These are busy times for Half Man Half Biscuit. An oddity of a band from Liverpool, they're a mongrel meld of punk, garage and indie rock, with a large smattering of cartoonish, cultish humour. John Peel has championed them for years, and their fans include Robbie Williams, Tracey Emin, Jarvis Cocker, Cerys Matthews. For a band notoriously light on work rate, low on ambition and unabashedly happy to do the absolute minimum necessary to keep the wolves from the door, this recent period has been more than merely busy. It has been mayhem - there have been schedules to adhere to, studio dates and at least two live gigs to accommodate, and voice-overs to record.
That is thanks to Mark Cooper, a "creative" at swanky ad agency Ogilvy and Mather. It is he who conceived the concept, and the voice, of the current BP ad. And the voice he chose was not that of Martin Clunes. Nor John Peel, nor Suggs, Jo Whiley, Johnny Vaughan, nor anyone else from the ranks of creatives' faves. The deadpan and slightly morose voice-over on one of the year's slickest and most expensive TV ads is that of Nigel Blackwell, the singer out of Half Man Half Biscuit.
"It appealed to my sense of the absurd," says Blackwell, a strapping 36-year-old who is more Jaap Stam these days than the crusty punk of yore. Absurdity is of paramount importance to chaps such as Nigel, one of thousands born into a new strand in the early 60s, the upper working class. Young newlyweds all over the UK were encouraged to buy starter homes on large estates - think Thelma and Bob in The Likely Lads - and their children, far from being groomed for an apprenticeship in a time-served trade, were more often encouraged to read and take school seriously. Which did not exclude television - their young were exposed to the wiles of Monty Python and The Goodies. Blackwell grew up in the Holmlands area of Birkenhead, a vast development of "bought" semis that is still growing exponentially today. And here he is voicing an advert for BP. "It's one of those where it's so easy not to do it that you end up quite liking the perversity of the idea," says Blackwell.
So perverse is it, in fact, that it sits easily amid a career that has embraced spats with Dean Friedman (Friedman heard HMHB had written a song about him; he assumed it would be a tribute - it was anything but); emergency birch-whittling on Lindisfarne (got cut off by the tide, drummer's sticks marooned, asked handy nearby fisherman if he'd whittle a set from a bit of driftwood); a gig at the redundancy party for Telford Inland Revenue (big wedge); and a back-list with titles such as The Trumpton Riots EP, Dickie Davies Eyes, Back In The DHSS and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road. Indeed, the Biscuit have a new CD out now, called Editor's Recommendation. This is the cause of the recent chaos - a Biscuit release is a rare event, and everyone from the Mean Fiddler to Frank Skinner wants to book the band.
Except that there is no band. Not as such. Half Man Half Biscuit is Nigel Blackwell. Other people play such things as drums and bass guitars, but the notion of HMHB as a band, as a unit that might be required to be "tight" on stage, is risible. This band is Blackwell plus pals. Formed in a bedsit shortly after Margaret Thatcher's re-election in 1983, HMHB burst on to the indie music scene in 1985 with their debut album, Back In The DHSS. Blackwell's witty lyrics and bizarre observations on life were delivered from the TV-addled perspective of a long-haul doleite.
"Leaving school at 15, I could either have become a heroin addict - de rigueur around here at that time - or amused myself in some other way. This, I suppose, was that 'other way' - writing songs that reflected my lifestyle. That is to say, too much time on my hands, watch large amounts of daytime TV and think up stupid incidents with K-list personalities. These incidents never happened, I should add. I have never met Fred Titmus, for example, let alone greeted him in such an overfamiliar way."
"Fiery Yorkshire Pace Legend" Fred Titmus is one of a gallery of victims lampooned on DHSS, in the song Fuckin' Hell! It's Fred Titmus! Minor celebrities and rank nonentities are feted with equal bravura. Targets include Liver Bird Nerys Hughes, snooker commentator Len Ganley and Bob Todd (the gurning baldie whose head Benny Hill was given to slapping). Nigel rhymed "darling sugar honey" with "Echo and the Bunny" (men). He wrote songs about Dukla Prague's away kit, and people loved it. By mid-1986, the album had sold more than 100,000 copies and the Biscuit were turning down an appearance at the Reading Festival.
Their record label then, as now, is Probe Plus - as ramshackle and free-spirited an independent as one could find anywhere. Probe operates from the Liverpool home of its proprietor, Geoff Davies, whose rambling Sefton Park manse is cluttered with Biscuit ephemera. Some of HMHB's more celebrated merchandise includes collectors' item teatowels (Some Call It Godcore tour - six dates in eight weeks) and the almost unobtainable McIntyre, Treadmore & Davitt mugs. They are an unusual pop group. Blackwell is a most unusual fellow.
