Monday, June 18, 2012

Acappellaobit: Brian Hibbard

Brian Hibbard - one of the Flying Pickets - has died.

Hibbard was a member of the briefly-popular a capella Flying Pickets, who snagged a Christmas number one with a cover of Yazoo's Only You. The band suffered rapidly declining chart positions with subsequent singles, something they blamed on their radical politics and support for the striking miners, but equally possibly down to the short half-life of a novelty act.

Even so, the band continues to tour, although not featuring any of the original members. Brian and famously-bald Picket Red Stripe quit the group in 1986, and tried to recapture the magic formula in an instrument-free act Brian And Stripe - even down to covering a Yazoo song, Mr Blue. (A Yazoo song which rhymed with Only You, what's more.) The world wasn't especially interested, and Hibbard quickly returned to acting.

He had a degree of success, landing a stay in Coronation Street as Doug Murray, a mechanic who somehow suffered a schoolgirl crush from Tracy Barlow; he also popped up in Doctor Who, Pobol Y Cwm and EastEnders. He had a part in Ifans-twin vehicle movie Twin Town.

Brian Hibbard was 65; he had been unwell with prostate cancer.


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