The Fall In Fives

   P is for... Palais The Hammersmith Palais closed its doors for the last time in 2007, 88 years after it opened as Hammersmith Palais de Danse. It was demolished in 2012, and the site is now occupied by student accommodation . The Fall's performance on 1 April 2007 was released in 2009 on CD and DVD as Last Night At The Palais , and is one of their best live albums, in the author's opinion. Damon Albarn's 'supergroup The Good, the Bad & the Queen had played the venue the night before, a gig that was billed as the venue's final show. However, neither this nor The Fall's performance were actually the last concert to be played there, as Groove Armada played there on 3 May. Pan Bahar The rather startling opening line to ' Dedication Not Medication ' – 'Pierce Brosnan how dare you prescribe / sad grief and bed wet pills?' – refers to the ex-Bond actor's role in promoting Indian chewing tobacco Pan Bahar, one of the side effects of which is...

  N is for... Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) is perhaps best known for his 1955 novel Lolita . He also wrote Bend Sinister  (1947), a dystopian novel in which the hero is persecuted by the totalitarian government of the ‘Party of the Average Man’.  Nadsat Speaking of dystopian novels, Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange (1962) features an Anglo-Russian argot called Nadsat. 'Yarbles' (as in 'To Nkroachment: Yarbles' - also the title of a 2014 live album ) is Nadsat for 'testicles'.  Prior to joining The Fall, Brix played bass in a band called Banda Dratsing (Claus Castenskiold, who provided the sleeve art for  Perverted By Language / Wonderful and Frightening was the drummer). 'Hotel Blöedel' and 'God-Box' were both based on old Banda Dratsing tunes (‘One More Time For The Record’ and '‘Can’t Stop The Flooding’). Banda Dratsing is also Nadsat, meaning 'fighting band'. Napoleon When Pamela Vander announced on Instagram that th...

  My first Fall-themed cryptic crossword was, on reflection, a bit convoluted and complex, because I endeavoured to make every single clue a Fall title or a word/phrase from one of the group's lyrics. This led me to get a little tied up in knots on occasion. This time, I simplified things a bit and made it a 'regular' cryptic that happened to have a Fall theme. If you haven't had a go yet, you can download it here . The Solution Definitions are underlined; answers in red; Fall connections in blue. Across 8 Country lost its exoticism somehow (6) MEXICO Anag. of exoticism - its (Mexico Wax Solvent) 9 Loss of daughter causes disposition to become low (3) MOO mood (disposition) - d (daughter)  10 Central Bhutan - a hot state (4) UTAH ut (centre of Bhutan) + a + h (hot) 11 Danger ably diverted, for the most part (2,3,5) BY AND LARGE Anag. (diverted) of danger ably 12 Solitary-sounding advance (4) LOAN Homophone of lone  13 One who triturates church vessel (6) CHEWE...

  M is for... Tamsin Middleton Alongside Simon ‘Ding’ Archer, a member of As Able As Kane, who supported The Fall on several occasions. She contributed backing vocals to ‘ Touchy Pad ’ from 2013’s The Remainderer . Midwatch In 1998, MES appeared in Mark Aerial Waller’s short film Glow Boys (see G ). The following year, he featured in another Waller film, Midwatch . It was set in the galley of a ship returning from Operation Mosaic , a series nuclear tests conducted by Britain in 1956. Waller's website describes the film as: ‘…an intensely claustrophobic scenario shot in infrared that depicts the plight of two individuals trapped in the galley of a ship returning from the first British nuclear test… the characters, played by Steve Evets and Mark E. Smith of the band The Fall, act out their frustrations with each other in a comic rambling exchange.’ Presumably inspired by his experience of appearing in Waller’s film, the lyric of 'Midwatch 1953' from The Unutterable consis...

     M is for... Bernard MacMahon Associate producer on The Marshall Suite , it's possible that he was the original source of the nearly-always-misquoted line, 'if it's me and your granny on bongos, then it's a Fall gig' (see G ). Richard Madeley  TV presenter best known for hosting the long-running daytime show This Morning alongside his wife Judy Finnigan. When discussing online impersonators with Q 's Ted Kessler in 2015 ('I had these fellas saying they were me... three on Facebook, two on the Twitter’) MES made the unlikely claim that he had used technology invented by Madeley to deal with the problem. Mansell Rooms / The Manzil Room Scene of the infamous dust-up between Marc Riley and MES that resulted in Smith sporting a black eye when the pair were interviewed on Australian TV the next day. In The Big Midweek , Steve Hanley says that the incident took place in a nightclub called the Mansell Rooms - however, it seems likely that the name of the night...