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Half Man Half Biscuit

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Half Man Half Biscuit tour dates 2024 - 2025

Half Man Half Biscuit is currently touring across 1 country and has 4 upcoming concerts.

Their next tour date is at hmv Empire in Coventry, after that they'll be at Holmfirth Picturedrome in Holmfirth.

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Upcoming concerts (4) See nearest concert

Holmfirth Picturedrome

The Leadmill

Past concerts

Boiler Shop

The Wulfrun at The Halls

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Recent tour reviews

Banging haven't seen the SWX so full.Great mixture of music banter backed with the lyrically genius humour of HMHB. Would recommend to anyone. The road trip and service station reports wasn't as long as usual. Some knobs in the crowd that are old enough to know how to respective other gig goers. Get them everywhere these days. Trip home was a nightmare, motorway closed every other junction

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As always HMHB did a great job - ferocious at times.

It is easy to make too much of the satire and deconstructionism, which is of course a major part of their appeal. That would though, be to overlook the fact that they are a very, very good rock band IE great musicians with great (if off kilter) tunes. On this occasion, having seen them many times before, that is what I enjoyed most of all: a great band playing good tunes, very well.

Support band needs a mention they lyrically follow in the tradition of HMHB. Themselves coming on to a Welsh classic set the mood perfectly. Good banter and varied set of old and newer tunes. Great finish with The Trumpton Riots. Encore included a great tribute to Pete Shelley. Top night

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Half Man Half Biscuit Tour Dates and Upcoming Concerts

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Half Man Half Biscuit

Half Man Half Biscuit are an English rock band, formed in 1984 in Birkenhead, Merseyside. Known for their satirical, sardonic, and sometimes surreal more...

• Apr 12 Fri Coventry, hmv Empire Half Man Half Biscuit View Tickets
• Jun 21 Fri Holmfirth Picturedrome Half Man Half Biscuit View Tickets

October 2024

• Oct 04 Fri Sheffield, Leadmill Half Man Half Biscuit View Tickets
• Mar 07 2025 Cardiff, Tramshed Half Man Half Biscuit View Tickets

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Biography - Half Man Half Biscuit

Half man half biscuit fan report: ratings and reviews, 1 reviews (ø 5.0), the full biscuit.

Forget about the half and half situation, this show was an entire pack of biscuits, with extra crumbs! Best night ever; can't wait to open the next packet!

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Any promoters interested in staging a HMHB gig, or for any other information regarding gigs, should now contact Pod (Mike Raven) at The Gig Cartel who now handle this sort of thing ( not this website).

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Half Man Half Biscuit

Half man half biscuit concert setlists & tour dates, half man half biscuit at boiler shop, newcastle upon tyne, england.

• The Rockford Files
• She's in Broadstairs
• Fuckin' 'Ell It's Fred Titmus
• Bob Wilson - Anchorman
• I'm Getting Buried In The Morning
• Renfield's Afoot
• We Gotta Get Out of This Place
• Awkward Sean
• When the Evening Sun Goes Down
• God Gave Us Life
• 1966 and All That
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Half Man Half Biscuit at Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton, England

• A Lilac Harry Quinn
• The Light at the End of the Tunnel (Is the Light of an Oncoming Train)
• Running Order Squabble Fest
• Irk the Purists
• It Makes the Room Look Bigger
• Evening of Swing (Has Been Cancelled)

Half Man Half Biscuit at SWX, Bristol, England

• Jarg Armani
• Token COVID Song
• Prag Vec at the Melkweg
• Letters Sent
• Lock Up Your Mountain Bikes
• When I Look At My Baby

Half Man Half Biscuit at Llangollen Town Hall, Llangollen, Wales

• Sealclubbing
• Bottleneck at Capel Curig
• Outbreak of Vitas Gerulaitis
• Monmore, Hare's Running
• 99% of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd
• Yipps (My Baby Got the)

Half Man Half Biscuit at Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Scotland

• There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
• 27 Yards of Dental Floss
• Petty Sessions
• Tending the Wrong Grave for 23 Years
• Time Flies By (When You're the Driver of a Train)
• Eno Collaboration

Half Man Half Biscuit at The Welly Club, Kingston upon Hull, England

• Bad Losers on Yahoo Chess
• Joy in Leeuwarden (We Are Ready)
• Look Dad No Tunes

Half Man Half Biscuit at Cambridge Junction, Cambridge, England

• The Bane of Constance
• Rock and Roll Is Full of Bad Wools
• The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman

Half Man Half Biscuit at John Peel Centre for Creative Arts, Stowmarket, England

• Ode to Joyce
• Swerving the Checkatrade
• The Best Things in Life
• For What Is Chatteris...

