Black Lace, ‘Agadoo’: The Sound of Butlins-Core

Black Lace
‘Agadoo’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
#2 on August 12, 1984

1. Ahhhhhh

Adults these days are often horrified when they see kids doing TikTok Dances or Fortnite emotes. We wouldn’t do those goofy moves, they say. We were cool.

Come on. Be hones.

Not only were we goofy, we scaled heights of embarrassment that these zoomers couldn’t imagine. Back in the 80s and 90s, you couldn’t attend a wedding or birthday party without being forced to do some stupid dance. You would flap your arms to The Birdie Song or sit on the sticky dancefloor and Rock The Boat while your drunk aunt screamed in your ear, “Isn’t this FUN?!”.

It was fun, but fun of a specific kind, peculiar to this era. Long after the days of folk dances, which were organic parts of a shared culture; before the current modern age of polished, personalised, slightly lonely entertainment.

This kind of entertainment, so popular in the 70s and 80s, was best embodied by the Butlins Redcoat.

Butlins was (and still is) a chain of holiday camps, the first of which appeared in 1936 in Skegness. Each camp had a team of hosts who wore the iconic red coats. A Recoat’s main responsibility was entertainment—by any means necessary. That could mean balloon animals for the kids, dirty jokes for the dads, and singalongs for everyone.

Redcoat entertainment needed to be stuff that was quick, easy, reproducable, and that appealed to people from a variety of backgrounds. Songs like The Birdie Song or Rock The Boat were perfect for Butlins, especially as they came with easy-to-follow dances. This entire genre of music could be described as Butlins-core

Butlins-core mainly stayed in Butlins (and, later, on the Costa Del Sol). Occasionally, however, the music and rituals would spill out into other environments that required very structured fun, such as weddings.

And, on some dark days, it would infect radio playlists and, eventually, the charts.

2. Gaaaaaah

Black Lace emerged from late 60s Yorkshire as an honest rock band with dreams of making real records.

A decade on the holiday circuit soon knocked that out of them. Black Lace were huge at Butlins, especially in the camp’s spiritual home of Skegness. Their secret was that they were ruthless about giving the audience a good time. Whatever the crowd wanted, they got it from Black Lace.

The band did make a few attempts at broader pop stardom. In 1976, they released a scratchy EP of demo-quality cover versions. A year later, they covered Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

The latter might be the worst thing in the entire Black Lace discography. It might literally be the worst thing ever recorded.

Around this time, another Yorkshire band were breaking through. Smokie had, after years of disappointment, cracked the Top 40 with 1975’s ‘If You Think You Know How To Love Me’, followed by Stateside success with their cover of ‘Living Next Door To Alice’. Black Lace carefully observed Smokie’s ascent to fame and devised their own strategy for success.

Just… copy Smokie. That was it, that was the whole plan.

Step one was to shuffle the lineup. Alan Barton had the most Smoke-ish voice, so he was promoted to lead singer. Step two was to rip off Smokie’s hit ‘Oh Carol’ (allegedly) with their song ‘Mary Ann’. In fairness, step three was something Smokie hadn’t attempted. Black Lace entered the Eurovision.

‘Mary Ann’ was Britain’s 1979 Song For Europe and finished 7th on the night behind winners Israel (and also, more importantly, behind Ireland). The single got a big release, but peaked at Number 42.

The Eurovision is usually career poison for British pop acts, and Black Lace were no exception. They did find some success on the continent, including both East and West Germany, but apart from that it seemed clear that the band had peaked.

Black Lace dwindled until only two people were left: founding member and Smokie-alike singer Alan Barton, plus Colin Routh, who had only joined in 1976. The duo had only two ways of retaining their dignity: either split up or hire a new band.

But this is Black Lace. They don’t know the meaning of the word “dignity”.

3. Doo doo doo

Barton & Routh did not write ‘Agadoo’. They’re not even among the first dozen artists to record it.

The exact origins of ‘Agadoo’ are unclear—the credited songwriter claims he heard someone whistling the melody in Morocco. Regardless, the first recorded version appeared in French in 1970 with the title ‘Agadou’ and it is…surprisingly not terrible? It’s still basically ‘Agadoo’, so it’s not good, but it’s got quite a funky bassline. Plus, everything sounds sexy in French.

The song became an inescapable sound at Club Med in the 70s. Artists recorded new versions in their home countries, with Canada, Germany, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Spain all getting to join in the fun/agony.

A British version didn’t appear until a decade later, when a novelty group called The Snowmen featured it on their album, Hokey Cokey Party: The Album. This version, now titled ‘Agadoo’, was sandwiched between two other Butlins-core classics: ‘Superman’ and ‘The Birdie Song’.

