As you’ve probably heard, Mark E Smith passed away last night at the age of 60. He had not been well.
For the uninitiated, Smith was the chronically Mancunian, fag ash-throated, perennially shit-faced lead singer of The Fall – simultaneously that half-cut, barely lucid bloke in the pub you don’t want anywhere near you and a national treasure of sorts.
With his passing, it’d be utterly remiss of us to once again share the clip of Smith being charged with reading out the football scores live on BBC Final Score in 2005, alongside the similarly late, great and ever so slightly more professional Tim Gudgin…
This is the The Fall song that Ray Stubbs mentions, shortly before having his haircut likened to that of a “murderer in Strangeways”.
Indeed, ‘Theme From Sparta FC’ was used as the lead-in music for Final Score for several years.
RIP Mark E Smith (1957-2018)