The story of
THE MUZZLE CLUB, TRIPWIRE, BENDY MONSTERS
1. ERIC PORKHAM SKY
After spending what seemed like a whole summer screeching into a tape recorder and knocking seven colours of shit out of Dom’s super Casio keyboard under the guise of numerous non-existent artists it was perhaps inevitable that one day Dom Bradshaw and Pat Hancock would throw caution to the wind and inflict their insanity on a wider audience.
During their final years at Beaver Hill Comprehensive School in Handsworth, Sheffield, they had spent many an hour recording songs at Dom’s mum’s house on the Badger Estate under the collective banner, Eric Porkham. These primitive recordings by acts such as Genghis Khan (a poor man’s James Brown, if such a thing is possible), archetypal hippie outfit Nine In The Atmosphere and Red Ken’s highly enthusiastic laments to his most favourite brand of ketchup would later lead to songs such as Liberace’s Balloon and Halcyon Days of Metal Mickey which would be a taster of what was to come.
“Well I almost died when Irene Handl turned up on This Is Your Life
While she stood and thought of something to say, Patricia Hodge just sat and cried
Well we held our breath cos she looked like death, to get her to the chair was gonna be tricky
It was a far, far cry from ’79 and the Halcyon Days of Metal Mickey”
Halcyon Days, Halcyon Days, Halcyon Days of Metal Mickey
The Eric Porkham cassette recording features over thirty songs and survives to this day along with the entire recordable output of yet another side project, Chisholm’s Jazz Band, affectionately known to those who got a little too close as CJB. The aforementioned were based around the unlikely concept of a collection of Beaver Hill remedials (namely Richard Chisholm, Trevor Smith and Graham Hirst) forming a band in their spare time and was basically an excuse for Pat and Dom to fuck about some more over the next five years or so. And great fun it was too!
The first CJB recording was a frantic version of Herbie Hancock’s Rock It and was followed by a plethora of riotously bad compositions such as Fire Engine, Hare On Fire You Cud Die In Hotel (inspired by a Chisholm scrawl stolen from his fourth year science book!), Right Nice Looking, 100% Daft, Surprise Party at Q’s and Wide Boy in Specs. The majority of these songs would feature Dom on guitar and keyboards with both Pat and Dom sharing the assumed vocals of Chiz & his new Sheffield Eagles supporting sidekick Alan Q.
The mid eighties would see Pat quickly forget his so-called teenage heavy metal fixation (Pat is the not-so-proud proud owner of two Aldo Nova LP’s) in favour of the bludgeoning indie music scene with bands such as The Fall, Stump, A Witness and the ever popular Half Man Half Biscuit becoming particular favourites. Dom meanwhile had escaped from his early eighties electro-pop hell-hole via a close shave with King and stadium rock-era Simple Minds to become an admirer of amongst others The Soup Dragons, Housemartins, Cud and The Pixies.
It was this exposure to up and coming bands on both a local and national level together with regular Friday and Saturday nights out around the pubs of Woodhouse and Handsworth with fellow cronies Jim Herring and Johnny Hanson which would lead to the formation of the mighty Muzzle Club….
2. BALD MEN SET THE PACE
Johnny Hanson, who in Rentaghost terms would often play Davenport to Pat and Dom’s Mumford and Claypole (first series aficionados) had been friends with Dom since their days at Brunswick Middle School and would prove to be particularly useful, despite no known musical abilities whatsoever, in the early days of the group. Johnny, who had been a Frankie Goes to Hollywood completist back at Beaver Hill but was particularly big on Spear of Destiny at the time, had a reputation for slightly eccentric behaviour and once famously had a shit upstairs on a bus back from Rotherham.
What’s more his parents had a garage which was used one drunken evening when his they were away to showcase, to an audience of three, a selection of songs from the Eric Porkham tape, lame satires in the vein of I Wanna Be Your Driving Instructor and a bizarre trilogy of John Cooper-Clark style pissed-up rants from the custodian of the house, namely Carpet Slippers, Steel City Blues and an unnamed ode to golf legend Nick Faldo.