Davies vividly remembers him coming into the Probe shop with his demo tape. "I looked at the back of the cassette and it was full of things like The Len Ganley Stance and Venus In Flares. I said to him: 'If the songs are half as good as the titles, we'll do it.' I was listening to the tape with my partner that night as we drove home and neither of us could believe what we were hearing. The lyrics and the subjects were astonishing, and probably actionable - but I called Nige the next day to say that we'd do an album."
To Davies's astonishment, Blackwell turned up on his doorstep a couple of days later with the finished master tapes of the album. "He just said to me: 'This is it. I've done it. That'll be £40, please.'"
"I might've told him it was 40," concedes Blackwell, "but I think it was more like 30. We recorded at Vulcan Studios. They'd just got in this eight-track studio upstairs and Half Man Half Biscuit were the guinea pigs. We went in. We did it. We put it out."
Thirty of our English pounds - for an album that has sold close on 200,000 copies - represents pretty reasonable value for money. And that cheapo, hissing recording provided John Peel with his first taste of the Biscuit. "I remember a white-label test pressing of their first album turning up," recalls Peel. He's talking in between takes, recording a radio show for Germany. "I had no idea who it was. I put it on and was immediately smitten. It came at a time when music in general was starting to get a little bit po-faced. Bands were all rather grave and taking themselves far too seriously, so Nigel was such a tonic. His song titles and his observations were, and still are, just spot on. I always thought it was a shame that punk never had its own Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and, while Nigel clearly wasn't that, he was there in spirit. I couldn't stop playing it."
Peel invited the band to Maida Vale to record a session for his show. It was HMHB's first experience of a real studio and professional producers and engineers. But in spite of their insistence on "drying up some of those sibilants", the session was hugely successful for both Radio 1 and the band.
It was an epochal event, but Blackwell remembers the trip to "that London" for different reasons: "We had to stay in quite a nice, well-appointed hotel. We were tired and hungry and asked this well-groomed lady if she could perhaps fix us up with a pot of tea and a slice of bara brith. She replied: 'I can't possibly do that. I'm Hannah Gordon.' " Blackwell smiles at the recollection.
The Hannah Gordon tapes were broadcast on Peel's show in October 1985. Somewhat to Blackwell's consternation, the session had the effect of launching the band nationally. Back In The DHSS sat at the top of the independent chart (during an era that heralded releases from New Order, Depeche Mode, The Cult, Prefab Sprout and Bauhaus) until Christmas and beyond. Four lads who shook the Wirral morphed overnight into "The Biscuit". They had fans.
"Yes, we started to 'gig', I suppose - although we never toured," says Blackwell. "I always like to get back home afterwards, no matter how far away the venue. Own bog, own bed - you can't ask for more than that, in my opinion."
He's not being flippant, either. That remark is indicative of Blackwell's take on the music business, a mixture of wilful and infuriating obstinacy shackled to a canny instinct for what people want and what he can get away with. He unfailingly picks the right platforms for exposing his band's talents. Thus he would turn down a spotlight feature on an 80s retrospective lest he find HMHB juxtaposed with Fiction Factory and Blue Zoo, yet he would cheerfully accept Libby Purves's invitation to appear on Radio 4's Midweek: "Fellow guests included a then fresh-faced David Jason and the president of the British Hedgehog Society. I felt mildly perverted, to be honest."
The Biscuit followed Back In The DHSS with the utterly marvellous Trumpton Riots EP and another album, Back Again In The DHSS (those Peel tapes, more or less). They began to accept gigs on the basis of a) oddness of venue, b) easiness to reach, c) comparative docility of townfolk and d) loot on offer. Their travels took them to some strange locations.
"We did one particular show that was organised by Joan Collins' daughter, Tara, for a charity I quite like. Actually, that's not true. Our appearance came down to the fact that Tara Newley was putting on a festival, full stop. I couldn't resist it. Other participants included Steeleye Span and It Bites. Quite unmissable. It was in a field near Bridgwater - a very nice day all round, really." And inspiration, perhaps, for the later album Trouble Over Bridgwater. For a band who would cheerfully confess to being awkward - they turned down an appearance on Channel 4's The Tube because it clashed with a Friday night football match at Prenton Park - they managed to cover some miles. Although they often preferred to gig in places such as Buxton, Hebden Bridge, Chichester and Durham to "circuit" clubs in the major tenderloins, large crowds gathered wherever they played.
For anybody who has never attended a Half Man Half Biscuit concert, these events are a near-religious experience. It's like going to one of those churches where everybody claps and smiles and sings along. At a Biscuit gig, everybody in the crowd knows every word to every song. They join in, right from the start, and sing along joyously. There is always a gaggle of bespectacled 33-year-olds huddled just to the side of the stage. One senses that they turn up to every show within a 56-mile drive in the avid hope that Nigel will one day forget a word. They're not unlike the quiet lad who works at Championship Vinyl, the shop in High Fidelity. They occasionally nod or shake their heads, half in admiration, half thwarted, when he gets through a tricky bit intact. These chaps - they're always men, always mild and slightly shy - are the spirit of the Biscuit fan. One senses also that they've driven to the gig at a nice, steady pace and they may well go mad and have a curry on the way home.
