HALF Man Half Biscuit. Nigel! The other blokes! Mersey legends to be sure. To celebrate the boys making their way up the M6 to play Blackpool tonight, here’s The Comedy Blog’s first pointless random list – The Unofficial and By No Means Definitive Top HMHB Moments:

10. Hair Like Brian May Blues
From the Eno Collaboration EP

Not one of their best known, or even best, but worth it for the opening line “woke up this morning about 11 with hair like Brian May, I’m supposed to be the hardest man on the estate”.

9. When the Evening Sun Goes Down
From the album Cammell Laird Social Club

A fan favourite and not without good reason: “I shout all my obscenities from steeples, but please don’t label me a madman. I’m off to see the Bootleg Beatles, as the bootleg Mark Chapman.”

8. I Went to a Wedding
From Saucy Haulage Ballads

After recently being at the mercy of a function room DJ, this one warranted inclusion. The fact that Saucy Haulage Ballads could be the best album title of all time also deserves kudos.
“The DJ adhered to the rule of occasion: Dancing Queen, Shoop Shoop Song, You're the One that I Want – he knew his trade well I could see.” Also points for the Shania Twain inspired wedding reception chat-up kiss-off of: “So you're Brad Friedel? I'm mildly impressed”. (He’s a goalkeeper apparently).

7. If I Had Possession of Pancake Day
From Cammell Laird Social Club

Another classic: “Give a philosophy student a glass of limeade, and he will say “is this a glass of limeade? And if so, why is it a glass of limeade?” And after a while, he’ll die of thirst.”

6. The Ballad of Climie Fisher
From Trouble Over Bridgewater

The break up and bitter fall out of the ‘80s one hit wonders went further than any of us could have imagined, the Biscuits reveal. Climie went into the gravel trade, apparently - yet to truly appreciate the magnitude of this betrayal, the listener learns that Fisher hates gravel. And shale. It goes right through him. It will all end in tears. And possible criminal charges.

5 Lock Up Your Mountain Bikes
From Look Dad No Tunes

To the tune of She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain, imagine instead; “There is surely nothing worse than washing sieves. There is surely nothing worse than washing sieves. With the possible exception of being Garth Crooks, there is surely nothing worse than washing sieves.”

4. Tending the Wrong Grave for 23 Years
From Saucy Haulage Ballads

From the “you shouldn’t laugh but” files, a heartfelt lament from a character who finds out he has, indeed, been tending the wrong grave for 23 years.
“Curse those in charge of plots, curse these forget-me-nots, I've been sharing my inner-most thoughts with an Edward McRae.
“I'm inconsolable and at times uncontrollable, but she wouldn't know 'cos she's two hundred metres away.”

3. Surging out of Convalescence
From Achtung Bono

Despite the Biscuit’s most recent album containing such anthems as Joy Division Oven Gloves and the Libertines inspired Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo, lyrically, Surging Out of Convalescence takes the cake. It has it all – starting out with an impassioned rant about the unrealistic portrayal of darts matches in soaps, moving on to scorn “is your child hyperactive, or is he perhaps a tw*t”, and climaxing with the joyously ridiculous ponderment: “Next Ash Wednesday I might strive to lick my elbow – strive in vain, for they say few succeed.”

2. 24 Hour Garage People
From Trouble Over Bridgewater

A song about going to the all night garage, taking a dislike to the attendant’s unhelpful demeanour, and deliberately winding him up by making him get you more stuff from all over the shop. “You curse my soul ‘cos I don’t want petrol/ I only came in for a tube of Pringles - sour cream and chive”.

1. Paintball’s Coming Home
From Voyage to the Bottom of the Road

A song so on the money they even recorded a second version to update the scorn contained within, Paintball’s Coming Home is without doubt one of HMHB’s finest moments – a bitter lament to the cliched smug couple in your life everyone loves to hate, to the tune of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands, no less. Highlights of the original version include “They go ten pin bowling after work, they're getting married on a Carribean beach”; “They've got a German shephard dog called Prince, the one called Sheba died”; and “They've got nothing but total respect for Annie Lennox”. Genius? Very possibly.

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