Although the specially invited audience of three quickly tired of our efforts and retired to the living room to drink more crap Stones and watch a video of a bloke having sexual intercourse with a Shetland Pony, the performance had whet the appetite and whilst it is perhaps a little disturbing to learn that a recording of this momentous evening still exists, the suggestion of forming a band, if memory serves was only weeks away.
In the forthcoming weeks, discussions took place to establish the band’s line-up with only the inclusion of vocalist Pat and bass player Jim confirmed. The original intention was for Dom to play guitar with Johnny on keyboards with another cohort Andrew Brown on drums but these plans were scuppered when the imaginatively nicknamed Brownie, who had his own drum-kit and appeared an obvious choice refused to sign up due to artistic differences.
When it became apparent that the would-be drummer’s enormous dislike of indie music & fascination with all things Eric Delaney could not be overcome, the lads turned to another of their mates, Andrew Birch in their search for a drummer but despite his eagerness to join it soon became clear that his basic time-keeping left a lot to be desired. Having exhausted all other known lines of inquiry, Dom agreed to be drummer with Johnny emerging as an unlikely guitar hero.
With the classic Muzzle Club line-up now in place, practice sessions began on Thursday nights in Johnny’s parents garage on the Flockton Estate in Handsworth with initially Pat and Johnny sharing lyrical responsibilities.
The band’s name had been a topic of discussion for some time with both The Fizzy Vicars and Now Wash Your Hands Please (the name of The Bendy Monsters second demo years later) early favourites. It was eventually agreed that a straight forward voting process would be the best way of settling it once and for all with 22 possible names being drawn up by Pat, Johnny and Dom.
On reflection, probably only a quarter of the suggested names were ever going to be used but it was nonetheless something of a shock when The Muzzle Club, a meaningless name made up by Pat on holiday in Jersey with his parents years earlier was chosen. On the night, Pat’s preferred name The Egg Seventies was a hot favourite but trailed in seventh behind The Slightly Balding Messiahs, Puffa Puffa Rice (a defunct 70’s breakfast cereal and a name used years later by Pat and Dom), Elvis Jelly Party and John Charles and the Money Men.
Other names which fared less successfully on the night ranged from the plainly ridiculous Scottish Decency Legion, Bobar Daddies, Aiotolagh Gum-boots, Toboggan Farty and Boiled Cheese through to the localised Fargate Clipboard Killers and Killer Wibes (Wibes being a band term for cock-sure, mainly ginger children from the Wybourn Estate in Sheffield). Menstruating Shoelaces, Kamikaze Pigs, Trundlewheel X, Thirty Goal Bob (an old reference to Everton’s Bob Latchford’s late seventies goal-scoring exploits), The Subuteo Floodlights, Danny Dawson (a really dull kid from school and a skit on the band, Danny Wilson) and the outrageously named Cunta’s (made up by Pat at a very early age and before he knew the connotation) were all also rightly rejected.
The Muzzle Club’s early practices were focused on familiarising each member with their role and many of the early songs were written entirely by Pat with varying degrees of success. The first ever Bendy Monsters song, ITMA dates from June 1988 and was a tribute to the wartime radio comedy It’s That Man Again featuring Tommy Handley. In many ways, ITMA set the scene for later songs by centring on a theme that would not normally be identifiable to working class teenagers.
“Down on your knees and you’re listening to the ITMA sound
Better turn the volume up and get the word around
Cos this isn’t peacetime it’s 1942
And we’re a country at war and our secret weapon’s you know who
So come on Mr Handley, wipe away our frustration
Mr Hitler can’t wipe the smile off this nation”
Where’s my fucking ITMA?
