As stars of The Young Ones and The Comic Strip Presents… Nigel Planer, Adrian Edmondson and the late Rik Mayall personified the game-changing early-80s alternative comedy movement. In 1983, a year before This Is Spinal Tap, the trio (along with Peter Richardson) won over the UK’s headbangers as Bad News, a hopeless, hapless NWOBHM-style band first showcased on The Comic Strip Presents, returning in the flesh to actually play alongside Ozzy and Def Leppard at the 1986 Monsters of Rock festival.
Two albums (produced by Queen’s Brian May) followed, reissued late last year as Every Mistake Imaginable – The Complete Frilly Pink Years 1987-1988. Planer’s fan-favourite character, long-suffering rhythm guitarist Den Dennis, then made an unexpected return under the moniker Almost Bad News, denting the iTunes chart with Axogram, a new recording of a metal epic originally penned in the 80s.
