In his second round-up, EWAN CAMERON picks excellent solo shows that deal with Scottishness, Englishness and race as highlights
Latest editorial
Take the biscuit
JAMES WALSH savours the genius of Britain’s greatest living songwriter
Half Man Half Biscuit in 2015
[Paul Hudson/CC] 
Fiery words from the Bard in Blackpool and Edinburgh, and Evidence Based Punk Rock from The Protest Family
MATTHEW HAWKINS is mesmerised by a performance that dissolves the line between audience and performer
MATTHEW SHARPE recommends the essays of a Renaissance politician that instruct and unnerve after 400 years
GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes the reissue of a seminal work of revolutionary theory that have genuine relevance in the current context
RON JACOBS rides shotgun with a member of Black Bloc on the wave of anti-capitalist protests of the 1990s and early 2000s
Half Man Half Biscuit
Electric Ballroom, London
20/1/2023
IN CAMDEN TOWN on a cold January night, a man down the front is crying and bellowing along to the closing track of a band’s sixteenth studio album: Oblong of Dreams, a paean to place and belonging worthy of Wordsworth.
Up on stage, Nigel Blackwell, Britain’s greatest living songwriter, is an unassuming type, his genius known only to a lucky few. Half Man Half Biscuit’s wonderful, warm and endearingly obsessive fan base are all here, packed like expectant sardines after drinking weak lager in a Camden boozer.
While many of their era have long since sunk into a morass of nostalgia tours, new tunes met with a rush to the bar, Nigel and the boys are more vital than ever.
More from this author
JAMES WALSH takes advantage of an evening of comedy snippets to pick out which clowns will make it in Edinburgh
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
JAMES WALSH applauds the observations of a new Chinese master of stand-up
