The Grumbleweeds
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The Grumbleweeds are an award winning British comedy band, performing music and comedy. They were mostly popular on radio and television in the 1980s.
[edit] Career
The group was formed by Robin Colvill and Graham Walker in Leeds in 1962. They performed on the northern club circuit and pubs in Yorkshire, and occasionally abroad in Germany. The band turned professional in 1967, and were by now a five-piece with the addition of Maurice Lee, a talented singer and guitarist, and brothers Albert and Carl Sutcliffe, who played keyboards and guitar as well as vocals. The group appeared on Opportunity Knocks, and New Faces, but although they did not win either talent competition, their performance brought them valuable exposure, enough to warrant a recording contract with Philips. The first release on this label was an album of serious songs, In a Teknikolor Dreem, which was produced by Alan Hawkshaw and remains highly collectable today. The group continued to release a mixture of serious and comedy singles and albums throughout the 1970s and 1980s, although none of these charted.
In 1973, the group secured further television exposure with a series The Coal Hole Club, which was shown on BBC One in the early evenings and aimed squarely at children. The show mixed the group's cabaret repertoire of impressions with fast-moving comedy and music. Further exposure came with an appearance on The Wheeltappers And Shunters Social Club in 1975, where the group performed an abridged version of their fast-moving live show to an enthusiastic audience. The show's producer Johnnie Hamp would later go on to produce The Grumbleweeds Radio Show, a series of television programmes made between 1983 and 1988 for Granada Television mixing elements of the live show with fast-moving sketches.
But it was on radio that the Grumbleweeds made their biggest breakthrough, with a successful BBC Radio 2 series, The Grumbleweeds Radio Show, running from 1979 to 1988. Fifteen series were recorded, and it received the "Best Radio Show" award from The Television and Radio Industries Awards in 1983.
In late 1987, brothers Albert and Carl Sutcliffe decided to leave the group, leaving the others augmented by backing musicians for the final television programmes which were shown in 1988. By 1989, slimmed down to a three-piece, they secured a new BBC Radio 2 series, Someone And The Grumbleweeds, which ran for three years. Maurice Lee decided to leave the group in 1997, and was briefly replaced by comedian Tony Joe. Lee is now a solo musician (performing under the nom de plume of Maurice Grumbleweed) and paints in his spare time.
The Grumbleweeds, now reduced to their two founder members Colvill and Walker, remain a popular attraction on the cabaret circuit. The duo have continued performing in most aspects of entertainment, appearing in television series such as Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Heartbeat and Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere.
