Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends

Cleavies Fish Counter #22

admin — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 16:56:22 +0000

Happy Easter fish-heads, if that’s not too much of a contradiction of terms. Sorry not to have troubled you about the price of fish for a week or two, but I took boy George [not Boy George] and boy Jakes skiing for the former’s 21st. When I say skiing, that’s what they did. I came down the mountain more like a cross between a three toed arctic tree sloth and a glacier, and all the more dangerous for it. Still, no broken bones, and back in Port Isaac ready for Easter.

We’ve probably all but forgotten it’s true meaning, or so we’re told. Just like dear old Christmas when, lest we forget, we celebrate the day when the baby Jesus came down somebody’s chimney, at Easter we simply stuff ourselves with chocolate and tell jokes like the ones that end with the punchline ‘I can see your house from here’, or ‘What a bloody way to spend Easter’. Don’t ask, but they raise an annual titter for those of us with nothing newer to tell.

They were, of course, far more religious a thousand or so years ago, and naughty jokes like those would have had you horribly tortured with spiky bits of metal and molten lead and the like, and your entire village burnt to the ground and your family massacred. And just to make it worst, this would be done in front of others for public entertainment. Well, I don’t know about you fish-heads, but think of the humiliation, eh? That would probably have done for me, way before the debilitating effects of being hung, drawn and quartered took full effect, ‘The molten lead up the jacksie was pretty bad, but the embarrassment….can you imagine how I felt?’

With all these lurid images of medieval justice flitting in and out of my mind that we descended a couple of weeks ago on Hastings. It has apparently not rained in Hastings since William the Bastard [a much better epithet than ‘the Conqueror’ don’t you think?] stuffed it up poor old Harold the second, who was tired out anyway after a fortnight’s walking up in the northern hills.

Now, you may be asking yourselves that as William was from Normandy in what is now France, why history does not remember him as William the French Bastard? Well, of course apart from the fact that it might upset that oversensitive malignant dwarf Sarcozy, William and the Normans were of Norse origin.

Somehow, it’s all rather soothing to reflect that the French have never conquered us. Isn’t it re-assuring that our ancestors were butchered by psychopaths of Viking origin, not French ones? It helps me sleep at night, I can tell you

Anyway, Hastings is drier than the Atacama desert, and al fresco local events are de rigeur, my dears.

So how come it p****d down on the night, eh?

We had a cracking night there though, and a lovely crowd of music lovers came along and joined in the fun. We’d brought a nice bucket of the finest Cornish water [not the Camelford stuff, obviously] to auction off, just to try and make a bit extra from the trip, but it got watered down with the rain and we had to give up on the idea. Another time maybe.
So, happy Easter to all you fish-heads. Stuff your faces with choccy, have a nice roast lamb dinner with your folks, and try not to run over too many bunnies in your four by twos or whatever they’re called.

Dreckly dears!

The Warbling Walrus of lurve.

Free Port Isaac Summer Gigs in 2012

admin — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:27:35 +0000

I’m sorry to say that we appear to have been swamped by our own success. With a heavy heart, we’ve had to reluctantly take the decision to cut the number of free gigs we do down on the Platt this year, simply because the lack of beach means there’s not enough room when the tides are high to accommodate two or more thousand people.

Short of auditioning King Canute for the group, to hold back the Atlantic while we sing, we’re a bit between a rock and a hard place…

It manifests itself in two ways –

When the tide is right up at around six, we can’t set ourselves up because so many people are already on the Platt and it’s impossible to position our equipment. We can’t set up any earlier because we’re all working in our ‘proper’ jobs! By the time we’re due to start singing at eight bells, we can hardly get through the crowds to our ‘stage’, and the crush is ridiculous.

When the tide is still coming in and reaches it’s highest point during a performance, say at eight thirty or nine o’clock, the audience who have been watching from the beach behind us have to squeeze sardine like up onto the Platt and slipway. It’s become quite impossible, and save a generous benefactor building us a coliseum with similar harbour views and ambience, we have had to become the world’s first tidal buoy band!