Half Man Half Biscuit at The Assembly, Royal Leamington Spa, England

• Westward Ho! - Massive Letdown
• In A Suffolk Ditch
• I Love You Because (You Look Like Jim Reeves)
• The Unfortunate Gwatkin
• King of Hi-Vis
• Knobheads on Quiz Shows
• Urge for Offal

Half Man Half Biscuit at Electric Ballroom, London, England

• What Made Colombia Famous
• Tommy Walsh's Eco House
• Big Man Up Front

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Most played songs

• The Trumpton Riots ( 188 )
• Fuckin' 'Ell It's Fred Titmus ( 174 )
• Everything's A.O.R. ( 158 )
• All I Want for Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit ( 157 )
• The Light at the End of the Tunnel (Is the Light of an Oncoming Train) ( 151 )

More Half Man Half Biscuit statistics

Attila the Stockbroker Crapsons Indignation Meeting Ian Prowse Repugnant Inebriation Frank Turner

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Artists covered

[traditional] 10cc ABBA The Beach Boys The Beatles Bee Gees Blondie Tim Buckley Buzzcocks Camper Van Beethoven Cher The Clash Leonard Cohen Cornershop The Crickets The Damned Dead Kennedys The Fall Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci Ellie Greenwich Albert Hammond James James Tommy James & the Shondells The Jesus and Mary Chain Daniel Johnston Joy Division Killing Joke The Leaves Jerry Lordan Magazine Barry Mann Matching Mole Odyssey The Only Ones Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark Thom Pace Pere Ubu Pink Floyd Pixies The Prefects Elvis Presley Ramones The Refreshments Kenny Rogers The Ruts Simon & Garfunkel Skids Blaine Smith Status Quo Stiff Little Fingers

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Gigs seen live by

423 people have seen Half Man Half Biscuit live.

FitBoySlob BigSimon k9045 PaulSymons ClareMeehan garyjevans MickE1979 ShauneeBoy JohnnyKwango Tubbaa Caspian317 SpockyLin JitterbugBoy TheOctaveDoctor Harry_Hill Paulctfc __AM wrax bigrichwood Jbet MotoMouse BlueBren sneakerdude40 rbrwr BigDom dm99 Speds McCol Jon4780 bobbyciccone Jones1608 The_Brief Jaguy leedivito GilesR Shorros johnjamesgordon Damo_ Claire_Bradford SAJFraser bigjohnd82 Nooboah Chanfan MemsPlease Thingwall williambriggs79 setlistkg andzzz kerryb Gallifreya

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Half man half biscuit tickets.

If Half Man Half Biscuit did not exist, it would be imperative to invent them. Since their formation nearly 30 years ago, their presence has been a necessity. In essence the vehicle for the observations, ramblings and creations of front-man Nigel Blackwell, they are a counterblast to the processes of modern life. Throughout changing times they have spanned the decades, released 13 full-length albums and dropped a thousand-and-one pop culture references; from BBC Radio's Charles Nove to former England cricketer Fred Titmus. Their approach to promoting their music is famously non-existent – a handful of UK gigs each year is normal. Even rarer are interviews of any kind. Blackwell himself states his biggest achievement, as "creating a situation for myself whereby I can get up of a morning and decide to go and tackle Bwlch Pen Barras on the bike, […] rather than report to a superior to await orders". Their existence is somehow outside of the modern world, yet also a reaction to it. Merely by continuing to release and perform, Half Man Half Biscuit serve a greater purpose – to rally against the crap that life throws up with a wry smile, and also to take joy in life's small and simple pleasures. HMHB are a truly genuine band, blessed with a magical capacity to make the most jaded of listeners fall back in love with music again. Witty and dry, sardonic yet never cynical, melodically infectious yet edgy sing along songs, these four lads who shook the Wirral are perhaps still to some extent an undiscovered national treasure.

Back in 1985, Half Man Half Biscuit sat comfortably at the top of the indie album chart.

