2

Ex-Throbbing Gristle member Genesis P Orridge had been pushing forward with his group Psychic TV since 1982, issuing two albums via major labels (WEA and CBS respectively, courtesy of quickie deals arranged by Stevo of Some Bizarre). Predictably enough, they were booted into indieland as soon as the largest labels realised that while the band may have been intriguing and had a critical pedigree, there was never going to be much money in them.

“Godstar” was a tribute to Brian Jones and was strangely conventional, taking a Stones styled riff for its main chorus and littering the mix with angelic vocals and handclaps. It’s astonishing close to the artier end of seventies glam rock, at some points sounding like something Lawrence out of Felt might have dreamt up while coming up with the template for Denim.

It’s also a fantastic single and strangely close to pop given how challenging Psychic TV could often be. The group would enter the national top 75 for the first time with this one, doing an impersonation of being contenders on their own label right after the music business had given them the heave-ho. 

27. Jake Burns and the Big Wheel - She Grew Up​ (Rigid Digits)

Peak position: 16

Ex-Stiff Little Finger Jake Burns delivers a melancholy song about a grown-up woman turning her back on punk to get a sensible job and feed her family. Closer to pub rock than his dynamite attacks of old, it sounds as if it could be the theme to a Channel 4 comedy drama series about the trials and tribulations of an ageing Clash fan who is almost, but not exactly, like a female Shelley (commission x6). This is as close as punk ever got to Bryan Adams’ “Summer of 69”, and could have ended up a deeply cornball exercise, but it isn’t and I’m glad it exists – every generation needs a moment like this. 

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Number One In The Official Charts

Diana Ross - "Chain Reaction" (Capitol)

Cliff Richard & The Young Ones - "Living Doll" (WEA)