You Must Be Mad

Many of you will recall a sketch from The Fast Show called Jazz Club, where John Thompson, in a bowl haircut and a dodgy suit, would smoke woozy cigarettes and introduce the act with the word “Nice!” or “Great!” or…ah heck, here they all are:

I met John once, in a professional capacity. Back in the late 80s, around the time he was best known for being Fat Bob in Steve Coogan’s Paul Calf Video Diaries, he did a gig at our college, and I was charged with looking after him, making sure he got fed and watered, and then introducing him on stage. To this day, my Dad still refers to him as “Your mate…”.

Fewer of you, I suspect will recall the one-off Indie Club edition, this time hosted by Simon Day, who gave the featured band a thoroughly inaccurate intro:

In the late 1980s/early 1990s there were a lot of short-lived jingly jangly indie bands that I loved, and I’d count Bristol’s The Driscolls one of them.

They first came to my attention when my college buddy Keith became a little obsessed with Allie, a girl who said she was going out with the lead singer from the band.

I have no reason to doubt her, nor to question Keith’s taste, for she was a proper Indie chick of the time: bleach blond bobbed hair, bedecked in either paisley or polka dot outfits, Doc Martin boots. She used to come to the Indie Night I used to DJ, and I always sensed Keith’s seething rage that she would talk to me (asking for a certain record to be played, nothing more).

Anyway, here’s three tracks by the band that Allie’s boyfriend was in, all lifted from their eponymous 1989 six-track EP. All of these, but particularly the first one, would sit really sweetly in The Fast Show’s Indie Club

But stick with them, because I genuinely think that the third one is a lost late 80s Indie classic:

The Driscolls – Doctor Good and His Incredible Life Saving Soap

The Driscolls – Groovy Little Town

The Driscolls – You Must Be Mad

More soon. (Brian: you’ll love these.)