The Flying Pickets
Encyclopedia
The Flying Pickets are a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...

 vocal group, who had a Christmas number one hit
Hit record
A hit record is a sound recording, usually in the form of a single or album, that sells a large number of copies or otherwise becomes broadly popular or well-known, through airplay, club play, inclusion in a film or stage play soundtrack, causing it to have "hit" one of the popular chart listings...

 in 1983 in the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...

 with their cover
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...

 of Yazoo
Yazoo (band)
Yazoo are a British synthpop duo from Basildon, Essex. They had a number of Top 10 hits in the UK charts in the early 1980s...

's track "Only You
Only You (Yazoo song)
-Track listing:7": Mute/7 MUTE 20 # "Only You" - 3:10# "Situation" - 3:447": Sire/9 2-98447 # "Only You" - 3:10# "Winter Kills" - 4:0112": Mute/12 MUTE 20 # "Only You" - 3:10# "Situation" - 5:20CD: Mute/CD MUTE 20...

".

History

The name 'Flying Pickets' refers to mobile strikers who travel in order to join a picket. The band of six was founded by Brian Hibbard
Brian Hibbard
Brian Hibbard is a Welsh actor and singer, best remembered as the lead vocalist in the original Flying Pickets.Hibbard was born in Ebbw Vale, and after various job including teacher, steel worker, barman and chimney sweep, he formed the Flying Pickets with a group of other actors who had practised...

 in 1982 from a group of actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

s who had been active with him in John McGrath's '7:84
7:84
7:84 was a Scottish left-wing agitprop theatre group. The name comes from a statistic, published in The Economist in 1966, that 7% of the population of the UK owned 84% of the state's wealth....

 Theatre Group', a fringe theatre organisation who had sung a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...

 in their production of the 1981 play One Big Blow. The group chose the name The Flying Pickets as band members had played a part in the UK miners strikes of 1972 and 1974. The Flying Pickets came up with the then novel concept of transferring the art of a cappella to the pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

 scene. Joining Hibbard in the Group were Rick Lloyd
Rick Lloyd
Rick Lloyd is a British actor and musical director best known as a member of the original Flying Pickets who had a Christmas number 1 hit in 1983 with a cover of Yazoo's "Only You"...

 (who also wrote the music to One Big Blow), Gareth Williams, David Brett
David Brett
David Brett is an English actor, singer and arranger.He was one of the original members of The Flying Pickets, and arranged a number of the group's songs, including the number one hit Only You....

, Ken Gregson (Real name Kenneth Gregory) and Red Stripe (real name David Gittins). The members of the group were internationally renowned for their flamboyant appearance: Hibbard's huge sideburns, Stripe's thick eye-liner, and four others showing off gaudy suits and large hats. Two of the other original members, Ron Donachie and Christopher Ryan
Christopher Ryan
Christopher Ryan is an English actor. Ryan is perhaps best known for his role as Mike "The Cool Person" in the BBC comedy series The Young Ones.-Early life:...

 left the band before "Only You".

"Only You", their debut single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...

, was the UK Christmas number one in 1983 spending a total of five weeks at the top, and also doing well around Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, where it hit #17 in the spring of 1984. It emulated the success of the original Yazoo version.

Despite the radical Socialist political views of The Flying Pickets, the then Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

 proclaimed to much amusement that it was her favourite record. A second single, featuring Van McCoy
Van McCoy
Van Allen Clinton McCoy was an accomplished musician, music producer, arranger, songwriter, and orchestra conductor. He is known best for his 1975 internationally successful song "The Hustle", which is still played in dance halls and on radio to this day more than thirty years since his death...

's "When You're Young and in Love" originally written for Ruby and the Romantics reached number 7 in the UK, but their third, a cover of the Eurythmics
Eurythmics
Eurythmics were a British pop rock duo, formed in 1980, currently disbanded, but known to reunite from time to time. Consisting of members Annie Lennox and David A...

' "Who's That Girl
Who's That Girl? (Eurythmics song)
"Who's That Girl?" is a song recorded by British pop duo Eurythmics. It was written by Eurythmics members Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart and produced by Stewart...

" barely charted
Record chart
A record chart is a ranking of recorded music according to popularity during a given period of time. Examples of music charts are the Hit parade, Hot 100 or Top 40....

.

The height of the group's fame coincided with the Miners Strike of 1984, when the National Union of Mineworkers called strike action following the National Coal Board
National Coal Board
The National Coal Board was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the mines on "vesting day", 1 January 1947...

's decision to close 20 pits - a move which would claim some 20,000 jobs. The Flying Pickets were very vocal regarding their support of the miners during the dispute and came to blows with the record label Virgin after they picketed Drax Power Station in Yorkshire. They also performed benefit gigs for the miners. Hibbard himself claimed that their political beliefs probably had a detrimental effect regarding the group's mainstream image but it was a sacrifice they were willing to make, one well known record store refused to sell the groups albums due to their support of strike action.