Biscuit fans are not natural born groovers, but the band's clash of punk chords and raw bass lends itself wonderfully to the Biscuit Chug. This involves fans standing on their tiptoes - or the very balls of their feet, at least - and bouncing on the spot for long periods of time. Not too much effort required, and absolutely anybody can pull it off.
More than anything, however, it is the sheer wit and the accuracy of Blackwell's observations and lyrics that is the glue that binds the Biscuit fraternity - and there is, of course, also something in the band's can't-be-arsed attitude that endears them to fans such as Shaun Ryder. Ryder has never truly acknowledged it, but his songs are striated with Biscuit influences, from mentions of Zippy out of Rainbow to homages to Netto. Maybe the Biscuit track 24-Hour Garage People is a crafty riposte to Happy Mondays? "No," says Nigel, "it's about rude staff in all-night petrol stations. The way they roll their eyes at the ceiling if all you want is a Scotch egg."
The band are lazy in the best sense, and utterly unwilling to make sensible career moves. They have never signed a contract with Probe Plus, a fact that has encouraged many bigger record labels to launch takeover attempts. Yet none has ever tempted Nigel away from Probe, whose symbiosis with Half Man Half Biscuit has transcended goth, acid house, indie dance, grunge, techno, jungle, garage and several visits from the bailiffs.
Charlie Galloway from Castle Records recalls the weekend in 1999 when he thought he'd tempted Blackwell to sign for a considerable sum: "We'd brought him to London and were due to meet at The Columbia [famous rock 'n 'roll hotel by Hyde Park] for talks. When we got there, there was a note from Nigel. It said: 'I feel a little queasy and have gone for a walk. If it's not too much trouble, can we meet on the bench by Peter Pan's statue?' "
In the park, they'd had a good chat about Millwall FC, but no deal ensued and Blackwell was so distressed at the thought of wasting Castle's time that he offered to reimburse the train fare. Blackwell says that he has come to love the way that band and label complement and reflect each other.
And Probe never, ever tries to make HMHB do anything they don't feel comfortable with. There is seldom much in the way of a publicity campaign accompanying a new release. This was the first time Blackwell had had his photograph taken in 10 years: "It's the wrong attitude, I know, but the less your photo is in the paper, the less chance you have of being apprehended in Primark and asked when you're going to write a song about Jeremy Beadle."
The man who lists Wagner, Thomas Hardy, a strident country walk and football hooligan books among his pleasures is keener to talk about the HMHB tribute band from Sunderland, It Ain't Half Man, Mum, than he is to discuss the new record. There's a track on it called New York Skiffle that equates the Andy Warhol heroin set with a gang of Birkenhead smackheads. The chorus goes: "Do you rob your brother's Giro, do you talk a load of shite/Does your heroin lose its glamour on the washboard overnight?"
Clever, huh? But he's not about to talk about it.
"It's just a boring thing of being reluctant to pontificate in a narcissistic way about songs that are clearly self-explanatory. If you don't know who Bob Wilson is, I could, perhaps, elaborate, but other than that..." Blackwell is referring to the standout song on Editor's Recommendation, called Bob Wilson - Anchorman. John Peel has spent the morning trying to explain to his German listeners why the ex-Arsenal goalkeeper is a TV icon in this country. He gave up. Peel doesn't really know why he even tried because, ultimately, he's found over the years that Biscuit songs have a way of making their point, anyway.
Blackwell, who sponsors an Arctic fox at Chester Zoo, is unromantic about his idiosyncratic band. Asked if he enjoys what he does for a living, he's unequivocal: "Enjoy it? Good God, no! One lucrative return on the Fixed Odds and I'm off!"
Make Mine a Half: Selected lyrics
'A million housewives every day/ pick up a tin of beans and say:/ "What an amazing example of synchronisation"'
From The Best Things In Life, on Back Again In The DHSS LP.
'She's the main man in the office/ and she treats me like a lackey/ But I can put a tennis racket up against my face/ and pretend I'm Kendo Nagasaki'
From Everything's AOR, on McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt CD.
'Never trust a crown green bowler/ under the age of 30'
From Improv Workshop Mimeshow Gobshite, on This Leaden Pall CD.
'Opinionated weather forecasters telling me it's going to be a miserable day./ Miserable to who?/ I quite like a bit of drizzle,/ so stick to the facts'
From A Country Practice, on Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral.
'Lord I've tried the best I can/ I've asked everybody in Kazakhstan/ but I still don't understand/ - Bob Wilson, anchorman./ I've been to Kent, Gwent and Senegal/ I've been to look for Jim Rosenthal/ found him on his knees by the Wailing Wall/ crying Bob Wilson, anchorman'
From Bob Wilson - Anchorman, on Editor's Recommendation.