This may not seem so much of an achievement, unless you take a look back at the other contenders in the chart at that time. Acts such as Depeche Mode, New Order and The Cult were all on the scene, and you could guarantee that none of them managed to hit the number one spot with an album that had been recorded in just a couple of days and for around £30.

That album was 'Back In The DHSS', it became an instant success after it was championed by the late John Peel, for whom they did a total of 12 sessions over the years. As soon as he heard the white label test pressing, he was smitten.

“('Back In The DHSS') came at a time when music in general was starting to get a little bit po-faced” - John Peel

With tracks such as 'I Hate Nerys Hughes' and 'I Love You Because (You Look Like Jim Reeves)', HMHB could never be considered as po-faced. Even though this was their debut recording, it went on to sell over 200,000 copies.

Since then, they have released a further 12 albums with Nigel Blackwell never taking the music business too seriously. According to Nigel, the reason he started writing songs, was due to the fact, that when he left school in Birkenhead, the only other option was to become a heroin addict.

With lyrics such as, “She’s the main man in the office in the city and she treats me like I’m just another lackey. But I can put a tennis racket up against my face and pretend that I am Kendo Nagasaki” nobody could dispute he chose the correct career path.

Their latest album 'Urge for Offal', sees more of Nigel’s surreal observations on everyday life. A few shining examples are 'Old age killed my teenage bride' and 'Baguette dilemma for the Booker Prize guy".

So grab your Joy Division Oven Gloves and don your Dukla Prague away kit, as The Biscuit are coming to town.

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And then a fan’s ashes were scattered on stage! My night out with Half Man Half Biscuit’s fanatical followers

They were kitchen-sink surrealists who sang about bats, bereavement and Subbuteo. Four decades on, the Wirral band have pop’s most maniacal fans – including our writer, who hits Holmfirth in his Dukla Prague away kit

O n an inky November night, Nigel, Neil, Karl and Carl amble on to the stage of a disused Yorkshire cinema to the strains of Neil Young’s My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue). Slumped in a chair with Covid fatigue, my nerves already jangled by a drive-by shouting en route, I burst into tears. I can scarcely believe this band exist.

The return of Half Man Half Biscuit , four lads who shook the Wirral with chugging indie-rock, is greeted ecstatically by those packed into the Holmfirth Picturedrome. Launching into a song about bats followed by one about bereavement, they neatly summarise the mood swings of the world in the preceding 20 months – and Biscuitmania erupts. It took me six hours to get here in the car, and it’s worth every minute.

Someone who travelled even further is Glaswegian John Ross, who came down from Scotland with a group of friends, including one, Francis, sadly no longer of this Earthly realm, his ashes ensconced in cellophane down John’s sock lest a bouncer query the fine white powder. A chance pre-gig meeting with lead singer Nigel Blackwell brings a fitting tribute to their fallen comrade, a fan of the band since 1987.

John takes up the story: “I went up to him and said, ‘Excuse me, Nigel, this is going to sound weird,’ and he replied: ‘It already does in that accent, mate.’ I explained the situation and he was brilliant. He spent about five minutes chatting to me about Francis.”

Halfway through the gig, Nigel retrieves the wrap from his top pocket and sprinkles the ashes on the stage as requested before dedicating Look Dad No Tunes to the departed fan. “I was absolutely elated,” says John. “I’d been expecting to spread his ashes on a beer-soaked floor. To have Nigel say lovely things about him, make some jokes and treat Francis’s ashes with the same care and respect that he would someone he knew well, was amazing. I wasn’t expecting the eulogy. That was way over and above what I’d hoped for.”

This emotional send-off is an example of how Half Man Half Biscuit – AKA Nigel Blackwell, Neil Crossley, Carl Henry and Karl Benson – have generated one of the most passionate fan communities of any British band. Apart from the occasional spin on BBC Radio 6 Music, they largely exist under the radar, which is how they like it. Born of Thatcher’s all-encompassing dole culture, their 1985 debut album Back in the DHSS was recorded for about £40. A lo-fi slice of kitchen-sink surrealism, it featured songs about the mundanity of everyday existence; a year later, the Trumpton Riots EP included a song about Subbuteo (All I Want for Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit). Publicity-shy even then, they turned down an appearance on Channel 4’s The Tube as it clashed with a Tranmere Rovers match, even refusing the offer of a helicopter as it would only have got them to Prenton Park at half-time.