By the time three quarters of the band, together with Birchy and Brownie left for a ten day trip to Lloret De Mar in September 1988, the band had around eight songs which would form the bulk of the set that they would perform at their debut gig the following year. In terms of direction, the Muzzle Club were determined not to become another poor man’s Smiths or U2 and began focusing their attention on media influenced subjects which is evident on the two best songs from this period, Anorexia and the evergreen, Sex With The Vicar.
Anorexia, which was never to be recorded in a proper format would nonetheless be a song which would remain in the band’s set-list for some time.
“You said you’d like to be, just like someone off TV
Like Lena Zavaroni, oh but now you are so thin and bony
Starving yourself is all you want to do
And everything she eats, ends up down toilet seats
Your stomach is all hollow and a thousand Kylie’s fit to follow
Anorexia is sexier than you”
None of the other songs written during the summer would ever be recorded or performed live because basically they were shit. Broccoli Brain was one such song that had been presented to the band by Pat at the first practice session along with ITMA and dealt with the horrors of being severely handicapped - like Joey Deacon say. A surviving tape from the garage shows that despite the odd highly individual and disturbing line, (bash, bash and crash, crash, wily hair and a thick moustache: saliva in my eyes, gobby soup and pudding pies etc) the song was something of a non starter musically and that the overall theme was perhaps one that should have been left to others.
Another half-hearted attempt from the summer of ‘88 was Test Match Afternoon which was really more of a poem than a song and played tribute to the Radio Three Test Match Special team. The song is perhaps only memorable for being probably the only song to name-check Farook Engineer but on balance deserves never to be heard again. Ever.
Two more songs which are the source of great embarrassment to Pat at least are What’s Your Problem (not the Blancmange song) and The City which were intended to herald a change of direction but which are both undeniably weak. The lyrics to the former are uncharacteristically dull and are nothing short of sixth form poetry standard save for the opening line, (there’s something in your kiss, there’s something in your piss) whilst The City has nothing to commend it whatsoever.
Sex With The Vicar on the other hand was a real ground breaker for The Muzzle Club and is arguably the band’s most famous composition. Written in June 1988, the song was lively, immediate and was perfect to finish the set with. Ask anybody who ever saw The Muzzle Club play live to name a song and Sex With The Vicar will almost certainly be mentioned. At live shows, the song would always begin with Pat questioning the audience and band; What Do We Want? - Sex! Who With? - The Vicar!! Amazing. Truly Amazing.
“Never on a Sunday I told the Vicar straight
He said come back to The Vicarage I said it’s getting late
I said I am Old Testament oh Vicar can’t you see
He said if you believe in Jesus Christ then you’ve believe in me”
Can you-you-you think of anything sicker
than sex-sex-sex with the Vic-vic-Vicar?”
Sex With The Vicar, for my money was something of a classic at the time and is one of one two songs to have been recorded by both The Muzzle Club and The Bendy Monsters.
On their return from the sunny paradise that is Lloret De Mar, regular practices continued up until Christmas with the band still seemingly unable to see that they were at their best when not taking themselves too seriously. Although the band had without doubt made rapid progress in their first six months, the shortcomings were there for all to see and the lack of any real identity is evident in their output from this period.
Four songs which typify the band’s lack of direction at this point are A Sicker Crime, Me And My Disease, If I Slit My Wrists and Pushing Forward which were written in response to a heated band pow-wow at Take Two Club when it was decided to again try to come up with more straight-forward material. The lack of individuality and plodding poor-man’s Wedding Present lyrics of A Sicker Crime and Me And My Disease would not prevent them being played live on at least three occasions and the mediocre Pushing Forward would later be pulled apart and re-emerge as the live favourite Doddy’s Dosh.
At this point, after numerous complaints from neighbours it was quite clear that the band had outstayed it’s welcome at Flockton Drive and so, the Muzzle Club found a new practice room at Woodhouse Community Centre which meant that they were able to call for a much needed pint at The Junction pub across the road afterwards.
