If no one was going to rank 2019’s Encore or 2021’s Protest Songs over Specials and More Specials, they were far better than a naysayer might have suggested a Specials album would be without the input of Dammers, who after all had been the band’s architect, chief songwriter and de facto leader in their heyday. Both albums were admirably uninterested in simply warming over the old Specials sound: you got the feeling that the same restless spirit that had powered Hall’s solo career was behind their diversions into everything from funk to Frank Zappa covers.

Horace: I think age has filtered a few things. The only thing I watch on television is the news, really. In 2009 he reflected on the performance, saying: "Bestival was a trial run. We did an unannounced slot so we could just could turn up, nameless. It was perfect." Horace: I’m the only participating member of the Specials who still lives in Coventry and no, I haven’t been approached to do something. I would like to see money put by to provide for music lessons for children in schools, a proper legacy. I’m more interested in that than “Here’s a couple of boutique hotels”, and who needs another wine bar for goodness sake?Terry: The last thing that I saw that I really, really liked was the Fat White Family. They were funny and everything you wanted. Bit druggy, funny, they look really good.

At Specials gigs we would have older skinhead men crying and opening up, and that was quite incredible because we were able to reach people that we wouldn’t otherwise have been able to reach,” says Langan. “A lot of fans of The Specials are men of a certain age who probably have never really opened up about their mental health before.” Panter had hoped that if the chemotherapy did its job, the band would be able to get into the studio by March next year. It is out of this world,” said Mr Hall. “I never believed it could be so good. I had seen him on television but it was never as exciting as this.” Terry, as a lifelong Man United fan, what do you think Ole Gunnar Solskjær has to do to get the manager’s job full time?EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Kate Middleton stayed home to help George with exams as William travelled to Singapore this month. Now, proud parents face a dilemma over whether to send their elder son to single-sex school next His political awakening came in his teenage years “when I discovered that working men’s clubs had a colour bar on their doors. You could only get in if you were white. That really shook me. I couldn’t work it out.” It comes after tributes flooded in for the music legend, who rose to fame with mega hits like Ghost Town, Gangsters and Too Much Too Young.

I didn't do anything wrong': Farmer jailed for hiring diggers to illegally rip up trees along river bank speaks out after he is freed from prison and says works were needed to stop flooding In 2019, they released a new album, Encore, which featured Khan performing on a new song, 10 Commandments. It charted at No 1 in the UK albums chart – their highest-ever album placing. “Achieving a first No 1 album in our 60s restored our faith in humanity,” Hall told the Quietus. Ska is a combined musical element of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues.Then came the Specials. The band released their self-titled debut album in October 1979 and received mass acclaim for blending a punk sensibility – and sharp lyrics about the degradation of modern Britain – with the traditional Jamaican ska sound, even explicitly updating hits by the likes of Toots and the Maytals, Prince Buster and Dandy Livingstone. Lynval: I like Nite Klub. It’s a bit of a naughty one: “I won’t dance in a club like this/ All the girls are slags/ And the beer tastes just like piss.” It’s what we guys, when we get together, we talk about. We don’t shout it out loud to people. I quite enjoy that. Fun Boy Three disbanded after just two years, with Hall spending the next two decades moving between musical projects, including his bands Colourfield, Terry, Blair & Anouchka and Vegas. I’m a Cov kid, who grew up as all the industry collapsed around us in the 80s and 90s, losing perhaps 100,000 jobs in that time from Jaguar, Triumph, Dunlop, Rover, Rolls-Royce, Morris, Alvis, Massey Ferguson. I wonder how you see the city today with so many of those jobs replaced by call centres? People who had repetitive production line jobs at least had the pride of being part of making something that was known, in some cases, worldwide. Now they just get shouted at by irate customers on the phone.

Charity Commission launches investigation into 'rotten' RNLI after volunteers accuse the 200-year-old lifeboat charity of covering up 'assaults, sexism and bullying' Hall was featured on the studio album True Love by Toots and the Maytals. The album won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album and showcased many notable musicians. [16] He said: 'The chemo treatment starts favourably but it seems that it would be March 2023 at the earliest before we'd be in any position to work. He is in and out of hospital to stabilise the diabetes issue and also to manage pain. It then goes quiet.' What good is this grotesque circus doing for those who lost loved ones to Covid? QUENTIN LETTS on the pandemic inquiryDescribing the song in a previous interview, Hall said: "The only way I could deal with the experience was to write about it, in a song. It was very difficult for me to write, but I wanted to communicate my feelings."