With their star in the ascendant, championed by John Peel and with Dickie Davies Eyes topping the indie singles chart, Nigel sensationally split the band in 1986 to the dismay of their burgeoning fanbase. However, after a near four-year silence, the group were booked to appear at the 1990 Reading festival. Straight-faced, wearing shorts, they launched into a storming set of old songs and new, with one fan dangerously wielding a potted plant throughout.

They have played a handful of gigs every year since, and I have seen them numerous times, up to the first lockdown. In the depths of quarantine, I forged a plan to make up for lost time by never missing another Half Man gig. It would be a post-lockdown gift to myself: have a good time, all the time. The downside is that I live in London and they rarely stray south, adhering to the time-honoured mantra of “own bed, own bog”. The upside is that it’s the best two hours of the month, grinning through a thrilling rock show interspersed with deadpan humour from the enigmatic Nigel.

He rarely does interviews, doesn’t want the band to be photographed and still suffers from pre-gig nerves. He is more at ease cycling round Wirral or enjoying tea and toast in front of nostalgia channel Talking Pictures TV. As far removed from the music industry as it’s feasible for a musician to be, this is an approach that has yielded 15 wildly entertaining albums to date, all skewering societal mores through an absurdist lens in songs such as Rock and Roll Is Full of Bad Wools (about landfill indie bands on Soccer AM), Bottleneck at Capel Curig (about A-road congestion) and the self-explanatory Knobheads on Quiz Shows.

While early gigs were largely attended by football fans, it’s now a broad church, with a cosplay element creeping in. I myself am guilty of wearing a personalised Dukla Prague away kit, which enabled me to mingle with a gang of HMHB ultras in a Nottingham pub before their recent Rock City gig. The most visible proponent of this trend is retired GP John Burscough from Lincolnshire, who accidentally rediscovered the band at the 2008 Cornbury music festival.

“I thought, ‘Fucking hell, why have I not been on to this?’” he says. “I bought CSI: Ambleside off the merch table, listened to it all the way home and got hooked. I went to see them in Sheffield and thought, ‘People are dressing up for this. This is great, this is what I like. This is a gang, I can be their king.’”

Sixty gigs later, John now routinely comes as the titular character of King of Hi-Vis, a song that has only ever been played live on five occasions – and he was there for them all. I’ve spotted him at gigs but never realised that beneath his fluorescent tabard was an actual tour jacket with detachable sleeves, the name of a spoken word song that the band has not performed this century. He rounds off the combo with a pair of Joy Division Oven Gloves, a kitchen accessory inspired by the HMHB song of the same name. At the time of our conversation, it is hours away from its 132nd airing.

This and other stats can be found on The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project website, subtitled “220 pop songs picked over by pedants”, a resource run by Chris Rand from Cambridge, who is also present in the pub, in regulation Dukla Prague kit, sandwiching the Nottingham gig between Genesis at the O2 and Ipswich Town playing at home, presumably in a Venn diagram of one.

“We always get a bump in visitors to the site when there’s a new album,” says Chris, of Half Man’s latest LP, The Voltarol Years. “But this one was like nothing else – three or four times the traffic we’ve ever had. Extraordinary.” Much of the discussion has been about the heartbreaking penultimate track, Slipping the Escort, where Nigel takes his tongue out of his cheek to devastating effect on a song about an elderly couple confronting dementia.

While some fans relish the band’s outsider status (even though they regularly fill midsized venues and their last two albums reached the UK Top 40) others are indignant that Nigel doesn’t have a larger audience. Fan Stephen Blackmore says: “I’m frightened that, when they do finally pack it in, no one’s going to know who they were. Someone needs to make a documentary. There needs to be a lasting legacy.” John has more prosaic concerns: “My only worry is that he’ll be knocked off his bike on a country lane.”

Since becoming a full-time follower, I have noticed a distinct cross-generational aspect, with parents indoctrinating their offspring. Jonas Mackay, 17, went to the Rock City gig with his dad, Shane, who spent lockdown amassing the entire back catalogue and bombarding his family with it. “I genuinely think it’s something worth spreading the word about and trying to inculcate my children with,” Shane says. “Do they know how much people love and appreciate them?”

They do. Between toast and cycling, Nigel emails me thus: “The band are more than grateful that people come and watch us and especially those that go the extra mile. Although statistically some of those people may have killed or carried out some dark arts, they never seem to bring that personality out on the evenings when we’re playing, so all is well from our angle. Hats off to ’em.”

