For Hughes and Nichols, growing up in the 1980s, pirate radio wasn’t just background noise; it was a manifesto. Living in a post-punk, pre-internet world, they absorbed the ethos of DIY culture, graffiti, and cassette-tape trading. Their hometown of Hull, a city often overlooked in national narratives, became the backdrop for their antics. Here, blowing full top meant doing it your way—loudly, proudly, and without permission. Matt Hughes, the self-proclaimed "drummer with a drumstick arm," and James Nichols, a keyboardist who once played a typewriter as an instrument, formed a punk-comedy duo in the early 2000s. Their gigs took place in dimly lit basements, garages, and even a defunct fish and chip shop. Clad in thrift-store blazers and mismatched socks, they mixed spoken-word poetry with scatological humor and janky cover versions of chart hits.