Six million LP selling anti-pop star's life story - and the truth behind that
infamous John Prescott drenching!
This is not another plodding rock memoir but a compassionate, critical and sometimes cynical
account of a life steeped in pop culture, lower division football and putting the world to rights.
Footnote is clever, funny and irreverent - a story about a boy from the redbrick clichés of
smalltown Lancashire reconciling Mormonism and punk rock, industrial courtesy and political
insurrection.
He finds a guitar, anarchism and art terrorism and, after years of honest-to-goodness slogging,
his pop group Chumbawamba makes it BIG with a massive hit record - funnily enough - about getting
knocked down and getting back up again.
Boff Whalley is a founder member of Chumbawamba, whose hit single, Tubthumping, was a hit in
46 countries (topping the charts in 10 of them). Candle in the Wind, Elton John's tribute to
Princess Diana and the best selling single of all time, kept Tubthumping from the No 1 position
in the charts.
The LP including the song sold six million copies world-wide and Chumbawamba have a well-established,
loyal fan-base built up over the past 20 years.
The band are renowned for political protest and were featured on the front pages of eight national
newspapers for a week when band member Dan drenched Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott with
water from a champagne bucket at the Brit Awards. They have maintained their high profile and
national press interest.
The author knows and references cultural icons such as the missing member of the Manic Street
Preachers, Richie Edwards, and Bill Drummond in the book ensuring its appeal to anyone with
an interest in pop culture.
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