I can’t remember the last summer when we didn’t spend each and every Friday evening in Port Isaac singing down by the harbour. It must be fifteen or more years, and has become part of the Fisherman’s Friends DNA. We know that it’s an important part of many visitor’s holidays, and a weekly social for lots of locals. In many ways the music has become almost incidental to the gathering as a whole.

Those of you who have been to one of our open air gigs will be familiar with our dilemma and I know you’ll understand our decision, which has been taken with great reluctance and sadness.

By announcing the dates of this year’s free Platt gigs as early as this, we hope to minimise any inconvenience to you all and hopefully save you any wasted journeys.

So here are the dates when, weather permitting, we’ll be up to giving you all a good, hard shantying!

Hope to see you all there!

June 2012
01/06/12 – Port Isaac Platt
15/06/12 – Port Isaac Platt
29/06/12 – Port Isaac Platt

July 2012
13/07/12 – Port Isaac Platt
27/07/12 – Port Isaac Platt

August 2012
10/08/12 – Port Isaac Platt
17/08/12 – Port Isaac Platt
31/08/12 – Port Isaac Platt

September 2012
07/09/12 – Port Isaac Platt

Cleavies Fish Counter #21

admin — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:20:21 +0000

Hello dears. Thought I’d write a little yarn to muse the price of fish with you all. Got back safe and sound Monday afternoon in the new improved, pimped-up, dark windowed, ‘my god that looks like a brothel on wheels’ fish van, and very comfy it is too. Well, it should be for £375 [ including road tax]!

We did 1,300 miles, visited some great towns to which most of us had never been before, and re-visited some towns who had foolishly welcomed us back with open arms. No accounting for taste…

It was very much our version of sex and drugs and rock and roll, the wildly Bohemian and hedonistic second leg of the winter tour. Considering that it has taken us since the first day of December to get over the last speaks volumes.

Experienced now in the art of tour management, we went properly equipped in the fish van nouveau with, wait for it, a built in telly and DVD player. We had the entire collection of Dad’s Army DVDs, nine whole series plus the Christmas specials. So often did we sing along to the theme tune that we are thinking of adding ‘Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler’ to the repertoire, with Peter [our very own Corporal Jones] singing the lead.

No bottles of vodka and whisky and pills and spliffs and wild, wild women for us either, oh no. We had a lovely Victoria sponge that Jason’s Annie had baked for us, which it has to be said had disappeared before we passed Lanson [not Lawn-cest-on, don’t forget what happened to the last person who mispronounced our place names – he’s never been seen again…], and a bleddy great tin of chocolate biscuits. We know how to live, we FFs.

We went around the colleges at Cambridge, and the town itself which was great, around the Roman ruins and cathedral in St Albans, and then for me what was to be the highlight of the tour in York, a morning in the Yorvik museum, and then an afternoon in the York Minster, with a break for a swift half in the Blue Bell in between. At least, that was the plan.

Oh dear….how very predictable. 12 hours later, the closest I got to the Minster was stretched out on the green outside waiting for a taxi with a massive doner kebab in hand, singing ‘Old Johnnie Bugger’ with my magnificent moustache caked with congealing chilli sauce. Had God been looking down he’d have been terribly disappointed. Just as well he had better things to do in other parts of the world.

Such friendly folk in the Blue Bell. Indeed, we were all struck at how great it is in the north that people are so uninhibited at socialising. If there is a choice between new arrivals sitting alone at their own table, or joining you on yours, they invariably do the latter with a merry ‘Do you mind if we join you?’ I think it’s really sad how we seem to have lost that in many other parts of the country – long may it continue. Surely that’s how folk should be?

Having said that, I don’t know how the four nice ladies of a certain age who joined us on our table felt about it the next day. On their weekly get together for a glass or two of vino, they were rather drawn too much into the singing. One poor lady had to be carried out by her mates having had just a smidgeon over her limit, following their tearful [as tearful as a newt] first friend who’d been slung out by the landlord on her second warning for standing on her bench and squawking out ‘On Ilkley Moor Bah’t Tat’ like a demented rook. And these were delightful, respectable, demure ladies I can assure you. Well, they were when they first came in and sat down anyway…

The Fisherman’s Friends? Sex and drugs and rock and roll? Nah…just mad, bad and dangerous to know. I do hope they felt better than we did the next day; at least they didn’t stoop to munching kebabs. Now that would have been disgraceful.