(There was a rumour that The Snowmen was a secret side project of Ian Dury. One of their singers definitely sounds like Ian, but apparently it’s not him.)

Where others might see Hokey Cokey Party as a tacky novelty record, Black Lace saw a career template. They correctly guessed that ‘The Birdie Song’ had the potential to be a huge UK chart hit, but they were beaten to the punch by German act, The Tweets. Undeterred, they released their version of ‘Superman’ and soon found themselves on Top Of The Pops.

‘Superman’ is an instructions song, a kind of ‘Cha Cha Slide’ for people with two left feet. The original Italian track, ‘Gioca Jouer’, had been a 1981 hit on the Mediterranean coast, and an STD-like spread across Europe as holidaymakers brought it back home with them.

The song is kind of charming in Italian. In English, it is just Alan Barton shouting verbs at a visibly distressed Top Of The Pops audience while a team of professional dancers try to make this look “cool” and “a good idea”.

(The dancers do a good job, especially that fierce punk girl.)

1984 saw Black Lace unleash their version of ‘Agadoo’, which became a cultural phenomenon far beyond ‘Superman’ or ‘The Birdie Song’. The single peaked at Number 2, with only ‘Careless Whisper’ denying them the top spot.

To be clear though: nobody has ever liked ‘Agadoo’. If anything, ‘Agadoo’-hate peaked in 1984 and has softened over time. Spitting Image’s parody, ‘The Chicken Song’, was a monster hit because everyone wanted to stick it to those Black Lace.

But there is also a kind of genius to Black Lace’s ‘Agadoo’. Barton and Gibb understood the psyche of British holidaymakers, especially the ones who go to Spain and eat only chips. They stripped the song of anything that could be considered “foreign muck”, toning down the funk and turning up their natural Yorkshire accents.

The resulting record is as exotic as a can of Lilt. ‘Agadou’ has been conquered, colonised, and sailed home as property of Britain. It’s the Elgin Marbles if the Elgin Marbles were somehow extremely annoying.

Black Lace never hit this peak again, although they had quite decent-sized hits with ‘Do The Conga’ and ‘Hokey Cokey’, plus the bestselling album Party Party: 16 Great Party Icebreakers. They also tried their hand with some mildly racist ditties like ‘I Speaka da Lingo’ and ‘El Vino Collapso’. Unfortunately, the latter appeared around the time of the Heysel disaster and the lyrics, which celebrated going to Europe and getting drunk, was banned by BBC.

People took the piss out of Black Lace, but they didn’t care. In 1987, they parodied themselves with The Blue Album (Banned In The UK), which reimagined their hits with slightly fnarr-fnarr lyrics. ‘Do The Conga’ is transformed into ‘Do The Condom’, ‘Superman’ becomes ‘Supercock’, and ‘Agadoo’ is reborn as ‘Have A Screw’. As comedy records go, The Blue Album is slightly less funny than that Lou Reed LP about all his friends dying.

Black Lace earned a movie credit in 1987 with Alan Clarke’s controversial comedy Rita, Sue and Bob Too! with the band appearing as themselves and performing one of their dirty songs, ‘Gang Bang’, in its entirety. It’s a raucous scene, ending in that most Butlins-core of dance moves, the conga line.

Eagle-eyed viewers might notice something different. That’s clearly Alan Barton on vocals, looking like a poundshop Rod Stewart.

But who’s the other bloke?

4. Push pineapple, shake the tree

Rita, Sue and Bob Too! is a film about a middle-aged man who has sex with teenage girls. For some reason, Barton agreed to do the film even though this is exactly why he had just kicked Colin Routh out of Black Lace.

In 1986, Routh was prosecuted for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. Routh, who was in his early 30s, tried to argue that he believed she was 19. The courts found him guilty, issuing a suspended sentence and a £200 fine. Barton fired Routh and replaced him with Dene Michael, another Butlins-core musician/entertainer. Barton and Michael are the version of Black Lace that appear in Rita, Sue and Bob Too!

If Barton was taking a principled stand, it didn’t last long. A few months later, he was approached by Smokie. Their lead singer, Chris Norman, had quit, and who better to replace him than the guy who had so fastidiously copied his style?

Barton jumped at the chance and handed Black Lace back to Routh (who had since changed his name to Colin Gibb). From 1987 onwards, Black Lace consisted of Gibb, the convicted sex offender, and Michael, the person hired to replace the convicted sex offender. Their first project together was a cover of ‘I Am The Music Man‘, which reached Number 52. It was the biggest hit Black Lace would have without Alan Barton.

