East Lancashire’s longest-surviving band Chumbwamba announce split

An announcement on Chumbwamba’s official website heralded the end of the anarcho-punk group’s thought-provoking run, which began when they were formed in Burnley in 1982.

Lead guitarist Boff Whalley – real name Allan – said the split was amicable.

He said: “Thirty years is long enough for any rock band. We are all really busy and felt like we wouldn’t be giving the band our full attention by just doing a few festival shows every year.”

The band experienced unexpected mainstream success with the hit single Tubthumping, which reached number two in the charts in 1997.

Singer Danbert Nobacon earned notoriety when he attacked then-Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott with a bucket of ice at the following year’s Brit Awards.

During their three-decade stint the band, led by Whalley and Nobacon (AKA Nigel Hunter), and later including ex-Towneley High student Alice Nutter, also took in playing in squats, supported striking miners and opposed the Poll Tax.

Just weeks after the Prescott episode, Nutter went on US television and urged fans, who may not be able to afford their new album, to shoplift it from large chains like HMV or Virgin.

Yet with the banking crisis and coalition cuts provoking outrage, the band, which has toured as an acoustic outfit for the past five or six years, will cease by the end of the year.

In a statement, the band said: “We felt we’d got to a point where what we did as a band – and specifically the writing, recording, touring cycle – wasn’t doing justice to what Chumbawamba set out to do in the first place. We were always as much about ideas as music, and that meant doing more than writing, recording and touring songs.

“It meant trying to be relevant and active and up-to-date, while trying to avoid the dreaded rut of routine or repetition.”

Several final dates have been promised before the band rides off into the sunset – and they have still reserved the right to reform if the circumstances are right.