Whatever, we hope that when we sing our songs of the sea, either in auditoriums or pubs, that folk realise the songs belong to all of us, ordinary working folk from the west and the north and all the bits in between. Sing them how you like and enjoy them, they’re yours, and don’t let anybody tell you any different….

But if you’re joining in with us not too loud please, we don’t want you to bugger it all up after all!

Dreckly dears xx

Cleavies Fish Counter #20

admin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:52:21 +0000

Co-ee fish heads! How’ve you been? Shivering I suppose. Well, I know it sounds a little harsh, but serves you right all you lot for living in that little bit of Britain east of Cornwall; let’s face it, you’re right on the edge of the Steppes there, aren’t you? Down here has been mildly temperate [rather like the people], if a little windy at times [not at all like the people!]. No snow and very little frost or ice at all.

Mind you, my boy George [that’s my boy George, not my ‘Boy George’ by the way], managed to get a little frosticled one day, stacking halibut or bream or skate or whatever in the big freezer of Dennis Knight’s wet fish emporium, and the door shut behind him, and he found that the emergency handle on the inside had, wait for it, frozen up and he was trapped. Could that be a design fault?

A bit like those stainless steel flip-lid teapots that don’t shut properly and spill scalding hot water down your plums, sorry lap, when you try and pour. Or that moulded plastic packaging that scissors and knives are packaged in now, that you have to use, wait for it, scissors or knives to cut into it to get the scissors or knife out. Why would I be buying scissors or a knife if I already had them? Did anyone consider that?

We took the trans-Siberian express out of Exeter St Davids last week, bound for Paddington across the vast tundra and permafrost of central southern England, to go on the One Show. Well, it was so much better than last time, when we all ended up getting mugged by winos in a piss-stinking alley on Shepherd’s Bush Green.

Our newest best mates Matt Baker and Alex Jones were charm itself, and so was Stephen Fry. It’s amazing to me that he chose to go into showbiz at all, when with a name like that you’d have thought he’d naturally have been predisposed to open his own take-away. Same applies to Matt Baker I suppose. I only say these things as I was once a policeman with a PC Nick Crook – having said that I don’t remember him ever nicking anyone. Too much paperwork and all that…

Anyway, after the show, I left the FFs in the middle of a snow shower and went off to join the luckiest girl in North Cornwall at Fishmonger’s Hall, one of the ancient London Guilds. She’d illustrated a children’s book for the lobster hatchery in Padstow, and as a result we’d got an invite to a fundraiser there, and I was bandwaggoning along, whoop whoop!

Well, what a plaice [geddit?] – no huge deep freezers with dodgy handles there my dears. No stench of red herrings or fish guts whatsoever. It’s a fabulous building right next to the Thames at London Bridge, and steeped in history.

Being a bit of a history nerd, I was fascinated to see in a case the dagger owned by the Lord Mayor of London, William Walworth. He was escorting young King Richard 2nd [who turned out to be a bit of a twat if you ask me] at Smithfield during the peasant’s revolt in 1381. Walworth used it to stab Watt Tyler, the leader of the peasants, who had got too close for comfort to young Dickie. Well, I’m blowed if Walworth wasn’t a fishmonger as well as Lord Mayor, and in recognition of his services the fishmongers of London were recognised as the fourth city Guild the following year – a great honour. The fact that he’d single handedly set back the cause of democracy, the rights of man, civil war and revolution in this country by nearly 3 hundred years is neither here nor there apparently…That’s fishmongers for you. I must have a word with boy George.

Still, the dagger was remarkably sharp after nearly 750 years, and sliced through my scallops [the ones on the plate] like a, well, dagger through scallops. The lamb cutlets were no problem either, and I was even able to carve ‘JC luvs CC 4ever’ into the surface of the priceless teak Georgian dining table between courses, and just in time for Valentine’s Day too. She was needless to say very touched. It also doubled up beautifully as a toothpick, proving more than equal to a stubborn slither of Brecon blackface lamb wedged in my right rear filling [in my tooth, that is].