Before they left however, The Muzzle Club were able to work on two songs which were much more like it, although the first, I Survived The Seventies, for some inexplicable reason was left by the wayside and was never performed live. This song was written at a time before it became fashionable to embrace the tackiness of seventies culture and was a decent lyrical snapshot of a TV childhood.
“Graeme Garden’s in a spin, great big sideys to his chin
Sex and drugs and booze galore, Elvis on the bathroom floor
Take me to another place, from Robert Dougal’s devil face
Kids ride around on Christmas bikes, returning home for Eric Sykes”
The other song, which no doubt contributed to the band’s swift exit from Johnny’s garage was very different to anything else the Muzzle Club ever produced. John Hill (1988), was a seven minute sprawling epic which saw the band in psychotic mood, energy pouring from every orifice. It was based upon the story of a local acid casualty who insisted that he was the son of God and then tried to sue parliament for £100 million when they said they didn’t believe him, while at the same time carrying out a seventy day hunger strike.
The song, which had occasionally been known to go on for longer than ten minutes had no real structure and was lyrically simplistic but captured the energy and enthusiasm of the band’s early days. A ropey recording from the garage still exists.
The Muzzle Club’s brief spell in an empty classroom at Woodhouse Community Centre gave them the opportunity to play as loudly as they wished and set the band thinking about booking their debut gig. The band now had enough material to be able to perform but began 1989 in style by writing three more songs that would feature in the forthcoming live shows.
All three of the new songs were celeb based and the first of them, Offa, dedicated to local MP David Blunkett’s guide-dog who at the time even had her own weekly column in The Sheffield Star, would make sporadic appearances over the next year and would be wheeled out when the band were allowed to play a set lasting longer than 35 minutes. Sue Cook’s Ring, a particular live favourite dealt with the unlikely event that the former Crimewatch and Children In Need presenter’s giant black ring which appeared at times to cover her entire hand might one day grow to such a size that it would eventually come to dominate the Earth.
“Sue Cook’s Ring takes over the world, it lives, it breathes, it makes decisions
It’s getting bigger everyday, oh no, oh no!
Sue Cook’s Ring takes over the world, it hides the hand, it hides the head
Now it’s blocking out the sun, oh god, oh god!”
Sue Cook’s Ring lives on a finger
The final song to be written before their live debut, the ingeniously titled Stratford Johns (named after the corpulent Z Cars actor) is remembered for Jim’s driving bass-line, had nothing to do with Stratford Johns whatsoever and was the first to tackle the re-occurring Muzzle Club/Bendy Monsters obsession with celebrity deaths.
At around this time, the band decided to put together a compilation of recordings of their work so far and send it to BBC Radio Sheffield’s Sunday night local music show The Hard Stuff with the intention of securing some air-time and sure enough the host Nick Reynolds, formerly of local outfit The Masons obliged by playing a track. His chosen track, ITMA, however was not a wise one considering the expletive chorus and Mr Reynolds was lucky to escape the wrath of his employees.
The Hard Stuff was a weekly show that played an excellent mixture of current alternative releases and tracks by both local bands and those playing in the area that particular week. Particular local favourites of the show were Pulp, The Midnight Choir, Chesterfield’s The Bland and Blammo! and it was the latter who The Muzzle Club approached to help play their first ever gig.
After a gig at Sheffield University’s Maze Bar featuring Dead By Friday and AC Temple, guitarist Johnny made himself known to Blammo’s Brummie front-man and mouthpiece Phil Watson who agreed to headline the pre-arranged gig at the renowned local music venue The Hallamshire Hotel, West Street on Monday 20 th March 1989.
Having secured the gig, the band returned to Woodhouse and began practising their set only to be given a piece of remarkable advice from an ex Beaver Hill inmate Wayne Downes who played with an unnamed band in the adjoining room that played Wipeout and specialised in crap Jam covers. Bassist Downsey, a loppy bastard of some note who’s only live experience had been an impromptu performance at the Community Centre on hearing of the Muzzle Club’s bold leap told them how they would freeze when we took the stage and delighted in telling them that he had been physically sick before his own stage debut.
