The Knees Up Band

From 1974 to 1976 The Knees Up Band played rather too fast and very silly skiffle around the West Midlands, especially Moseley and Kings Heath.

They appeared on the same bills if not actually in the same rooms as the Kursaal Flyers and Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney and even played Birmingham Town Hall.

A chance encounter this year revealed that all seven of the band's most regular members were still alive, just as daft and, possibly, slightly more musical, and Niall Macaulay still has his famous length of red plastic pipe.

So for one evening only forget the grim present and dive back into the innocent 1970s. Flares optional.