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Take the biscuit
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gig
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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.
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