A combination of disturbances from Woodhouse youth and ever changing practice times meant that the Community Centre even allowing for it’s close proximity to the pub had become something of a hindrance and so Johnny arranged a move to his dad’s works at Autoglass on Fitzwilliam Street. This was always considered a short-term measure but it was here where The Muzzle Club put the finishing touches to their set and a new song Trivia Terrace, which unashamedly managed to rip-off Duchess by The Stranglers and Waterloo Sunset with equal measure. The song was only played on a couple of occasions but the lyrics were half decent.
“An ageing performer sits in the corner but he hasn’t got much to say
My family upset me, my friends just forget me, I’m shaking my life away
Terry-Thomas, upper-class hero has fallen on hard times they said
But I don’t believe it, not old Terry, I thought he was already dead”
On the day of the gig, all four members met outside the pub in snowy conditions and re-adjourned in The Mail Coach (which became Scruffy Murphy’s and later, Muse) waiting for the pub to open and carefully folding their specially made eight-page lyric booklets for distribution at the gig. The booklet was to be the first of many and contained as well as lyrics to six songs an article taken from a 1949 edition of The Star about a disturbed pensioner who had killed himself with disinfectant on hearing of the death of ITMA star Tommy Handley, and invited would-be fans to exchange shite-talk, footy stickers and Cheapo Bobar Snax with the band.
The gig which cost £1 to get in and which had been publicised by a fly-posting campaign “One to tell your grandparents about” around the subways of Sheffield eventually kicked off at around 9pm when The Muzzle Club took the floor (there wasn’t a stage as such) in front of a mostly seated crowd of about forty. The crowd mainly consisted of employees of Jackson’s Supermarket where Pat worked at the time and a handful of Johnny’s dad’s work (including a bloke called Steve Food!) and drinking mates from The Brunswick in Woodhouse. The set-list for their very first gig was as follows:
1, Sue Cook’s Ring 2, ITMA 3, If I Slit My Wrists 4, Stratford Johns 5, Me And My Disease 6, John Hill 7, A Sicker Crime 8, Anorexia 9, Offa 10, Sex With The Vicar
Quite what the predominantly thirty/fortysomething crowd made of the band’s particularly enthusiastic renditions of songs such as Offa and John Hill and the sight of Pat, resplendent in brown long sleeve jumper eating Sugar Puffs off the beer stained floor of The Hallamshire’s dingy upstairs room complete with floral wallpaper and ripped seating is anyone’s guess.
One ill informed and uncomfortable Rod Stewart loving housewife drew predictable comparisons with The Smiths (Pat was no Morrissey and Johnny was certainly no Johnny Marr) while others applauded politely and muttered phrases like “It was certainly different”. Anyway the band enjoyed it and that was all that really mattered. They didn’t freeze, nor were they physically sick.
At just after ten, Blammo took the stage to a much thinned out crowd and played a set featuring such titles as Disco, Pat Nevin, Wanky Wayne and future single Sharon Wilson all featured on their Blammo Or Bust demo. Blammo, who would amazingly later land a record deal, tour arenas with The Beautiful South and change their name to Speedy were at the time a highly entertaining, ramshackle four piece slapstick combo featuring oddball ex Flexible Penguin’s member Paul Turner on keyboards, drummer Bronwyn Stone, singer Phil and larger than life itself, fag-smoking, flat capped guitarist Tracey Plant who would later of course join The Bendy Monsters.
Disappointingly, the night ended with a row between members of both bands about money which Blammo had intended to pocket despite bringing virtually nobody to the gig themselves and The Muzzle Club were left to search alone for their next gig.
3. THE JOKES ARE FREE
The Muzzle Club’s new immediate target was to secure more live dates but their second gig at The Enfield Arms on Broughton Lane in Sheffield’s East End was a complete wash out. The pub which did not hold a reputation for live music and was mainly frequented by steelworkers in the days before the Sheffield Arena, had played host to two bands from Darnall Music Factory, Crow and Skyfire, a few weeks earlier which had been well attended.
