Hairier half of Chas and Dave, the duo who perfected the ‘rockney’ pop genre

Chas Hodges, who has died aged 74, was the hairier half of Chas and Dave, the scruffy Cockney duo behind a string of novelty pop hits in the 1980s, including Rabbit and their highest-charting release Ain’t No Pleasing You, which reached No 2 in the British charts in March 1982.

With his performing and writing partner Dave Peacock, Hodges chalked up no fewer than eight Top 40 ‘‘rockney’’ hits, a musical genre combining pub knees-up, music-hall humour and boogie-woogie piano, bookended by Gertcha in 1979 and Snooker Loopy in 1986.

Although as Chas and Dave – Hodges (on piano) and Peacock (bass) – they were sometimes ridiculed as joanna-rattling jabberers,

Hodges could claim to be a seasoned session musician who had served his time.

Lacking any formal musical training, he turned professional at 16, and as the bassist in Joe Meek’s house band in the early 1960s, had played on hits such as Johnny Remember Me (1961).

As a member of Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, Hodges supported the Beatles on tour in 1966, and was instrumental in paving the way for Bennett’s biggest chart hit, a cover of Got to Get You into My Life from the Beatles’ Revolver album.

Hodges and Peacock hooked up professionally in the late 1960s, touring pubs and clubs in London and Essex, billing themselves as Chas and Dave from 1972. By the early 1980s the pair had developed their signature look of hat, braces, beards and boots. With Mick Burt on drums, they remained the quintessence of a working-class Cockney pub act, Hodges looking like an unmade bed and larger than life, ‘‘giving it that’’ – as he and Peacock sang in Rabbit, the title being Cockney rhyming slang for incessant talk, or rabbit and pork.

Rabbit, with what the Independent later called its ‘‘good-naturedly sexist’’ lyrics, reached No 8 in November 1980. Hodges came up with the song’s memorable line ‘‘You’ve got more rabbit than Sainsbury’s’’, but was on the point of discarding it. Peacock liked it, though, so it stayed in.

‘‘They complement each other perfectly,’’ noted critic Dave Gelly at the height of their popularity, ‘‘two inseparable mates, given to stopping at the pub on the way home from work, getting plastered and telephoning desperately for a minicab when their wives come looking for them.’’

In 1979 their debut single Gertcha was adapted for a television advertising promotion for Courage Best, followed by another seven of their compositions, including Margate and The Sideboard Song, as the campaign was extended. Hodges and Peacock also released four FA Cup final singles in support of Tottenham Hotspur.

Although their heyday was the 1980s, the pair enjoyed a 21st-century renaissance, and appeared at Glastonbury in 2005 and 2007. Peacock announced his retirement in 2009 after the death of his wife, but he rejoined the group in 2011, with more live tours and new recordings.

Reviewing a 2014 concert in The Guardian, critic Dave Simpson hailed the pair as ‘‘documentarians of a lost England, in the manner of the Kinks’’. In Chas Hodges, another music writer, Pete Paphides, admired an authentic performer ‘‘who spans the history of rock’n’roll like a Zelig in gorblimey trousers’’.

The younger son of a lorry driver, Charles Nicholas Hodges was born in Edmonton, north London. His father killed himself with a 12-bore shotgun the day before Chas’ fourth birthday, and his mother remarried twice in rapid succession, the second time to a man known as Irish John, whom she met while playing the piano in a pub.

The lad’s early interest in music was further fostered by his maternal greatgrandfather, who played the penny whistle.

Expelled from school at Christmas 1958 after being caught drinking beer on the premises, Chas took a job at a local jeweller’s as a watch and clockmaker’s apprentice, only to be sacked for bad timekeeping. Having bought an electric bass guitar, he teamed up with Billy Gray and the Stormers, playing gigs at the King’s Head, Edmonton. This led to a booking for the 1960 summer season at Butlin’s holiday camp in Filey, North Yorkshire.

Hodges next joined the Outlaws, a backing group for the singer Mike Berry, who had a Top 50 entry with Swingin’ Low, recorded by Joe Meek. In 1961 a session with the singer John Leyton, on which Hodges played bass, produced Johnny Remember Me, which became one of the biggest sellers of the year.

The Outlaws toured Britain, backing Hodges’ hero Jerry Lee Lewis and later Gene Vincent. In 1965 Hodges joined Cliff Bennett’s backing group, the hard-drinking, hardgambling Rebel Rousers (‘‘a bunch of bastards,’’ he remembered, ‘‘but a good band’’), managed by Brian Epstein.

At about the same time, through an old school friend, Brian Juniper, he met Dave Peacock, who was playing bass in Juniper’s band. After the Rebel Rousers split up in 1969, Hodges formed a group called Black Claw with himself on piano, Peacock on bass, Mick Burt on drums and Harvey Hinsley on guitar. The band quickly folded and he formed the Chas and Dave act, releasing their debut album One Fing ’n’ Anuvver in 1975.

Meanwhile, a guitar riff recorded around the same time by Hodges and Peacock for Labi Siffre’s IGotThe... would be sampled by Eminem for his 1999 hit My Name Is.

Hodges and Peacock stood as independent candidates in the London mayoral elections in 2000, advocating the abolition of piped music in pubs and the provision of licensed bars at Tube stations.

Hodges, who published Chas and Dave: All About Us in 2008, discovered that he had oesophageal cancer in January 2017. He is survived by his wife, Joan, and their three children. – Telegraph Group

Music writer Pete Paphides admired Hodges as an authentic performer ‘‘who spans the history of rock’n’roll like a Zelig in gorblimey trousers’’.