But let no one say we Cornish don’t know how to behave. I put it right back in the case as we left – a lovely little piece of history – still with a tiny bit of lamb on the point. A class act me.

So there we are. Boy George has been driving the fish delivery van around all week like a dog with two tails, or like a fishmonger with a van full of fish anyway, while Lefty has been preparing our pimped out new fish van for part deux of our tour. There will not have been so many rugged, rustic types east of Cornwall since 1381. If you can get to a gig, you’ll truthfully be able to say ‘My god, the peasants are truly revolting’!

Dreckly dears

The Warbling Walrus xx

Click here to find out where you can see us singing in the future

Cleavie’s Fish Counter #19

admin — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:44:56 +0000

Merry Christmas fish-heads, and a Happy New Year too! I bet you’re wondering why we haven’t got a Christmas song out, aren’t you? So am I, seeing as I wrote one last year and we’ve recorded it, along with a couple of Cornish carols, and it sounds good to me. Then, it would do, wouldn’t it? It’s called ‘The stars of the New Year Turning’, and is meant to fill us all with hope and optimism in these dodgy times….

‘And we’ll all be all right
When we walk home tonight,
The fires deep in our hearts burning.
If you want to survive
Keep your passions alive,
Be the stars of the New Year turning….’

There, that’s cheered you up already, hasn’t it?

So what are you all doing pre-christmas? Carol singing? I hope you don’t come to the Port Gaverne hotel Friday evening, or the Golden Lion on Christmas Eve, because we’ll be in there carolling and shantying together probably, with loads of other locals, and we wouldn’t want you to join in and bugger it all up. Maybe you could just listen from outside? The windows are generally open for you to hear, and if it’s freezing with a blizzard blowing in on a North Easterly and you’ve got icicles hanging off your nether regions, and you’re being attacked by polar bears or wolverines or the like, we could pass you out a ginger beer and bag of crisps.

We love our own carols, fish-heads. One in particular we regard as the Port Isaac carol, ‘Hark the Glad Sound’. That’s a good old hellfire, brimstone and eternal damnation number that is…

‘…The gates of brass before him burst,
The iron fetters yield!’

Good old Methodists, just like the Taliban only without the bonhomie and goodwill and wicked sense of fun. The best thing about it is that no one else knows it, so they can’t join in at all!

We always had problems with people joining in with ‘While Shepherds Watched’, however we put paid to that by doing it to the tune of Lyngham, which is hugely popular in Cornwall. Imagine how disappointed I was to discover that Thomas Jarman, the composer of Lyngham, was in fact from Northamptonshire. Still, it by far and away the most rattlin!!! version of the carol.

And just who was it wot rote ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithfull’? It is a fabulous carol I know, but what on earth possessed him to think up the line ‘…Lo, he abhors not the virgin’s womb’ ? What’s that all about? I’m surprised some rapper hasn’t ‘sampled it’ [pinched it in other words] – ‘…Yo, he abhors not the virgin’s womb etc etc’!

I think, for me certainly, therein lies the appeal of carols. They take you right back to your childhood, when you could change the words to give the lyric a naughty, silly little twist. You know, ‘Noel, Noel’ becomes ‘Oh hell, Oh hell..’, ‘Most highly favoured lady’ becomes ‘Most highly flavoured lady’, and ‘While shepherds watched their flocks’ became ‘While shepherds washed their…’, oh never mind. These little tweaks, seemingly inaudible to teachers and choirmasters, gave us little moments of fun through those interminable rehearsals for nativity plays.

And then some of us graduated on to doing complete sets of lyrics for traditional Christmas songs. I remember fondly my exquisitely filthy version of The Twelve Days of Christmas, the cleanest bit of which was where three French hens became three French tarts. Ahh, Christmas. The warm glow of nostalgia. My nuts roasting by an open fire and all that…

Talking of Nat King Cole, I’ve had a little tweak to the Christmas classic, ‘The little Boy that Santa Claus Forgot.’ I do hope you like it.

