Whatever Happened To The Likely Pads?
It’s no rest for the wicket, as Stuart Clark gets bowled over by the DUCKWORTH LEWIS METHOD. Musical odd-couple Neil Hannon and Thomas Walsh explain why they decided to record a musical homage to cricket and talk about hanging out with Blur’s Damon Albarn, the Governor of the Bank of England and Sir Tim Rice.
Stuart Clark, 10 Aug 2009
“It’s like waking up in a parallel universe. There were four reviews this morning – The Independent, The Times, The Guardian and The Sun – and they all loved it. That never happened to The Divine Comedy!”
Neil Hannon and his Duckworth Lewis Method partner Thomas Walsh are celebrating the latest five out of fives for their eponymous album with a pot of tea and fruit scones all round (albeit in Mr. Hannon’s case with all those “yucky sultanas” removed).
Highly appropriate, given that its 12 tracks all address the subject of cricket.
“There’s quite a rich tradition of cricketers drinking too much and taking drugs – Ian Botham and Phil Tufnell being two that readily spring to mind – but there’s still a lot of drinking tea, eating cakes and other activities which to the tie and blazer brigade embody Englishness,” Neil resumes. “I did an interview with Q recently where they went down the ‘cricket is the new rock ‘n’ roll’ route, but it’s not very rock ‘n’ roll in the MCC pavilion at Lords!”
Where himself and Thomas recently had dinner with – cue shameless rock star namedropping – “Sir Tim Rice, Michael Atherton who captained England in a record 54 Test matches, current England spin-bowler Graeme Swann, Christopher Martin-Jenkins who’s the Jimmy Magee of cricket commentary, the Editor and Sports Editor of The Times, the former Chairman of the BBC, Lord Rees-Mogg, Frank Skinner, the screenwriter Ronald Harwood who’s done things like Australia, and Mervyn King, the Head of the Bank of England. Not rock ‘n’ roll perhaps, but bloody surreal!.”
Has anything ever matched that in the weirdness stakes?
“It’s probably on a par with the time I went to a birthday party for Andy Ross, the Food Records boss. All the usual suspects were there including Graham Coxon, who was fulfilling his role at the time by lying in oblivion in the corner, and Damon Albarn who came over, clenched me and… I tell you what, let’s do this as a little one-scene play.
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