In 1986 Hibbard and Stripe left the band and were replaced by Gary Howard and Hereward Kaye. Hibbard and Stripe tried to stay in the music industry, forming their own act called Brian and Stripe but their first and only single featuring a cover of Yazoo
Yazoo (band)
Yazoo are a British synthpop duo from Basildon, Essex. They had a number of Top 10 hits in the UK charts in the early 1980s...

's Mr Blue failed to chart, and they returned to their separate acting careers.

The Flying Pickets' line-up has been changing constantly throughout the years, but the band never died; since the Pickets began, there have been about 27 different band members. The last member of the original line-up, David Brett, left the band in 1990. However in 1994, the original line-up (minus Lloyd) reformed to record one more album.

Although since 1990 none of the founding members is part of the band anymore, The Flying Pickets keep recording albums and touring all over Europe and abroad.

Post-Picket activities

Brian Hibbard
Brian Hibbard
Brian Hibbard is a Welsh actor and singer, best remembered as the lead vocalist in the original Flying Pickets.Hibbard was born in Ebbw Vale, and after various job including teacher, steel worker, barman and chimney sweep, he formed the Flying Pickets with a group of other actors who had practised...

 - Founder and lead singer Hibbard went on to act in Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

, and then briefly in Coronation Street
Coronation Street
Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...

as Dougie Murray. He has since appeared regularly on Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

. He also had a brief role as "Bobby-John Downes" on the soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

, Emmerdale
Emmerdale
Emmerdale, is a long-running British soap opera set in Emmerdale , a fictional village in the Yorkshire Dales. Created by Kevin Laffan, Emmerdale was first broadcast on 16 October 1972...

in 2003 and then came back for another brief spell in 2006. He appeared in the cult 1997 film 'Twin Town' playing the part of the karaoke king , Dai Rhys. In 2006 Brian won the BAFTA Cymru
BAFTA Cymru
BAFTA Cymru is the Welsh branch of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.Formed in 1991, they hold an annual awards ceremony to recognise achievement by performers and production staff in Welsh-made films and television programmes...

 Award for Best Actor for his role as Tony in the film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 Little White Lies.". He also appeared in Doctors in 2005.

David Brett
David Brett
David Brett is an English actor, singer and arranger.He was one of the original members of The Flying Pickets, and arranged a number of the group's songs, including the number one hit Only You....

 - Has toured with The English Shakespeare Company and appeared as Mad Mike the Mechanic on BBC Children's TV programme Marlene Marlowe Investigates. In 2000 Brett played the part of Dedalus Diggle in the film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first novel in the Harry Potter series written by J. K. Rowling and featuring Harry Potter, a young wizard...

.

Gareth Williams - Has toured in a production of South Pacific
South Pacific (musical)
South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...

and also with The English Shakespeare Company; he played Nathan Detroit in a production of Guys & Dolls. He also worked with Jonathan Miller
Jonathan Miller
Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE is a British theatre and opera director, author, physician, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and...

 on a TV adaptation of Henry Mayhew
Henry Mayhew
Henry Mayhew was an English social researcher, journalist, playwright and advocate of reform. He was one of the two founders of the satirical and humorous magazine Punch, and the magazine's joint-editor, with Mark Lemon, in its early days...

's, London Labour, London Poor In 2009, he understudied and went on for Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart
Sir Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career in theatre and television for around half a century...

 in the Theatre Royal Haymarket production of Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...

.

David Gittins (aka Red Stripe) - Got a bread round after leaving the band, then decided to move to Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 where he got a job as a stage mechanist at The Victorian State Theatre. He also co-developed the techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...

 act Poets of the Machine.

Ken Gregson - Emigrated to Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 and has made an appearance on the soap, Neighbours
Neighbours
Neighbours is an Australian television soap opera first broadcast on the Seven Network on 18 March 1985. It was created by TV executive Reg Watson, who proposed the idea of making a show that focused on realistic stories and portrayed adults and teenagers who talk openly and solve their problems...

.

Rick Lloyd
Rick Lloyd
Rick Lloyd is a British actor and musical director best known as a member of the original Flying Pickets who had a Christmas number 1 hit in 1983 with a cover of Yazoo's "Only You"...

 - was a joint winner of a BAFTA TV Award for his work on the 1987 TV series Porterhouse Blue
Porterhouse Blue
Porterhouse Blue is a novel written by Tom Sharpe, first published in 1974. There was a Channel 4 TV series in 1987 based on the novel, adapted by Malcolm Bradbury...

, and was musical director for the 1999 film, Julie and the Cadillacs.'

Original

  • Brian Hibbard
    Brian Hibbard
    Brian Hibbard is a Welsh actor and singer, best remembered as the lead vocalist in the original Flying Pickets.Hibbard was born in Ebbw Vale, and after various job including teacher, steel worker, barman and chimney sweep, he formed the Flying Pickets with a group of other actors who had practised...

  • Ken Gregson
  • David Brett
    David Brett
    David Brett is an English actor, singer and arranger.He was one of the original members of The Flying Pickets, and arranged a number of the group's songs, including the number one hit Only You....

