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Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1979

Its a work-in-progress bedroom demo for Blurs "Parklife"!  Its Mike Skinner of The Streets with a Casiotone demo of his missing chippy "dinnertime" track from "A Grand Dont Come For Free"!  Its Eddie Argos out of Art Brut doing an ironic advert for the British Potato Council!  Its Chas and Dave getting unusually belligerent and demanding in a Leytonstone Fish and Chip shop!  Its... well, its all of these things, but its actually none of these things as well.  Sorry.

However, we can definitely classify this as a curio from the arse-end of the life of Pye Records which was clearly meant to be a summer novelty pop smash.  Had a particularly influential daytime Radio One DJ taken a shine to this it probably would have been a hit, but we can only assume that they failed to see the potential - or rather, that Pye at this stage in their corporate lives were utterly incapable of getting anyones attention at the Beeb.

Theres something very cheesy and cheap about the record, and its received thorough drubbings elsewhere on the Interweb, but I genuinely like it - its unpretentious, snappy and decidedly silly, siphoning off the credible influences of Madness and Ian Dury and squeezing them into a novelty blender.  The lyrics focussed entirely upon the act of putting salt and vinegar on chips are utterly facile and ridiculous, but sometimes pop music needs such idiocy.  Had it been even a minor hit, theres a strong probability it would have become awfully irritating very quickly, but as a flop its harmless, cheerful and sprightly.

Its not clear who Austin Van Driver and the Morrismen were, but certainly the involvement of Phil Hampson on the songwriting credit is something of a giveaway to the fact that they were a one-off project.  Hampson has produced numerous pieces of soundtrack work and one-off novelty singles over the years, including "The Sparrow" by The Ramblers,  "Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs" by Brian and Michael, and (perhaps more credibly) the "Spiral Scratch" EP for The Buzzcocks, as well as work for Slaughter and the Dogs and The Fall.  This particular single is probably stylistically halfway between Brian & Michael and The Buzzcocks, and as bizarre as youd expect given that.