‘I’m the little boy that Santa Claus forgot,
And heaven knows, I didn’t want a lot.
I left a note for Santa for an X- Box and a gun,
I was so disappointed when the old bugger didn’t come.
Now I play out on the street with all those lucky boys,
Then wander home alone to last year’s broken toys.
I’d like to stampede all his reindeer,
But then I know he’d never come here,
To the little boy that Santa Claus forgot.

I recall one Christmas eve when Santa came to town,
With Dancer, Prancer, Rudolph and the sleigh.
I left a glass of sherry, and a carrot for the deer,
Then hid behind the sofa, for Santa to appear.
Yes, I hid there all night long and all through Christmas day,
Boxing day too…the old bugger never came.
I’d light a bonfire up my chimney,
But I haven’t got it in me,
Cos I’m the little boy that Santa Claus forgot.

It’s not as horrid as my original re-write, but you see he might just read it, and then I really would be the little boy that Santa Claus forgot, wouldn’t I?

A very Happy Christmas and New Year to all fish-heads everywhere!!!!

Dreckly dears xx

Cleavies Fish Counter #18

admin — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:30:46 +0000

Fish-heads! Hello dears. Just got back from tripping the light fantastic….or did the light fantastic trip us? Who knows or indeed cares now; we’re back in dear old P.I.. What an absolutely fabulous and memorable time we’ve had, and thanks to all you lovers of high culture for coming to see us – we were overwhelmed and a not a little touched by your response to the shows.

No accounting for taste…

Of course, were it not for the luxurious diva treatment afforded to top international superstars like us these days, the whole experience could be quite unpleasantly debilitating. The Hovelodges [or whatever they’re called] that we stayed in were rather resonant of a serf’s hut constructed of mud, cow dung and twigs from the reign of Widdlebert the Incontinent [the heir to Piddlebert the Incompetent]. Seemingly, all that was missing was bubonic plague and the occasional horde of marauding norsemen intent on rape and pillage….oh, and starvation. We had plenty to eat, as you’ll see.

To be honest, once we’d made ourselves at home by smashing the huts, sorry rooms, up a bit, they became home from home really. The fact that we’ve had no complaints about the state the rooms were left in tells you all you want to know….

And as for the lear jet, sorry stretch limo, sorry luxury tour coach, sorry…fish van. Oh my god. Has anyone seen the ‘I’m a celebrity’ gig with the contestant’s head in a glass box full of blowflies? Believe me, that’s nothing compared to the fish van.

It seems that a particularly sexually active couple of blowflies have been having it away behind the door and window seals, and laid enough eggs to provide the world’s spider population with copious snacks for the next fifty years. The only problem being that the fish van doesn’t have any spiders in it, only us.

Add together the unseasonably warm late November, and the combined body heat of ten FFs, and you have that peculiar zoological phenomenon, the mobile blowfly hatchery. At precisely 11.07 am daily when the temperature was apparently at it’s optimum, the little bastards, sorry big bastards, would start to emerge and lazily, dopily, dozily bump from one FF’s head to another, in our ears, in our eyes, up our nose, up our…oh never mind, I’m sure you can guess. And they were so massive. I’d swear one was bigger than a rook!

Now you always hear complaints from the rock and roll fraternity about all the hanging about and the travelling between gigs. Well, maybe they should all invest in fly blown fish vans. From the emergence of the first on day one, somewhere outside Bridgewater [you know, of Simon and Garfunkel fame – ‘Trouble Over Bridgewater’ remember that?], until the journey from Salisbury to Bristol on day three, we had found a new way of passing the long, tedious hours.

Rather than the usual needlework and embroidery, and in-depth investigation into the origins of the capstan shanty, and philosophical discourses on the role of the enlightenment in the French Revolution, we killed flies.

We progressed from primitive swatting methods, using rolled up bits of cardboard and newspaper, to more advanced fly destruction techniques. Sam pulled over at a DIY shop and equipped us with some spray left over from the Gulf War and some builder’s face masks. Sadly, these did not protect the eyes. How Lefty still managed to drive the fish van blind I have no idea. He did it by pure instinct, like Tommy at the pinball machine. That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure drives a mean fish van…

And then came the ultimate swatter, shaped like a mini tennis racket only with an electric charge, one only had to squash the unfortunate bluebottle against the window and crank up the voltage, and watch as the sparks flew and the smoke and stench of sizzled fly flesh drifted up our nostrils. My, how the hours flew by.

