Ade Edmondson and The Bad Shepherds to appear at the M Club, Crewe

Jul 29 2009 By Crewe Chronicle

IF COMEDY is the new rock ’n’ roll, Ade Edmondson is its original punk.

This analogy is a phrase coined during the heyday of Newman and Baddiel in the 1990s – but Edmondson has been punk for the whole of his TV career.

Fresh off the back of a sell-out performance at the Middlewich Folk and Boat Festival last month, he brings his new band The Bad Shepherds to The M Club in High Street, Crewe, next week.

He has ditched the safety pins through the nose for expensive grown-up toys including the mandolin, the ukulele and the autoharp.

But the punk spirit remains and his band, including piper Troy Donockley, who also plays with Gothic metal titans Nightwish, and Martin Allcock, a former member of Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull, perform a repertoire of 70s classics with a folk twist.

"Thrash folk!" he explained. "I’ve always liked this era of music. I grew up with punk and all that stuff.

"I have pre-Christmas drinks with chums and generally end up on Denmark Street in London where all the music shops are and I buy something inappropriate when I’m drunk. Last time, I bought a mandolin."

Edmondson was messing about with old pal Neil Innes – not a Bad Shepherds member – when suddenly things fell into place.

"It just got better and better," he said. "Everyone fell on board very quickly. The band is all punk covers and we do a bit of Kraftwerk and The Specials.

"Punk was the folk music of its day. They’re very similar forms of music, very naive, three chords and you can go and play in a band.

"And it’s the same kind of excitement for me, there’s a visceral kind of passion to it."

Breaking through as The Young Ones’ mohawked, V-flicking, jack-booted anarchist Vyvyan, his obsession with all things ‘very metal’ – as was studded into the back of his character’s denim jacket – saw him through spoof Comic Strip band Bad News and the nihilism of Bottom.

But now he’s enjoying indulging himself in his second love of music, though it begs the obvious question – is it comedy or straight?

"It’s difficult for me to take anything seriously, I just do it because it’s fun. If the result is I can make a living, then fantastic," he said.

"It’s like a hobby. It reminds me of when I started out with Rik (Mayall), that was a hobby that turned into a job.

"It’s not a comedy band. But there is some inherent comedy in punk. Johnny Rotten was very funny and a lot of punk has a wry humour.

"Because we’re the Bad Shepherds - it’s always good to start your band name with bad... Bad News, Bad Seeds. There’s a few religious things too. We’ve re-written a couple of psalms."

Edmondson hopes music can become his full-time occupation if things turn out well.

"This tour is a little try out to see if it’s got legs," he said. "Most comics I know want to be musicians and the musicians want to be comics. Everyone’s in the wrong job.

"It’s like when Rik and I first started out. A hobby that becomes a job, it feels exactly the same.

"The aim is to have a party every night, that’s my goal.

"I’ve never had a plan. Everything in my career has been an accident. There’s no masterplan, I just do whatever I fancy doing, if I can."

Ade Edmondson and The Bad Shepherds appear at The M Club on Saturday, August 8. Doors open at 8pm and tickets are £15. To book, log on to www.themclub.co.uk