In their naiveity, the band called in at the pub and approached the landlord who agreed to book the band to play on Thursday 6 th April 1989. Before it’s renovation, the Enfield had a concert room to the rear and a decent stage decorated with silver foil and balloons whilst the left hand side sported a basic bar serving Stones Bitter.
In the lead up to the gig, the band took to the East End streets armed with a bucket of wallpaper paste and cleverly publicised the gig in places that absolutely no-one would think to look. Dom’s specially designed posters featured a map of the surrounding area photocopied from a Sheffield A-Z pointing out exactly where The Enfield was and a collection of baffling slogans such as “They make Chas n Dave look good”, “What a groovy band they are” and even “They make Donna Hartley look weedy”.
On the night of the gig, the band were hopeful of a handful of followers but in the event played to an audience consisting only of Dom’s brother Paul, his then girlfriend Louise and two others. The band made only one change to their Hallamshire set-list, replacing guide-dog anthem Offa with the newly composed Trivia Terrace, and were asked at one point to turn down after complaints that the noise was echoing in the tap room.
Undeterred by this experience the band, who by this time were practising at the council run Red Tape Studios complex on Shoreham Street decided that they were prepared to play almost anywhere and lined up a very ill-advised free Saturday night gig at The Olde Bradley Well, Main Road, Darnall on 29 th April 1989.
Before it’s re-incarnation as The Terminus Tavern in the early nineties, the pub had enjoyed quite a colourful reputation and was closed for almost two years after a man was beaten to death with a baseball bat. Even allowing for the Muzzle Club’s alarming naiveity, The Bradley Well experience was clearly a bold move for a band of very limited musical ability with only two gigs under it’s belt and a drummer who relied purely on a snare drum and cymbal to see him through.
The band took time to practice for their forthcoming gig and even returned to Johnny’s garage for one final practice that afternoon to run through a set which would see the introduction of Pushing Forward in place of the manic John Hill, which Darnall was clearly not yet ready for.
On their arrival, the band sheepishly set up their equipment in one corner of the room, enjoyed XTC’s The Mayor of Simpleton on the pub’s own video jukebox and agreed that the chorus to ITMA should be re-written in order to avoid the beginning of World War III. It had previously been agreed by the landlord that the band, who once again received no payment at all, would play two half hour sets and also organise a collection on behalf of the Hillsborough disaster victims.
At around 8.30pm, The Muzzle Club launched into their third gig in front of a highly bemused audience containing several old school associates who were lampooned by Pat throughout the act as they rattled through a set list containing low quality numbers such as A Sicker Crime and If I Slit My Wrists. When the first set had finished, the landlord stepped in and enquired, on hearing the huge lack of audience reaction, whether the band knew anything from the charts and on hearing their answer decided that a further half hour would be inadvisable.
Having escaped with their lives if not their dignity, the band made a quick exit to ponder their next move and embarked on one of their most successful and prolific writing sprees. Several songs would not be heard again as the band worked on new material in time for their next performance.
The first new song to emerge was Raggerty, which was a tribute to the obscure stick-like creature featured in old Rupert Bear annuals. The song which never quite made it into the Muzzle Club first XI suffered from rushed preparation and uninspired lyrics and in later times acquired a 30 second drunken squawking bit in the middle which on reflection must have sounded awful.
Raggerty would be followed by a number of songs that failed to make their way out of the practice room and are only remembered by band members with exclusive access to the Muzzle Club archive. Famegame, which dealt with the problems encountered by the tearaway offspring of the famous along with songs such as Ante Post Bets, Something Cynical and Where A Kick Should Be were all written during this period but were kicked into touch as the band strived to replace the weaker songs in their set in time for their return to The Hallamshire Hotel.
Another rejected song from was The Clitheroe Kid which concentrated on short-arse radio comedy star and eternal schoolboy Jimmy Clitheroe’s fall from fame.
