THE LAST TURKEY

"One of Britain's longest running and best loved rock acts split up today after Dave announced his retirement from Chas & Dave" - The Telegraph

It's a sad day when of two Britain's finest musicians of all time decide to call it a day. They produced some of the great classics of British music from the past three decades. Ageless tunes such as Gertcha, Rabbit, Romford Rap, Ossie's Dream (Spurs Are On Their Way To Wembley) and so many more. However, my personal favourite has to be the 1986 smash hit "Snooker Loopy".



"Snooker Loopy" is a comic song about snooker. It was released as a single in May 1986 and entered the UK Singles Chart, reaching #6 and featured snooker players Steve Davis, Dennis Taylor, Willie Thorne, Terry Griffiths and Tony Meo, as backing vocalists under the name 'The Matchroom Mob' - Matchroom Sport being the company owned by promoter Barry Hearn which managed all these top snooker professionals at the time.

The lyrics are a mild satire on the style and antics of the players involved: "old Willie Thorne; his hair's all gone" for example. The verse on Steve Davis also makes light of the famous 1985 World Snooker Championship final and his missed black in the final frame.

Chas & Dave still perform the song at their live shows with the original lyrics, even though most of the players mentioned have now retired from the game, although some are still known as part of the BBC commentary team.


Also, an amazing nugget that is not widely known: Chas and Dave played on one the biggest rap singles of all time - My Name Is, by Eminem.

In the seventies Chas & Dave were prolific session musicians before their own thing took off, playing on many albums for a wide range of artists. One such album was Labi Siffre's 'Remember My Song' from 1975. One of the tracks on this album - 'I Got The' - was sampled by Eminem on his breakthrough hit 'My Name Is' and is the main musical refrain of the track. Chas is playing guitar and Dave is playing bass.