HMP Hull’s Hedon Road Jail
The Hole in the Wall
I got the words for this song in the mid 1970s from one of the regular ‘singers’, at The Bag of Shoddy Folk Club, Clive Mansel. Clive, who learnt the song from his father, was a big lad of Irish Catholic extraction, with an equally large personality and he loved to sing. His two favourite songs were John McCormack’s "Macushla", and the Peter Dawson’s song "On the Road to Mandalay", and when singing them, what he lacked in vocal dexterity he made up for in enthusiasm.
Some nights, if the Folk Club were running over, we would put him on to sing to help clear the room. One night I told him that the Fylde Folk Festival was running the ‘Worst Singer in the World Competition’ and that he should enter.
He was disappointed though when he only came second.