Here’s the irony: Smokie had a massive in 1995 with a song that feels like a Black Lace song. The band collaborated with another Butlins-core act, comedian Roy “Chubby” Brown, on a version of ‘Living Next Door To Alice’ with Chubby adding the popular “Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?” refrain. It reached Number 3 and the band appeared on Top Of The Pops.

Unfortunately, Barton didn’t get to enjoy this moment. Earlier in 1995, Smokie’s tour bus had been driving through the mountains near Cologne when they hit a hailstorm, sending the bus plunging into a ravine. Most of the band survived, miraculously.

Barton wasn’t so lucky. He was hospitalised with severe head injuries and died a few days later. All of the profits from ‘Who The Fuck Is Alice?’ went to his family.

5. Push pineapple, grind coffee

For the next 30 years, Colin Gibb kept Black Lace going on the holiday circuit, with a rotating cast of collaborators filling the space left by Alan Barton. Michael Dene, who had initially been hired to replace Gibb, drifted in and out of the band up until 2016, when he was arrested for benefit fraud.

Dene spent six months in prison. While there, he claims that other inmates kept asking him to sing ‘Agadoo’ and lead them in a conga line.

Gibb tried other gimmicks to get Black Lace into the spotlight, including horrible cover versions of cheesy songs: ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’, ‘The Electric Slide’, ‘Macarena’, ‘Follow The Leader‘. Honestly, it’s surprising that Crazy Frog isn’t in their discography.

In 2002, Gibb jumped on the Reality TV gimmick, working with Yorkshire TV on an X Factor-style talent show called Agadoo: The Search for the New Black Lace. The 4-episode show was… mostly quite dull, apart from two truly horrific moments.

First, one of the contestants is a very pretty 16-year-old girl. She’s quite talented, but clearly not right for Black Lace. Nonetheless, she progresses through each round, as do most of the pretty girls who audition. When you know about Gibb’s conviction, it becomes unbearably tense to watch her almost become part of the band. Thankfully, she’s cut at the final audition.

The other moment (which literally made my jaw drop) involves a contestant who is perfect for Black Lace. She’s pure Redcoat: charismatic, hilarious, incredible presence, great voice, tons of energy, and obviously a hard worker.

The judges looks her dead in the eye and tells her she can’t join Black Lace because…she’s too fat.

The Search For A New Black Lace was billed as Colin Gibb’s retirement from the band. However, The New Black Lace never materialised and Gibb kept things going by himself. For the next 20 years, Black Lace settled into life as a pop-up party act performing at bars and clubs in Spain.

In May of 2024, Gibb announced that he was finally, finally retiring from Black Lace, with plans for one final goodbye show in Tenerife, which he also intended to make his permanent home. Sadly, this didn’t come to pass, as he died a month later at the age of 70.

However, even death cannot stop Black Lace. The torch has been passed to two of Gibb’s former collaborators, who are keeping the brand going, like a conga line that refuses to end. At the time of writing, their upcoming shows include dates at Butlins in Skegness and Bognor.

6. To the left, to the right

“What can we learn from Black Lace?” might seem a pointless question, but their career path has certainly made me think about some things.

There’s a politics to everything, including Black Lace. You could argue that Black Lace’s music is not Butlins-core but Thatcher-core: hollow, plastic, pretending to offer individual freedom but actually deeply conformist, popular among people you’ve got muted on Facebook. Listen carefully to ‘Agadoo’, and you can hear Brexit struggling to be born.

(Bell & Spurling, the Black Lace-alikes who gave us ‘Sven Sven Sven‘ in 2002, are now Nigel Farage’s house band on GB News.)

Entertainment of this kind is really about social conformity. Butlins Redcoats don’t really give a shit about whether you’re having a good time. They just want you to keep quiet, do your two weeks, and come back next year. The Black Lace scene in Rita, Sue and Bob Too! ends with a big, circular conga line, because the conga line is a nice visual metaphor for social conformity. Everyone falls in line, eventually.

And the downside is that social conformity allows some terrible things to flourish. It’s why Bob gets to have sex with teenagers in Rita, Sue and Bob Too!, and why so many mainstream entertainers were allowed to get away with horrific crimes. Hard for victims to speak up when people are saying, It’s only a bit of fun. Stop making a fuss.

On the other hand, this kind of entertainment also offered a much-needed form of social cohesion. The 70s and 80s were still the post-war period, and community bonds were rapidly vanishing. People increasingly found they lacked a shared culture, even between family members. What do you do when one half of a wedding wants to waltz while the other half wants to pogo?

Easy. You play ‘The Birdie Song’ or ‘Superman’ and unite everyone in a shared hatred of crap records.

Perhaps that’s what Black Lace were really about. As people started drifting away from each other, pulled apart by cultural tectonic forces, they grabbed anything that might help them cling together. Things like ‘Agadoo’.