All those boys just waiting for a heavy heavy monster sound to spark them into that jerky dancing on

All those boys just waiting for a heavy, heavy monster sound to spark them into that jerky dancing on the spot, that exaggerated turkey walk, that whole library of Not Hippie movement. They’re anything from early thirties (Madness boys) to 50-plus (ska and blue-beat originals, these boys).
There’s a whole tribal strand of this stuff running through British big-city boy life (it’s not a girl thing, it’s not a couple thing), from Mod through Two-Tone to the knockabout line-dancing and saxophones world of Madness (and put all thoughts of the Blues Brothers out of your head right now) It’s a well-dressed, precision clothing world. Hair almost squaddie short, blue Crombie coats, sharp-creased mohair strides in notable colours, button-down shirts, big solid brogues and wingtips. Absolutely no soft-sole, swirly-whirly hippie-dippy anything. All they need is a sign, a musical call-sign, to get them going. “Don’t touch that, do this” hugely amplified on really old kit.The compilers of The Rude Boy Revival double CD boxed set know all this. They know all the cues for that secret army and they get them out convincingly in 20 seconds flat.

No archive film, no hostage-to-fortune track listing, just one skinny suburban tribesman in his 1970s bedroom, putting on the kit, turning on the sound (those flickering needles), doing the walk striding into the street (Harlesden? Handsworth?) and really looking the part. Crombie coat with a red handkerchief, white T-shirt, dark-red Tonik parallels with a knife-edge crease.They’ve thought about the casting and they’ve got stylists who’ve really mugged up the detail.And the casting is a Suggs lookalike Suggs before he became north London dad and game-show man. Suggs when he seemed – however music hall Madness became – like the natural inheritor of 20 years’ worth of white working class, black music loving, hard dancing tradition. (The people side of Rude Boy, it has to be said, covers everything from Two-Tone pieties to the BNP.) The original Rude Boys were Jamaican, but the market for this set will be middle-aged white-bread Brits. And faced with a culture that gave the world The Specials and Buster Bloodvessel, who wouldn’t feel humble? And my instinct tells me they’ve got the timing right too.. Football fans are being urged to boycott the money-spinning television shows Blind Date and Coronation Street as part of a campaign to stop ITV Digital pulling the plug on the Nationwide League.

Its negotiators made it clear it was a “take it or leave it” offer.The IOS has learned that ITV Digital also offered the Football League shares in the company as part of the package, but this was rejected out of hand.A boycott by fans of the two heavily advertised programmes could hit ratings and wreck the finances of the two ITV companies, which have invested £1.2bn in the digital channel that is losing an estimated £1 million a day.A boycott against The Sun by Liverpool fans enraged by its reporting of the Hillsborough disaster led to a rare climb-down by the Murdoch title. Keith Harris, the chairman of the Football League said: “We are aware that football supporters when mobilised can be a very powerful body.”The two ITV companies are insisting they were not party to the deal between the Nationwide League and ITV Digital. There is a fear that they could prefer to see ITV Digital go under, rather than see it pay more to the League. It is widely felt that it paid too much for the television rights to beat Sky and that could spell the end for the high sums paid for televising football in the future.Sky could use the d?cle to reduce the price for televising the Premier League when the contract is renewed. This could depress the inflated wages paid to some of the country’s top football stars.. Old-fashioned gentlemen’s clubs are no longer just old. Against all expectations, they have once more become fashionable

Old-fashioned gentlemen’s clubs are no longer just old.

Mr Deayton, who joins such stalwart entertainers as Lord Attenborough, Sir Donald Sinden and Richard Wilson, follows hot on the heels of fellow Have I Got News for You? star Paul Merton, whose laconic one-liners now echo around the high-ceilinged ballroom of the nearby Savile.Merton is said to have become a regular fixture at the £700-a-year Mayfair club, snootily dismissed by the older Garrick as a louche copycat, since finally securing his membership after a lengthy wait He is in good company. Alongside such grandees as ex-Tory Minister Lord Young and veteran actors David Suchet and Edward Fox, the club, founded in 1868, counts among its members Stephen Fry and hotshot producer Peter Benet-Jones, whose credits include the film Bean and sitcoms The Vicar of Dibley.Deayton, whose name appeared on the Garrick’s “new members” list last week, was uncharacteristically coy when asked about his new haunt. Pointing out that he had visited the club only twice so far, he said: “I’ve only been a member there for about 10 days, most of which has been taken up with reading the rulebook.”It is likely to sound a disturbing note for PR guru Matthew Freud, who with chocolate heir Joel Cadbury led the consortium that bought out the Groucho last year. Only two months ago, the Soho venue, whose regulars include Damien Hirst and comics Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, announced it had made a £427,000 loss in 2000/2001, as opposed to a £620,000 pre-tax profit the previous financial year.