Fat and Frantic
English pop-music band

Fat and Frantic are a London-based pop music group who write all their own material, play a wide variety of musical styles ranging from manic skiffle through rock 'n roll to a cappella which they sometimes described as "piffle" – a mix of punk and skiffle.
Background
Formed in 1985, Fat and Frantic was a particular favourite on the UK live venues and University circuit playing some 300 gigs between 1989 and 1992, as well as playing frequently at the Greenbelt Festival and at Reading Festival. Its best-known song was "Last Night My Wife Hoovered My Head", one chorus of which was sung in French. The group were also somewhat notorious for once receiving a particularly bad live review from Damon Wise in the music paper Sounds, which closed with the line "Fat and Frantic ruined my weekend and I hate them for it", a line which they went on to use extensively in their publicity.
In July 2011, Fat and Frantic re-formed some 26 years after the first time around to play some live gigs (mainly) in the South of England. In preparation for the tour, all of their back catalogue became available on iTunes as well as 2 brand new recordings.
In 2013, the band reformed one more time for a reunion appearance at the Greenbelt Festival's 40th anniversary.
The end of August 2019 saw Fat and Frantic reforming once again for a brief appearance on Winchester High Street. The busking set was in aid of Winchester Hospice.
In October 2021, they presented F+FJukebox, a concert broadcast on YouTube, as a fundraiser for the charity Help Harry Help Others.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5437232. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1989, 1992 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fat and Frantic” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.