COMEDIAN BEHIND MOSH SONG HAS NO REGRETS Tune filled with with four-letter expletives became cult favourite
IT’S a simple story about a teenager with an attitude problem whose inability to deal with the world lands him in prison. It is also liberally peppered with expletives, meaning it was never likely to get mainstream exposure.
And yet The Mosh Song, also known as ‘Oi Mush’ proved to be revelatory for its comedic creator.
Incredibly, the cult song which made its way all over the globe during the fledgling years of the internet, largely through word of mouth, is now twenty years old and has, in various guises, racked up more than a million hits on YouTube.
It came from the streets of Swansea, via the nimble mind of comedian Paul Allen, who next year is looking to finally draw a curtain down on his long career as a standup, if not his career as a humourist.
“I didn’t release the song. It escaped,” he said.
“I knew a DJ and gave it to him, and he played it at a club on a Saturday night. He rang me at quarter past midnight that evening to say it had nearly got him the sack. They were dancing on the tables.
“On the Tuesday I got a call from someone saying ‘Do you know your song is on the juke box in The Tenby?’
“By the time I got down there within 24 hours it had been downloaded 40,000 times.
“We lost sales through my naivety. I just did not expect the reaction it would get.
“So that was a setback, but I could not put my head in my hands and think about the money. I had to think of it as my business card”.
Recorded with producer Peter King in Hot Town Studios in Treboeth, the song details the troubled teen’s journey from confrontation with the ‘man from the electric board’, his assault of his landlord, then resisting arrest, and derision of f a court judge which ultimately leads to an extended custodial sentence.
Featuring more than two dozen uses of the f-word, and delivered with the thickest of Jack accents, the song provided Paul with a vast new audience.
Born in Swansea and raised in Townhill, he began performing at the once famous Swansea club run by flyweight champion boxer Jimmy Wilde, before running away to learn clowning with Chipperfield’s circus, then becoming a roadie for Welsh rockers Sassafras.
A spell in the merchant navy proved less than spectacular, managing to accidentally set fire to the first ship he sailed on, and falling into Athens harbour with a fridge after jamming his hand in it.
Realising where his talents lay, he moved into stand-up, performing at the Swansea Fringe in the mid eighties, followed by appearances at Glastonbury and the Comedy Store in London. With friend Viv Kenning, better known as Spiv, he opened a comedy club in Swansea at the Singleton pub, where he created a character called Wayne Champagne, ‘a deluded cabaret singer [who] had delusions of inadequacy he would never fulfil’.
In the mid noughties he went to Tenerife for five years, where his health took a turn for the worse; he would later undergo significant dental surgery and was diagnosed with peripheral vascular disease.
“That was difficult because it is hard to be a stand up if you can’t stand up,” he said.
“It made me reassess. I had limited mobility, so I can’t travel anymore. There’s not much call for a sit-down comic.
“I just wanted to be a real comedian in real venues in front of real people.
“But it took me a few years to sort my health issues out.
“I’ve always written, and by then I was looking to do something with a fresh perspective”.
Comedy songs were a way back.
Sw Swansea Sound championed one, ‘I sa saw Santa signing on’, while ‘Who Are We, Jack Army’ was another popular during the Swans’ Premiership playoffs season.
But none would prove as successfu ful as The Mosh Song – which Paul in insists is the correct spelling, rather th than ‘mush’.
“We had a lot of fun doing it, but p people were very pious about it,” he sa said.
“Some said I should be prosecuted fo for obscenity, but I said if that was the ca case then I wanted Lulu prosecuted fo for noise pollution with Boom Banga-Bang and the song ‘ How much is that doggy in the window’, for being discriminatory because you can’t just take a dog because it’s got the waggiest tail.
“When it came out my sister called me to tell me our mum had found out that I had written it.
“When I spoke to my mum she said ‘Do you know you have got half of Swansea saying ‘f*** off’ to each other?’
“I said I was disappointed because I wanted to get the whole town saying it. I’ve got no regrets about the song.
“It tapped into Swansea and the mood at the time, but I never thought it would go on and continue, and in its own way be a bit of Swansea history.
“People from Swansea often say they remember where they were when they first heard it.
“It went everywhere. I had an email from a guy who said he had taken it to a research station in Alaska, and another solider who was with the
Welsh Regiment had taken it on manoeuvres to Iraq. It was played in Australia and Canada”.
There is good news for fans; of the song, and of Paul.
He is currently writing his life story, as well as more comedy including the story of lives of residents on the moshland estate, in the fictional town Llantalbot, which will be available via website and podcast.
And there will be one final show – and at least one more song.
“My last show had been in Middlesbrough on a wet Wednesday night in 2013. When I was coming home, I thought, surely that can’t be it?
“So as next year it will be 40 years since my first gig, which was at the Sketty Park Social Club, and 50 since my first stage appearance, I’m looking to do one more to get closure,” he said.
“I’ve had the best observation platform for 30 years, up there on stage.
“The Mosh Song defined a teenager with attitude problem. He’d now be in his 30s, and it would be interesting to see if he’d grown up. I’m working on the follow-up.
“The song starts with boy confronting someone from the electric board and ends up in Strangeways.
“If it triggered debate about antisocial behaviour with people who would not have had such a debate, then that is a winner.
He adds: “I do not worry about I have done.
“I have no regrets,
“I just worry what would have happened to me if I hadn’t had done it”.