is the best, including, as it does, The Light At the End of the Tunnel (Is the Light of an Oncoming Train), Them's The Vagaries, She's in Broadstairs and Breaking News. But the album before last, Achtung Bono, is also chock-full of goodies (Joy Division Oven Gloves, For What is Chatteris, Surging out of Convalescence) and well worth a punt. This Leaden Pall from 1993 is also good, especially Running Order Squabble Fest.

Nothing to really avoid, as such, but they've easily surpassed their earlier stuff, so I wouldn't be rushing to buy Back in the DHSS and The Trumpton Riots if I were you. Leave those till you're well and truly hooked.

In short, I'd buy, in order: Cammell Laird Social Club, Achtung Bono, This Leaden Pall, then the rest.

Plenty of free stuff on their excellent website, by the way, including a superb interview with, I think, Richard Skinner, throughout which he refers to them as 'Half Moon, Half Biscuit'...

All their stuff is downloadable from emusic.com so if you're a subscriber you can download probably 3-4 albums for a months subscription.

I'd disagree slightly about Back in the DHSS - if you're of a "certain age" (40-50) you'll get all the references and there are some great songs - you can't claim to be a HMHB fan if you haven't got "All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Awaykit". One thing to look out for is that the early stuff (Back In The DHSS/Trumpton Riots/Back Again in the DHSS) is collected on the "ACD" compilation, which is quite poor quality (it sounds like it was mastered from very cheap cassettes)

Be warned though that HMHB are very addictive - you'll constantly be checking references on their official website, or arguing about the correct lyrics at the HMHB lyrics site (http://www.chrisrand.com/hmhb/)

Only discoverd them last year and now I'm obsessed

Cammell Laird and Achtung Bono are both excellent records, but I'd also include Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral as worth a shout

...was certainly my entry point, yes, but I think they've improved significantly since. Those early songs sound a bit unformed and more like those of a 'joke band' (the most common accusation levelled against the Biscuit, when in fact they are the best folk band in the country) compared to, say, Took Problem Chimp to Ideal Home Show. Sophisticated, melodic *and* funny.

Or... listen to Surging Out of Convalescence, for example. The outro about storing the Horse & Hound in a data retrieval system brings a tear to the eye, so it does.

iTunes just randomly threw up Lark Descending as I was reading the updates. How many other songs can you name that start with a Thomas Hardy quote? (and finish with "I could have been like Lou Barlow, but I'm more like Ken Barlow").

There are those who believe that A Country Practice, from "4 Lads..." is one of the best songs ever written (I don't just mean members of the Massive, but proper singers/musicians like Eliza Carthy)

It's all on Emusic so you should be able to download loads of their stuff quite cheaply.

Half Man Half Biscuit did something like 48 songs on a series of Peel Sessions between 1985 and 2004, and these have all been brought together on The Perfumed Garden blog*. Many of the performances are at least as good as the recorded versions, and one or two, e.g "Mars Ultras (You’ll Never Make The Station)" have never appeared on record.

I'd second eMusic as a good source to get Half Man Half Biscuit material: everything's there except (curiously) the 1998 album "Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral" which you'll have to seek out elsewhere, because it's one of the best.

* http://theperfumedgarden.blogspot.com/2008/07/half-man-half-biscuit-peel...

Thanks for your feedback everybody.. My HMHB odyssey starts here!