MUCH-LOVED AND FONDLY REMEMBERED HULL BAND THE HOUSEMARTINS WAS ORIGINALLY FORMED AS A BUSKING DUO BY STUDENTS IAN (STAN) CULLIMORE AND PAUL HEATON, IN 1983. THEY EXPANDED TO A QUARTET, RECRUITING DRUMMER HUGH WHITTAKER AND, EVENTUALLY, BASSIST NORMAN COOK, AND BECAME POLITE CHART-STORMERS A COUPLE OF YEARS LATER. 

After signing with Go Discs, the single HAPPY HOUR and the debut album LONDON 0 HULL 4 propelled the band into the UK Top Ten – no student bedsit was quite the same for a good couple of years. Their December 1986 single CARAVAN OF LOVE (an a capella cover of the 1985 Isley-Jasper-Isley r’n’b / soul hit) almost gave them the Christmas Number One slot, but the Humberside band was knocked from the top spot by a reissue of Jackie Wilson’s REET PETITE. Being almost Christmas Number One was, somehow, entirely fitting for a band with as much self-effacing humour and as many light-hearted sensibilities as they had political and social convictions. The second album – THE PEOPLE WHO GRINNED THEMSELVES TO DEATH – followed in 1987, with original drummer Whittaker now replaced by Dave Hemingway. Always good, and occasionally great, the album still somehow failed to eclipse the seminal debut. Singles FIVE GET OVER-EXCITED, BUILD and ME AND THE FARMER followed before the band decided to call time. Cook became Fat Boy Slim, Heaton (and Hemingway) formed The Beautiful South and Stan Cullimore went on to become an author of children’s books, a presenter (and composer of music) for children’s television and, currently, a travel writer. In this extended and extremely cheerful new edition of The Mouthcast, he talks in depth about The Housemartins’ brief but beautiful pop moment…