Nigel, Zack, and XTC
As some of you know, I am a huge fan of XTC, the title of whose 1979 hit single (‘Making Plans for Nigel’) has been referenced in a bizarre dispute between Reform's Nigel Farage and the Green Party’s Zack Polanski.
As I understand it, Polanski shared a social media post that included multiple images from a Green Party event, one of which was a photo of a man wearing a t-shirt that featured an illustration of a French-style guillotine accompanied by the words ‘We’re only making plans for Nigel’. According to BBC News:
A Green Party spokesperson said: "Once this image was brought to [Zack's] attention he immediately unshared the post. He unequivocally does not support this type of dangerous message."
You might think that would be an end to it but Reform decided to report Polanski to the Metropolitan Police who responded by issuing the following statement: ‘We received a third-party report relating to an image shared on social media. We take reports of this nature extremely seriously, and officers are conducting enquiries into the matter’.
Let’s see how this develops but I’m not sure that involving the police - even at this sensitive time - is the best response from a party that claims to support freedom of speech and has been happy to embrace Lucy Connolly following her imprisonment for a far more ill-advised social media post.
Anyway, 44 years after their last hit single (‘Senses Working Overtime’ in 1982) and 20 years since what was left of the band quietly called it quits, it’s a strange way for XTC to be thrust back into the public eye from which they disappeared many decades ago.
The irony is that Colin Moulding, the band’s bass player who wrote (and sang) ‘Making Plans for Nigel’, is, by reputation, fairly reclusive, but via a third party he has issued the following response via the Colin Moulding of XTC Fan Club group (of which I am a member) on Facebook:
Politics and pop music is a combination I've never really cared for. Pop music belongs to the kids ;- top of the pops ;- pans people , seven o’clock on a Thursday evening ;-all that ;- and all the kids who are now middle-aged and have loved pop music down the years ;- that’s the world that the song belongs to. Not the men in grey suits….But I also say that one cannot have a monopoly on the English language ;- it's there for everyone. But it would be a great pity if the song came away from all this with a negative connotation. I just hope it doesn’t.—that’s all I have to say.—cheers…Colin M .
By coincidence, I am currently listening to the first ‘new’ XTC album for 26 years. Actually, it’s an ‘official’ bootleg of a gig performed at Emerald City, New Jersey, in April 1981 but, having waited almost 30 years for ‘new’ product that isn’t yet another remastered studio album or a collection of demos by Andy Partridge, the band’s principal singer and songwriter, I’m not complaining.
Nevertheless, given the less than stellar audio quality, the best thing about Live Boots is arguably the liner notes that all four band members have written for the CD booklet. I particularly like Moulding’s contribution that begins:
When you’re asked to write some notes about something that you weren’t too keen on in the first place, it might get you scratching your head a bit. I would not care to tour again because time is precious. One must be very careful how one spend’s one time when in your sixties or seventies. You can’t throw time away like you used to and touring wastes so much of your time …
A few hundred words later, he concludes:
I thank you for listening to the jabbering of a reluctant performer. It’s all a long time ago, and that bum note I played in the second verse whilst thinking about what I would have to eat that night is as forgotten as I will be in fifty years time … Adios.
See also: Making Plans for Nigel — XTC’s hit mapped out a young man’s life (Financial Times, July 2024) and XTC - an appreciation (Taking Liberties, January 2022)
