How Cliff Richard inspired Scottish rockers

How Cliff Richard inspired Scottish rockers on a drunken night out

Biffy Clyro are coy - or fed up - when it comes to explaining their band’s teasingly odd name.
Though no-one at Sheffield Arena on Saturday night will care about that, it still needs to be outlined to the rest of the world.
The Scots rockers joke about their origins but the best explanation concerns a pen...
One of the members supposedly owned a Cliff Richard pen - a “Cliffy Biro” - which was accidentally spoonerised on a drunken night out. Cliffy Biro becomes Biffy Clyro when you transpose the first letters of each word.
Simon Neil appeared to confirm this as the real reason in a 2010 interview with Eve Jackson on France 24, and said that it was “a stupid name” that was often “awkward” to explain its origins when the band started and when not many had heard their music. But that aside Biffy Clyro are fresh from a triumphant return to live appearances and are on their their biggest arena tour to date in the wake of their eagerly anticipated new double-album ‘Opposites’. Again produced by Garth Richardson in Los Angeles, ‘Opposites’ signals the band’s growing ambition with twenty-two tracks spread across two discs: ‘The Sand at the Core of Our Bones’ and ‘The Land at the End of Our Toes’.
Biffy Clyro’s tour in support of ‘Only Revolutions’ – which earned a Mercury Prize nomination and sold in excess of 600,000 copies – saw them elevated to arena and festival headlining status as they played three sold-out UK tours which included a landmark show at Wembley Arena. Their status as one of Britain’s most exciting bands was reflected with Best Live Band awards from both NME and Q in 2011.
Their ferocious set is lit by jets of blue flame, burning red teardrops falling from the rigging and, most importantly, three new tracks.

 

What do Cliff Richard have in common?

What do Cliff Richard, a Goon and a Soviet Spy have in common? 

BEST OF BRITISH
1. Which English county can boast 13 of the 40 place-names in the United Kingdom that begin with the letter Z?
2. Which Scottish town at the foot of Ben Nevis was rebuilt as a garrison in 1690 and named after the reigning monarch?
3. Which charity and pressure group was founded in Didsbury in 1889 by a Mrs Robert Williamson, as a circle of ladies pledging themselves not to wear feathers in their hats?

Missing link: George Orwell, Spike Milligan, Vivien Leigh, Kim Philby, Joanna Lumley, William Makepeace Thackeray and Cliff Richard. In which country were they all born?

4. Which is the only pub on the Monopoly board?
5. Which British supermarket chain has the highest market share, with more than 30 per cent?
6. Which Welsh county is an amalgamation of the three former counties: Breconshire, Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire?
7. In which British city would you find a cathedral at each end of Hope Street and football clubs on opposite sides of Stanley Park?
8. Which college has an ‘e’ at Cambridge but not at Oxford?
9. Traditionally, the flat racing season begins in March and ends in November. At which racecourse?
10. Bristol, Bodmin, Horwich, Liverpool South, Warwick, Port Talbot, Southampton Airport and Tiverton. What’s the connection?
SCREEN IDOLS
1. Ashley, aged 17, and Pudsey, then aged six. What did they win in May last year?
2. Who is the only member of the Simpsons family who is not named after a close relative of the series creator Matt Groening?
3. Max Zorin, Dr Kananga, Emilio Largo, Karl Stromberg, General Orlov and, in the new one, Raoul Silva. Who are they?
4. Which TV drama series, first shown in 2006, had the working title ‘Ford Cortina’?
5. Four of the men were dancers, one was a gymnast, one was a former professional baseball player and only one was an actor. All seven women were dancers. In which 1954 film?
6. Between 1993 and 2004, who most famously broadcast on KACL 780 AM?

. The American broadcasting company HBO, makers of the television series The Sopranos, Sex And The City (starring Sarah Jessica Parker, right), The Wire and many others. What do the letters HBO stand for?8. The Sherman brothers, Richard and Robert, won Oscar for Best Song in 1964 for one of their many songs in Mary Poppins. Which one?
9. In 2010, Doctor Who sent the Doctor and Amy to Arles to meet Vincent Van Gogh. The episode was written by which British screenwriter and director, whose films have grossed more than $1 billion?
10. Until it was overtaken a couple of years ago by the Super Bowl, the highest rated individual programme in American TV history was the last episode of a long-running and much-loved comedy series, which in 1983 was watched by nearly 106 million viewers. Which series?

AROUND THE WORLD

1. George Orwell, Spike Milligan, Vivien Leigh, Kim Philby, Joanna Lumley, William Makepeace Thackeray and Cliff Richard. In which country were they all born?
2. It started life as an insurance office. After the revolution it became a jail and later the offices of the KGB. What is this building in central Moscow called?
3. In which major Commonwealth city are there areas called Paddington, Kensington, Dulwich Hill, Woolwich, Greenwich and Balmoral?
4. Two EU member states give their heads of government the title of Chancellor. Germany is one; what is the other?
5. Which island lies approximately 56 miles due south of Sicily?
6. What did Cape Canaveral become in 1963, before becoming Cape Canaveral again in 1973?
7. What is the most visited amusement or theme park outside the US? It hosted 13.65 million people in 2009.
8. Which Englishman is believed to have been the first person to set foot on all six inhabited continents (i.e. not including Antarctica)?
9. In which South American country would you find the source of the river Amazon?
10. What relatively unusual occurrence was recorded in the Sahara Desert on February 18, 1979?