By the end of the journey, the fish van was like a fly cemetery. It was flymageddon. There were so many dead flies that we were tempted to give up our blossoming careers in entertainment, and turn instead to opening an organic Eccles cake and Garibaldi factory.

Anyway, fish-heads, we’ve decided to invest in a new fish van for next year – we reasoned that it’ll save money on flights if we get invited to the US or Australia. In the meantime, anyone interested in an old fish van, two hundred thousand plus miles on the clock, seats as soft as church pews, and with the unmistakable malodour of sizzled flies, stale farts and of course fish lingering imperceptibly within, give Lefty a shout. He’ll get back to you shortly….

Dreckly dears xx

Cleavies Fish Counter #17

admin — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:51:57 +0000

Hey! Fish-heads, where have you been my dears? What do you mean, where have I been? In therapy, obviously. Celebrity has it’s casualties, fish-heads, and all the global adulation [well deserved though it is!] has driven me and the boys back to our old lives for a period of respite. The brothers have been crabbing about the price of bait and lobsters and diesel and the Spanish and their bleddy great trawlers, Leftie’s been up at 3.30 every morning for an early start in the milking parlours of North Cornwall [or so he says], Trev and the Johney Mac are building as if there’s a housing shortage, Pete’s old farting about in the garden [he’s 78 you know – did I mention that?], Bill’s been churning out pots [playing golf according to Leftie], and I’ve been baking pasties with mother.

What better therapy for a Cornish boy? I love to cook, but had never even attempted to make pastry, let alone to bake a pasty. So I said to mother, who lives just up the hill from me [next to John Mac and next but one from Jeremy in fact], how do you fancy teaching your dear little boy how to make pasties?

I’ve got to say that it was one of the nicest things I’ve ever done. Mother and I have been spending Wednesday mornings together deep in conversation about nothing in particular, you know family stuff and village stuff and matters of extreme global importance as well, whilst slicing potatoes, onions and swede, cutting up skirt beef into tiny pieces, and trying out various pastry mixtures [not bought ones!]. It’s brilliant.

A little technical pointer or two should any of you decide to try this at home…

Firstly, please don’t even attempt to bake a pasty anywhere outside the county border. It is bound to taste disgusting and could even poison you or explode. This rule only applies to the Cornish pasty, and is not applicable to Yorkshire puddings, Welsh cakes or Lancashire hotpot, which can apparently all be made anywhere [according to Delia].

Secondly, you must slice your vegetable ingredients. Diced ones can tumble out of the pasty and can fall scalding hot onto your lap. Be especially careful if you are eating one on a naturist beach somewhere…

Finally, always use the most delicious and accordingly least healthy ingredients that you can find. We’re talking one third lard in the pastry mix here, and lashings of butter in the pasty itself, and plenty of seasoning especially salt. The heavier and more discomforted you feel after eating the pasty, the better it would have been. Come on, let’s block up those arteries!

Anyone transgressing these laws can expect an early morning knock on the door from the PIPPs [Port Isaac Pasty Police], that is to say mother and her mates, and I don’t give much for your chances if they find you guilty of baking a ‘nasty pasty’. You’ve been warned…

Just like the way our singing has almost become secondary to the whole social thing on Friday evenings on the Platt, so the pasties are but a delicious by-product of our mornings together. This week we’re doing yeast and saffron buns, and we will be discussing the Italian debt crisis and the demise of Mr Berlusconni, the tormented genius of Van Gogh, whether that other famous Dutchman Dick Van Dyke was in fact really a cockney, and evidencing whether Offa’s Dyke was a dark ages earthwork constructed to keep out the marauding Welsh, or in fact the King of Mercia’s first wife with whom he was incompatible for obvious reasons. Oh, and the price of fish of course….