  • Red Stripe
  • Rick Lloyd
    Rick Lloyd
    Rick Lloyd is a British actor and musical director best known as a member of the original Flying Pickets who had a Christmas number 1 hit in 1983 with a cover of Yazoo's "Only You"...

  • Gareth Williams
  • Ron Donachie
  • Christopher Ryan
    Christopher Ryan
    Christopher Ryan is an English actor. Ryan is perhaps best known for his role as Mike "The Cool Person" in the BBC comedy series The Young Ones.-Early life:...


Other past members

  • Dylan Foster
  • Hereward Kaye
  • Gary Howard
  • Nick Godfrey
  • Lex Lewis
  • Ricky Payne
  • Henrik Wager
  • Paul Kissaun
  • Fraser Collins
  • Gavin Muir

Original albums

  • Live at the Albany Empire - (1982) - UK
    UK Albums Chart
    The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...

     #48
  • Lost Boys
    Lost Boys (album)
    -Track listing:#"Remember This" - 2:31#"I Heard It Through the Grapevine" - 3:31#"Disco Down" - 3:21#"So Close" - 3:23...

    - (1984) - UK #11
  • Flying Pickets Live - (1985)
  • Best of the Flying Pickets - (1988)
  • The Original Flying Pickets: Volume 1
    The Original Flying Pickets: Volume 1
    The Original Flying Pickets: Volume 1 is an album by the original Flying Pickets line-up. As with all of their albums, it contains a cappella cover versions of popular songs.-Track listing:#"Under the Bridge"...

    - (1994)
  • Best of the Flying Pickets - (2006)


Other albums featuring The Flying Pickets

  • Freudiana
    Freudiana
    Freudiana is a rock opera, originally intended to be the 11th album by The Alan Parsons Project, but by release time was the first album credited to Eric Woolfson as a solo artist, marking his final project with former collaborator Alan Parsons, who is credited as producer. After recording the...

    (1990)

The last Alan Parsons Project
The Alan Parsons Project
The Alan Parsons Project was a British progressive rock band, active between 1975 and 1990, consisting of singer Eric Woolfson and keyboardist Alan Parsons surrounded by a varying number of session musicians....

 album, which was released simply as a solo album by Eric Woolfson. It was soon after adapted into Eric Woolfson
Eric Woolfson
Eric Norman Woolfson was a Scottish songwriter, lyricist, vocalist, executive producer, pianist, and creator of The Alan Parsons Project. He has sold over 50 million albums world-wide....

's first musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 of the same name. The Flying Pickets sing all the vocals on two tracks, (6) "Funny You Should Say That" and (8) "Far Away From Home."

New albums

  • Blue Money - (1991)
  • The Warning - (1994)
  • Politics of Need - (1996)
  • Vox Pop - (1998)
  • Live in Hamburg - (2003)
  • Everyday - (2005)
  • Big Mouth - (2008)
  • Only Yule - (2010)

Singles

  • 1983 - "Only You" UK
    UK Singles Chart
    The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...

     #1
  • 1984 - "When You're Young and in Love" UK #7
  • 1984 - "So Close"
  • 1984 - "Who's That Girl
    Who's That Girl? (Eurythmics song)
    "Who's That Girl?" is a song recorded by British pop duo Eurythmics. It was written by Eurythmics members Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart and produced by Stewart...

    " UK #71
  • 1985 - "Only the Lonely"
  • 1985 - "Summer EP - Sealed with a Kiss
    Sealed with a Kiss
    "Sealed with a Kiss" is the title of a song written by Peter Udell and Gary Geld. It was first recorded by The Four Voices in 1960 as a single, but their recording was not a hit....

    "
  • 1986 - "Take My Breath Away
    Take My Breath Away
    American pop singer Jessica Simpson covered "Take My Breath Away" and released it as the third single from the album In This Skin in 2004. Her version was produced by Billy Mann. Simpson chose to cover this song because she felt that it was the theme song of her relationship with her then husband,...

    "
  • 1992 - "Tainted Love
    Tainted Love
    "Tainted Love" is a song composed by Ed Cobb, formerly of The Four Preps, which was originally recorded by Gloria Jones in 1965. It attained worldwide fame after being covered by Soft Cell in 1981, reaching number one in the UK Singles Chart, and has since been covered by numerous groups and...

    " / "The Warning"
  • 1992 - "Englishman in New York
    Englishman in New York
    "Englishman in New York" is a song by Sting, from his 1987 album ...Nothing Like the Sun. The "Englishman" in question is the famous eccentric Quentin Crisp. Sting wrote the song not long after Crisp moved from London to an apartment in New York's Bowery...

    " / "Purple Rain
    Purple Rain (song)
    "Purple Rain" is a power ballad by Prince and The Revolution. It is the title track from the 1984 album of the same name, which in turn is the soundtrack album for the 1984 film of the same name, and was released as the third single from that album. The song is a combination of rock, pop, gospel,...

    "


External links

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