The Voltarol Years is out now, with a vinyl edition released in July. Half Man Half Biscuit play the Gala theatre, Durham, on 29 April.

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Live Review: Half Man Half Biscuit – Gala Theatre, Durham

When Yard Act came on the scene two years ago there were many comparisons doing the rounds. As is customary, they were compared to the Sleaford Mods and The Fall but there were those of us who immediately recognised their contempt for the archetypal English know-it-all as similar to Half Man Half Biscuit . Whereas Yard Act are happy to wax lyrical on abstract and political concepts: gentrification and ghetto fetishes being two examples, HMHB prefer to keep things personal.

Perhaps rejecting serious abstraction is what led Ricky Gervais to brandish HMHB as a novelty band on his XFM show in the early noughties. Nigel Blackwood (lyricist for HMHB) is the antithesis to David Byrne’s post-modern imperative: stop making sense. Instead he uses surrealist methods to attain clarity and make judgments of character. Blackwood doesn’t suffer the overload of modern life because he takes life one observation at a time. To use a Henry James phrase, he is a ‘benedictine to the actual’ with regards to the production of the band and Blackwood’s rationale world view. This is a rare thing in the world of pop music and so it was that I caught an eight hour coach from London to Newcastle. From Newcastle I caught the train to Durham and then walked through the picturesque city to Durham Gala.

Unsurprisingly the band were punctual and rolled through their punk catalogue from 8.30, as promised. Complaining about people and trains running late are recurring subjects for the band. By track two they were back to the eighties with breakthrough single: ‘Trumpton Riots’. Middle aged men pogoed and pointed to their favourite phrases.

The casual jouissance of the room could appear neutered to more pugnacious rockers but what good has getting topless and piercing ears ever done?

Rocking through their beloved oldies, gyrating in a Status Quo manner, the band dressed as Jeremy from Peep Show, more audience members knew the words back to front than didn’t. Even tracks from their latest album found new harmonies in the audience.

The evening reached a collaborative ecstasy with a chorus of seasoned punks singing the outro to ‘Oblong Of Dreams’. The last song on their new album; Blackwood muses on the death of a local resident: “I could never work out if he was heading for a food bank or a pharmacy, a field path or indecency, either way, he’s out of it now.” Drunk on empathy we howled along with him: “Clouds part, showtime, cowslips and celandine, wake up, Oblong of Dreams!”

It was an evening of strange metaphors and at times it was only the microphone that differentiated Blackwell from the audience’s recitals. 

Again and again he tried to trick his audience into turning around by saying he had seen someone famous. He pointed to a man next to me who once he had been singled out did in fact take off a mask that disguised him as someone else completely. I think he was wearing it for at least an hour and a half, through the sweat and singing. Was it because he was preempting the joke or because wearing a mask is typical for HMHB fans and makes fertile ground for Blackwell’s humour? We’ll never know.

The tomfoolery became too much as Blackwell stuffed the lines for crowd favourite ‘National Shite Day’. “I fucked that up didn’t I?” He mocked through the second verse as he still struggled to remember his words.

Audience members shouted out requests left right and from the seats above. Some floated unanswered and others Blackwell responded to: “Why don’t you come up here and do it? I can’t remember the words.”

Surprisingly the band performed The Ramones ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ as part of their encore. It felt unusual to hear the band deliver a song without mention of a specific street, television show or local character. Only the power chord riffing and distorted bass anchored it. For their finale they did an extended rendition of ‘Everytime a Bell Rings’, a track which laments a cyclist, in full lycra with dreams of opening up a deli. 

Then it was over. For two hours, with only a three minute exit from the stage before the encore, the band played. The bassist handed his set list to a fan near the front and they were gone.

In the pubs people swapped stories of where they had travelled from. I did well on the distance category but lost badly on the number of times I had seen them. This was my first. 

I got what I expected and what I expected was good. Now I’ll do what Blackwell never does and draw wide conclusions from a single event. In a time where collectivism and individualism dress up as one another and call themselves wellbeing and everyone acts like they’re nice but you know it can’t be true, it is comforting to remember there are still earthly bands like HMHB, who remind us just how easy it is to spot the dickheads from the good people. It’s really not difficult.

Find out more on Half Man Half Biscuit’s official website

Review by Patrick Malone

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