On tour next week fish-heads! Looking forward to seeing all the girls from Redland College in Bristol on Friday week….well, I say girls, you know what I mean. I’m sure you’re all still drop dead gorgeous 35 years on. Just like me in fact. The years have been nothing but kind, haven’t they? Can’t wait!!

Dreckly dears xx

Tour & compilation CD

admin — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:08:31 +0000

Well, it’s been a while, but we’re back!
We’ve had some time off in October to recharge the batteries, we’re now getting ready to do a few shows at the end of November (have you got your tickets yet?)

22 Nov Cheltenham Town Hall – tickets available here
23 Nov Salisbury City Hall – tickets available here
25 Nov Bristol Colston Hall- tickets available here
27 Nov Plymouth Theatre Royal – SOLD OUT
30 Nov Birmingham Town Hall – SOLD OUT
1 Dec London Union Chapel- tickets available here

We are also singing, chatting and signing books at Waterstones in Truro this Thursday at 7pm (10th November). Tickets are £2 and available from the shop. Watersones website

Lastly 5 FF songs are featured on a new compilation from Proper Records. These songs are taken from our 2 albums ‘Suck ‘em & Sea’ and ‘Another Mouthful From…’
The full tracklisting is below and its available to pre order from Amazon.co.uk and Play.com

A Treasury Of Shanties And Songs Of The Sea
1. The Fisherman’s Friends – Shanty Man
2. The Fisherman’s Friends – John Kanaka
3. The Fisherman’s Friends – Haul Away Joe
4. The Fisherman’s Friends – Blood Red Roses
5. The Fisherman’s Friends – What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor ?
6. Long Dan Russell – A Hundred Days On The East
7. Long Dan Russell – Blow The Man Down
8. Long Dan Russell – Shoals Of Herring
9. Long Dan Russell – The Blackball Line
10. Long Dan Russell – The Wild Goose
11. The Cod Wranglers – Poor Old Man
12. The Cod Wranglers – Carry Him To The Burying Ground
13. The Cod Wranglers – For Those In Peril On The Sea
14. The Cod Wranglers – Shenandoah
15. The Cod Wranglers – Where The Codfish Grow
16. Ron Kavana & The Sherkin Crew – A-Rovin’
17. Ron Kavana & The Sherkin Crew – The Harp Without The Crown
18. Ron Kavana & The Sherkin Crew – Rounding The Horn
19. Ron Kavana & The Sherkin Crew – Willie Taylor
20. Ron Kavana & The Sherkin Crew – A Health To The Company

Cleavie’s Fish Counter #16

admin — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:21:36 +0000

It’s been a while fish-heads – how’s tricks? The boys and me have been winding down a bit, finished on the Platt for another year, just the America’s Cup gig on the Hoe at Plymouth to go on Sunday. Looking forward to that and then a break until the tour, end November.

So I thought like any real fish counter, I may close for a few weeks and give the place a good old clean out and hose down, and try and get rid of the all pervading stink of fish, which is really a metaphor for clearing out my head and trying to get some writing and rehearsing and stuff done.

So before I pull down the shutters for a bit, I thought I’d leave you with a little rhyme what I wrote a little while ago, and if anyone can set it to music please let us know…

The Ship’s Biscuit.

A cabin boy, with vertigo nervy
And fruitless, scared to death of scurvy,
Abseiled from his topsail gantry,
Resolved to raid the ship’s cook’s pantry.
There marooned upon the shelf,
Crumbling lonesome, quite by itself,
An unprepossessing, dry ship’s biscuit.
Mad hunger drove the boy to risk it.

For cabin boys, fed the least
Of all the crew, this was a feast.
But within that morsel, lurking evil
Rear Admiral Sir Reginald Weevil,
Who, from said biscuit, poked his head
In tricorn hat; so fill with dread
Ye cabin boys, for biscuit hogging
Is sure to earn a damn good flogging.

Dreckly dears xx

Cleavie’s Fish Counter #15

admin — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:21:41 +0000

Fish–heads, welcome to the fish counter, and I mean you are bleddy welcome to the fish counter this week. It’s not as if I haven’t anything better to do after all, as it’s August Bank holiday week and Port Isaac is completely overrun with tourists who have clearly never read the Sunday Times, and their 4 x 4s and dogs and kids, and we’re all run off our legs and going mental…

This is except Nigel, of course, who apparently employs more staff than the rest of the FFs put together [what a bag of scallops!].

