Hundreds of lost indie bands found in Camden Lock

MORE than 300 indie bands have been discovered in Camden Lock after it was drained for repairs.

The musicians, caked in thick mud and entangled with shopping trolleys, empty cider cans and discarded crack cocaine wrappers, are being cleaned and restored by volunteers.

One particularly tough knot of human detritus turned out to be Shed Seven, The Shop Assistants and Klaxons.

Workman Tom Logan said: “Once the worst of the filth was cleaned off, they got Shed Seven running and we heard a brief burst of Going For Gold before they stuttered to a halt.”

The bands, thought to have blundered into the canal while drunk and wearing shades at night, are being pieced together by volunteers who have appealed for help from anyone who read the NME between the late 80s and 2002.

EMI executive Joseph Turner said: “It’s all very well putting these bands back together, but there’s only a limited amount of mid-afternoon festival slots and I want those kept free for younger, more attractive folktronica acts.”

Conservationist Carolyn Ryan described the find as “a living relic of more androgynous times”.

She said: “Working out whether a man in skinny jeans was a member of the Wombats, the Guillemots or the Pigeon Detectives is very hard.

“And drummers often have no idea what band they were in because they were at the back and not paying attention.”

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Rugby beaten by football

RUGBY is to end after admitting defeat in the battle for ball game supremacy.

It has long been acknowledged that rugby and football were locked in a battle to the death, with the nation only having enough emotions to invest into one ball-based activity.

The Institute for Studies declared victory for football after comparing television viewing figures, amounts of shiny shirts sold and the number of players who are sort-of-celebrities in America.

FA chairman Greg Dyke said: “This is a great day for the nation. We’ve got only one sport with a field, a ball and goals that’s really popular in this country.

“It’s called football.

“Like wrestling on World of Sport, rugby is a once-amusing novelty long past its sell-by date.”

Prop forward Tom Booker admitted: “Rugby’s been a great way for me to explain away my alcoholism, desire to rub up against other men, and penchant for stockings and suspenders.

“But all those things are acceptable in society now so I can throw away my hooped jersey and stand proud.”

The end of rugby is expected to pass unnoticed in most of the country, with the only people affected being the upper middle class, the Welsh, and isolated pockets of Scotland and the North-West.

Dyke concluded: “I call upon the rugby league to do the decent thing, dissolve itself, and let us all move on from this whole silly business.”

When told that there are actually two kinds of rugby, rugby league and rugby union, he said: “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”