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Half Man Half Biscuit (Nigel Blackwell, Neil Crossley, Ken Hancock and Carl Henry) often abbreviated to "HMHB", are a UK rock band from Birkenhead, active sporadically since the mid-1980s, known for their satirical, sardonic and sometimes surreal songs. They were long championed by DJ John Peel, for whom they recorded twelve sessions before Peel's death in 2004[1]. The band are huge fans of Tranmere Rovers, and once famously turned down the chance to appear on seminal 80s rock show The Tube, as Tranmere were playing that night.

Their musical styles often parody simple popular genres, while their lyrics are dense with cultural allusions, usually to UK popular culture. Songwriter Nigel Blackwell has a love of language and most of the songs contain several words or terms that have never before been used in popular music. It is unlikely that any one person would be able to recognise all of the terms and allusions in the songs, and websites such as hmhb.co.uk provide information to help decipher them.

Examples of their lyrics

The interpretation of the title of the band's first album, Back in the DHSS (1985), requires three items of background information: that the Beatles wrote a song called "Back in the USSR"; that the DHSS was the UK state welfare agency, and that at that time unemployment stood at high levels.

"Mention the Lord of the Rings just once more and I'll more than likely kill you" is the first line in the surprisingly emotional 'Dickie Davies' Eyes' (the title of which conflates Kim Carnes' 1980s ode to Bette Davis and legendary ITV sports presenter Dickie Davies). A line from the song "Brian Moore's Head Looks Uncannily Like London Planetarium" spawned a football fanzine devoted to Gillingham F.C..

A particularly celebrated couplet comes from the 1996 song "Eno Collaboration":-

"I know Bono and he knows Ono and she know's Eno's phone goes thus

'Brian's not home he's, at the North Pole, but if you'd like to leave a weird noise....'"  

A more recent example of this lyrical style is the line "When you're in Matlock Bath, you don't need Sylvia Plath" from the album Cammell Laird Social Club (2002).

Discography

Singles / EPs

• The Trumpton Riots (1986)
• Dickie Davies Eyes (1986)
• Let's Not (1990)
• No Regrets (1991)
• Eno Collaboration (1996)
• Look Dad No Tunes (1999)
• Editor's Recommendation (2001)
• Saucy Haulage Ballads (2003)

Albums

• Back in the DHSS (1985)
• Back Again in the DHSS (1987) (later re-released as ACD).
• MacIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt (1991)
• This Leaden Pall (1993)
• Some Call It Godcore (1995)
• Voyage to the Bottom Of The Road (1997)
• Four Lads Who Shook the Wirral (1998)
• Trouble Over Bridgwater (2000)
• Cammell Laird Social Club (2002)
• Achtung Bono (2005)

External links

• Half Man Half Biscuit's official website
• Half Man Half Biscuit at the BBC
• Spike Magazine's review of 2005 album Acthung Bono
• 2001 Guardian interview with Nigel Blackwell

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