“I dashed home at 6 o’ clock to see my favourite show”
On green settee, I slurped my tea with Jimmy Clitheroe
I saw you, I told you, that everybody cared
Then why are they axing me he cried
It’s the cleanest show, the cleanest show on air”
At this stage in their career it was agreed that in order to be able to secure gigs and gain more radio exposure, the band would need a demo tape and so, one Saturday in June 1989, they entered the dingy cellar studio on Greenhow Street, Walkley to make their debut recordings. Gabadon Studio’s were owned by the members of Sheffield progressive rock outfit, Haze who helped the band record their almost legendary Bald Men Set The Pace demo.
Bald Men Set The Pace, a slogan used in a Stuart Hall backed advertising campaign for hair restorer in tabloid newspapers at the time would feature two old songs, Sue Cook’s Ring, with the Crimewatch UK signature tune as an introduction and Sex With The Vicar, as well as two brand new tracks, Actor and Start To The Dog.
The latter, which successfully brought together some wonderfully inane lyrics, a nice nah-nah chorus and the bass-line from Scottish Rain by Jim-band The Silencers, (Cry Before Dawn were another) became an instantly recognisable live favourite and enjoyed a brief revival years later at the odd Bendy Monsters gig. The lyrics were knocked up during a Friday night practice session at Red Tape and are largely nonsensical.
“Felt like Alan Lake, lost without my doggy
I climbed into the pet shop, said they couldn’t help me
Fed him lots of protein, licked his lips with pleasure
The dog smokes Berkeley Red, fag-ends in his kennel”
Actor, despite some beautifully out of tune guitar work by Johnny was a popular song throughout the years that would also be revived and recorded again after a few lyrical enhancements by Tripwire in 1991. The song name-checks the actor, John McArdle who played Billy Corkhill in Brookside at the time and the old Chelsea and Hearts striker Eamon Bannon.
“When he was stranded in the classroom, he used to dream that he could be elsewhere
~And think of fame and fortune but his heart just wasn’t there
Young McArdle said “I’ll Show You”. I’ll become a household name
But John, he said “I want, I want”
I wanna be an actor
All members of the band were initially proud and impressed by their new recording and listened to the tape on their way home from Gabadon on Jim’s car stereo. The cassette cover featuring Stuart Hall himself, the lyrics to each song and a badly photocopied picture of the band would later be packaged and sold at gigs.
Two further songs would emerge before The Muzzle Club returned to the live scene and each would rank among the band’s best work, showing a marked improvement in their song-writing and fitting in well with the best of what had gone before.
Doddy’s Dosh, in many ways saw The Muzzle Club at their very best. Individual, satirical, lively and slightly risqué. The tune itself was stolen from Pushing Forward with completely new lyrics providing a commentary on the Ked Dodd ‘money in the attic’ trial of that year. Knotty Ash’s finest would become one of the band’s early heroes and the band on more than one occasion took to the stage to the strains of Happiness and Tears for Souvenirs. No early Muzzle Club performance would be quite complete without a obligatory multicoloured tickling stick.
“Tears for fears and tax arrears, the judge didn’t find it funny
With gold-plated tickling sticks, The Diddymen rake in the money
One of stars that helped the Tories win the last election
When they waved their cash in Doddy’s face he got a showbiz style erection
What a beautiful day for the Inland Revenue to come knocking on your door
He wished he had Benny Hill’s Kentucky Fried Chicken bag
Screaming “Gimme some more, Gimme some more”
Another media inspired song, Rampi’s Hole was written about a incident from the late seventies which Pat had followed with great interest. Alfredo Rampi was an Italian schoolboy who had fallen down a disused mine-shaft and died despite numerous attempts to save him and prompted a particularly insensitive song which featured the cries of young Alfredo (I’m down here mom, the sludge is all around me etc) which led to a rousing final chorus of Rampi sure has got his dream.
Sadly, no known recordings of these two songs exist.