The whole John Humphreys thing

"...but he is attracting some er, perhaps unlikely supporters...

~cue tune~

...yeah, if you can catch the lyrics, 'Most Unlikely Civil Liberties Defender Of All' there, by the band 'Billy Ruffian'. Well our correspondant Danny Savage is on the line. Does that sort of set the tone for this by-election, Danny...?"

Hearing Jon Humphreys read out the title of our latest record was an odd experience indeed. Mind you, hearing anyone talk about us always throws me a bit. Indeed, the last thing I tend to think about when writing a song or lyric is the critical reception/attention that it will receive, so when stuff does get heard and commented on, I always tend to find it an odd proposition. The idea of Mr. Humphreys talking (however briefly) about our song certainly never occurred to me as I sent the 50% joking, 50% serious text to Thom Ruffian whilst walking down Wilmslow Road one morning.

I’m paraphrasing here, but I think it was something like: “When are we going to write ‘The Most Unlikely Civil Liberties Defender Of All’ then? “I think that maybe I’ve been taking pills / ‘cos David Davis is acting like he’s John Stuart Mills””

As simple as that. Thom sent back part of what would become the 2nd verse and we went on from there.

Trying to get the key line to scan as I was walking along was slightly troublesome, and I tried several permutations to try and get the two main facts across – a) that Davis seems to be pro-civil liberties and b) that he really is the least likely chap that one would expect to do so. The words swapped position several times until I settled on what I was happiest with. Thom suggested the chorus be put to the music of the old, old Billy Ruffian song ‘Mixtape’. The words duly fitted. In time, due to lack of having any other suitable music available, we stuck the verse to the Mixtape verse, too.

When I wrote ‘Mixtape’ back in the Summer of ’05 as one band died and another began to be born, I never could ever have dreamt of it being heard by as many people as it has now been!

I’m glad I pushed ahead with the song. It seemed a bit silly to spent so much time on something that would be so ephemeral – there’s only another nine or ten days left before it entirely stops being relevant – but I thought that, with good luck on our side and a lack of any other big political stories, we might just get a fair bit of attention for it. At the worst I hoped for at least a couple of blog mentions. At best? Well, a phone-call from PM’s Eddie Mair to discuss the song and our own views on politics wouldn’t have gone amiss. But, y’know, John Humphreys is definitely the next best thing!

Where next from here, then? We certainly don’t have any intention of becoming a political group, for starters. The song was never meant to be political, merely being a song written from Davis’ own point of view. We’ve been tarred as Conservatives, Libertarians and, most confusingly, the progeny of Labour MPs. Not sure I understand that one. But the experience has been useful – writing a song with such a quick turnaround was a fascinating challenge, and Producer Paul really does deserve kudos for getting it ready so quickly. I’m not sure I’d like to try and compile a video in just one night again, though. But the whole experiment was definitely worth the effort. We’ve raised our profile exponentially and, keeping our fingers crossed, perhaps as we approach by-election day, we’ll get a bit more play out of it.

Oh, and just for the record – we're very much in line with Nick Clegg’s stance on this one, in that we agree with Davis’ stance on opposing 42 day detention without charge, but I can’t imagine that we’d agree with Davis on many other topics.

I also don't agree with the previous blog post that suggests the song is about the 'ridiculousness' of David Davis. As I said, this song is largely written from his point of view and, whilst there are some of our own thoughts and opinions in there (notably on the verse about the length of detention without charge in various other countries), I don't think we're really hitting any targets other than the Prime Minister, Kelvin McKenzie and The Establishment (i.e. those who would support '42 days') in general.

Just a shame I hadn't forseen the fact that David Icke would stand. That's a song in itself right there...