The Lancashire Hotpots were formed in 2006, and quickly became popular largely due to ‘He’s Turned Emo’ becoming an internet meme. With their folk tinged comic tunes, they have become a huge draw on the live circuit, as proved by the massive turnout on a rainy Friday night. To give credence to their cult status, many of the audience were turned out in flat caps and waistcoats.

Opening with ‘Let’s Get Leathered’, the glasses were raised and a party atmosphere ensued. Drinking was very much the theme of the evening, with a repartoire including such titles as ‘Bitter Lager Cider Ale and Stout’, ‘I’ll ‘ave one wi’yer’, ‘Beer Olympics’, and ‘Perfect Pint’.

Clad in flat caps and multicoloured waistcoats, the band looked like they had stepped out of a Hovis advert directed by Timmy Mallett. Seamlessy blending traditional folk music with pantomime, many of the songs came with a ready made audience response that could rival John Otway’s call and response version of ‘House Of The Rising Sun’. Audience participation was very much the order of the day, with a ‘YMCA’ style spelling out the letters during the song ‘Chav’, and I’m pretty sure that the Rescue Rooms have never played host to a conga line before.

The band have a hardcore following who know every word and action for the favourites, and with airplay on BBC 6 Music, Radio Two, and The Sunday Alternative, they’ve achieved greatness without chart success, but who cares about the charts these days?

Determined to play until 9:59:59, the club cerfew, they squeezed every drop out of their allocated stage time, and the crowd loved every one of those vital minutes. Appropriately for a Friday night, they ended with ‘Chippy Tea’. Returning for a fifteen minute encore, the power ballad ‘The Girl From Bargain Booze’ is a song criminally overlooked by those shortsighted fools in charge of compiling those soppy CD collections every Valentines Day.

How these guys are still doing day jobs is beyond me, if this was the 1970s they would have been given their own Saturday evening television show. Then again, from what we’re learning about 1970s light entertainment, it was a lucky escape all round. Seriously though, the Hotpots deserve the ability to go and tell their bosses to go and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.

Harnessing inspiration from The Barron Knights and Weird Al Yancovic, The Lancashire Hotpots are the only band brave enough to cover ‘Gangnam Style’ reworked as ‘Chips and Gravy’. I might be sticking my neck out here, but I do believe that if Noel Coward was still alive and working, this would be exactly the gig he would be doing.

For the record, they finished at six minutes past ten.