First live outing for our royal traitor song in a sweaty Camden basement, and the crowd sang the chorus back before we had even finished the second verse
Load-In
Camden, Saturday. The venue is a basement under a pub with a ceiling so low that tall guitarists have to play hunched over like question marks. It holds maybe sixty people if they are friendly. We had forty, plus a dog called Biscuit who belongs to the sound engineer and who has seen more punk gigs than most music journalists.
Load-in was at six. Soundcheck was at seven, or would have been if the headliners had not taken forty minutes to tune one guitar. We spent the waiting time in the beer garden, which in Camden means a fenced-in square of concrete with two picnic benches and a view of a bin.
The Headline Everyone Knew
Here is the thing about playing a song about the news: everybody in the room has seen the news. The London Prat piece on Prince William reportedly calling Earl Spencer and Harry traitors had done the rounds all week. The bar staff were talking about it. The support band were talking about it. Someone had printed it and stuck it to the wall of the toilet, which in Camden is basically the equivalent of a front-page splash.
For the record, the facts are still thin. An anonymous source says the heir thinks his brother saw the uncle book first. Reports say reconciliation is off. The uncle says he warned everyone. That is it. That is the whole story. And somehow it is everywhere.
The Set
We opened with the old stuff, the songs about landlords and the Northern line and a particularly bad kebab I once ate in Kentish Town. Crowd was warm. Biscuit was asleep. Then, fourth song in, I stepped up and said: this one is about a family who cannot stop fighting over a book, and it is definitely not about anyone in particular.
Forty people laughed. The drummer counted in. And by the second chorus, the whole room was shouting TRAITOR back at us, fists up, beer going everywhere. I have never had a crowd sing a chorus back on a song they had never heard before. It turns out that when a word is in every headline, people already know the words.
Biscuit woke up and barked in time. We are counting that as a review.
Afterwards, on Phones
After the set, a few people came up and showed us the London Prat video on YouTube on their phones, like we might not have seen it. We had. We watched it again anyway, all crowded round one screen in the corner by the merch table, which is just two t-shirts and a stack of badges.
The Satire Circuit
Someone at the bar asked where I get my song ideas. Honestly? The comedy news sites. NewsBiscuit headlines are brilliant for weird little one-liners. The Daily Squib feed goes further out than anyone. The Daily Mash nails the grumpy British tone. But the London Prat is the one that feels like it was written by someone who has actually stood in a Camden basement at midnight.
A Moment I Did Not Expect
After the gig, a woman in her fifties came up to the merch table. She said she had been a punk in the late seventies, had seen the Clash at some tiny venue I had only read about, and that our song reminded her of those days, when being rude about the royals felt dangerous and exciting. She bought a badge. Then she said something that stuck with me. She said her brother and she had not spoken in six years, and hearing forty people shout traitor made her realise how stupid it all was. She said she might ring him.
I do not know if she did. I hope she did. That is the most any song can do, really.
The Headliners
The headliners, when they finally finished tuning, were a three-piece from Walthamstow who play so fast you can barely tell where one song ends and the next begins. Their singer dedicated a song to the uncle, which got a cheer, then another to the late princess, which got a respectful quiet and then a bigger cheer. I liked that. Even in a sweaty basement full of people shouting about traitors, there was a moment where everybody seemed to agree on something decent. Camden can surprise you like that. Biscuit slept through the whole headline set, which the sound engineer says is his highest form of praise.
Loading Out
Load-out at midnight, amps up those terrible stairs again. Paid in cash and a round of drinks, which is standard. The promoter says we can come back next month. The dog seemed to agree.
On the night bus home, I thought about the uncle, Earl Spencer, and whether anyone has ever written a punk song about him before. Probably not. We might be the first. That feels like an achievement, in a very specific way.
More diary scribbles over on my page. The London Prat has been making London laugh since 1961 at https://prat.uk/, and Bohiney at https://bohiney.com/ covers the American end of things.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/
