The Trumpton Riots E.P. is a 1986 12" 45½rpm vinylEP by the English indie band Half Man Half Biscuit. The original release comprised the first four tracks listed below. A re-release later that year included the fifth one also.
"The Trumpton Riots " and "All I Want For Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit" were released in 1986 on a 7" vinyl single, before the release of the five-track EP. The EP was incorporated into the 2003 re-release on CD of the album Back in the DHSS. There, the title of the second song is given as "Architecture and Morality Ted and Alice". In a 2001 appreciation of the band, music writer and novelist Kevin Sampson described the EP as "utterly marvellous". In May 2016, The Guardian newspaper reported that Gordon Murray's family were contemplating suing the band Radiohead for infringing the copyright of the idea of Trumptonshire in the video for their single "Burn the Witch". The same report noted that Half Man Half Biscuit's 1980s song "The Trumpton Riots" had "portrayed Trumptonshire as a place of striking firemen, militant socialism, and military coups". The following tracks have been said to have been recorded for this, their first, EP; but as of 2015 no trustworthy evidence, or even recordings, have been found:
"More Brawn"
"I’m Out on Bail"
"She Looks Like Alan Gilzean"
"No Spare”
Cultural references
As is usual with Half Man Half Biscuit, the songs contain multiple cultural references, often obscure. Those identified include:
"The Trumpton Riots" imagines a violent civil insurrection in Trumpton, a fictional town inhabited by stop-motion characters which featured in BBC TV children's programmes of 196669; the song also mentions several of the best-known characters in those programmes.
** The song "He Who Would Valium Take" on the band's 1997 album Voyage to the Bottom of the Road refers to the same hymn
* "Cant conformism" puns on:
** cant, a jargon or argot of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside that group
** Brian Cant, narrator of the Trumpton programmes
** Immanuel Kant, German philosopher who argued that reason is the source of morality
, and Lady Diana Spencer, of the kind referred to in "Architecture and Morality Ted and Alice"
"Architecture and Morality Ted and Alice" combines the title of the 1981 album Architecture & Morality by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and the title of the 1969 film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
* Logie Baird, Scottish inventor known for his involvement in the development of television
* Club 18-30, a London-based holiday company that provides holidays for people aged 1735 in typical party island destinations
* DC-10, a three-engine wide-body jet passenger airliner which in its early years had a poor safety record
* Marseilles, a city and popular holiday destination on the French Riviera; as of 2015 often called Marseille because there's no final 's' in the French name
"1966 and All That" alludes both to the comic misrepresentation of English history 1066 and All That by Sellar and Yeatman, and to the England national team's sole victory in a major international football competition, in the 1966 World Cup
The title "All I Want For Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit" alludes to both the 1944 noveltyChristmas song "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" by Donald Yetter Gardner, and to the 1963 novelty Christmas song "All I Want For Christmas Is a Beatle" by Dora Bryan
* Away kit is sports clothing designed to distinguish the visiting team from the home team when similar team colours might confuse the players, spectators, and officials
* Dukla Prague, a football team from Prague, whose away kit consisted of yellow stockings, red shorts, and a yellow shirt with non-detachable red sleeves. In 2001, FK Dukla Prague adopted the name of that by-then-disbanded club; their away kit is all red, but also has non-detachable sleeves