Not only is it impossible to drive through the narrows of the village, it’s almost impossible to even walk through it without treading on unwary snot-nosed children with ice creams or bumping into old ladies with blue rinses and handbags full of sugar sachets and butter pats and mini pots of jam they’ve liberated from cafes ‘just in case’ [that’s what the war did to them, waste not and all that!].

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I’ve got augustitus, and the only anti-serum is septembritis taken in liberal measure.

Quite frankly, I blame Doc Martin for the extra hordes of people. It has nothing to do with the Fisherman’s Friends whatsoever, even the 3000 people who came on Friday evening and pretended that they’d come to listen to us sing. Look, we’re not stupid [well all right, some of us are quite stupid], we saw you looking over our heads gawping at the Doc’s surgery and Bert’s Restaurant, and hoping to catch a glimpse of Mr Clunes. Well you had to put up with Clooneyesque JB instead!

Certainly, the accepted route through the UK for most Australians now seems to be London – Stratford Upon Avon – Port Isaac, but now it seems that the programme has been aired on public TV in the US, and it is proving equally popular over there. That’s a worry, coach loads of over-earnest Burberry clad yanks trying to trace a direct line of ancestry to fictional TV characters with dodgy pan-westcountry Long John Silver accents.

‘Hi, my folks came over stateside in the Mayflower. My name is Dupree Beauregard Martin the 23rd, and ironically [although being American, I don’t get irony of course] I’m a doctor, and I’m trying to find the Martin family….’ Oh my god, what a nightmare scenario that’ll be.

So this week, fish-heads, comes the launch of our book ‘Sailing at Eight Bells’, whatever that is. I’ll have to ask one of the jolly Jack Tars in our naughty nautical ranks. The burning question is – what will it be? Will it be wildly hilarious, or just mildly diverting? Tragic, or merely a little melancholy? A reference book for fish-heads with a transitory and healthy interest in the subject, or an encyclopaedia for obsessive stalker types who want to get right inside us? May we expect crime or fiction, drama or romance? Bodice ripper or underpant creaser? Kiss and tell, or scratch and sniff? Chick lit or fish lit?

Whatever, going by my preferred adage of ‘always judge a book by it’s cover’, it’s pretty good, and made our photo shoot 18 months ago seem worthwhile, as we’re all posing with smouldering gothic menace on the front.

I always stick to that adage because of my own books about Gully. That is Gully the Mischievous and Wicked Cornish Seagull in case I haven’t subliminally plugged him before [only £6.95 per signed copy…]. The fact is, forget the storyline and content [which are all equally good obviously], and title [there are 6 in case you were interested, set of three for £17.95 – oh there I go again], the best seller is by far the blue one.

To be fair, it is a nice shade of blue. Sadly, the purple book [Gully Celebrity Chef], which is probably the best story, is the least popular colour and it follows therefore the slowest seller. This is just like our two first albums, ‘The FFs – Suck ’Em and Sea’, and the cleverly titled sequel ‘Another Mouthful from the FFs’. The former sells three times as many copies because the sleeve is in colour. Musically [if I may use that term with the FFs] they are much the same…challenged, shall we say?

At least the FFs didn’t have any problems with finding a publisher. When I’d first completed writing and illustrating Gully [only £6.95…!], I proudly sent the stories and artwork off to agents and publishers galore. What I got back was ‘We like the pictures, but not the story;’ or ‘We like the stories, but not the pictures.’ Most dispiriting. When I finally got a ‘We love the stories and the illustrations are divine…’ it was accompanied with a ‘…but we don’t think there’s a market for them.’

That’s what you get when you have to deal with people who used to get bullied at school. It just makes me regret that I wasn’t more of a bully back then, as that might have made the frustration all the more worthwhile.

So fish-heads, here we are spending our entire weekend, the busiest of the year, signing books with a collective glad heart ready for the launch on Thursday, which will be brilliant. At least it keeps us out of those streets!

Dreckly dears xx