1996 was a big year for Jarvis Cocker but, more than that, it was a big year for Jarvis Cocker’s arse. His band Pulp were riding high after 1995’s Different Class had turned them from cult indie concern into one of the country’s biggest bands but Cocker was about to become very well-known for entirely different reasons, for this was the year that he took umbrage with Michael Jackson doing his second coming act at the Brits and decided to go and stand on the stage and wiggle his bum for a bit. It was a bum wiggle that shocked the nation (well, it mainly cheered the nation up a bit but for the benefit of the tabloids, it shocked them, OK?).
Now you can get the full deep dive on this earth-shaking arse-shimmy. A few years ago, this writer spoke to Marc Marot and got the skinny on what happened. Former music exec Marot was managing director of Island Records at the time. Let him set the scene for you: “Island had had a particularly good year and I had two, maybe three, tables at the Brits,” Marot recalled. “Jarvis and all of Pulp were on my table, along with my head of talent, Nick Angel and also Roger Ames, who was the chairman of Polygram.”
