Charles Dickens’ fans . if ‘fans’ is a 19th-century enough word to use in these circumstances . will recognise Sergeant Buzfuz as the bullying crimson-faced lawyer in ‘The Pickwick Papers’. But you probably knew that already.

Slightly less famous in literary circles is micro Moby look-alike Joe Murphy, a Yorkshireman blown south to the Big Smoke by the chilly winds of antifolk (as one would rather romantically like to imagine) and whose ‘band’ (the line-up apparently expands and contracts according to various extracurricular social activities, drinking commitments and psychotherapy) is also called Sergeant Buzfuz. A lot of people ‘in the know’ (or so they think) say Sergeant Buzfuz sound rather like The Teardrop Explodes. A lot of people ‘in the know’ are, erm, mistaken.

Joe Murphy does not sound like Julian Cope. And hammered dulcimer playing (courtesy of the other core Buzfuz member, Kate Arnold) doesn’t figure too prominently on the ‘Kilimanjaro’ album, does it?
More accurately, vocalist Joe Murphy shares an attribute or two with loveable loonies and oddball wordsmiths like Robyn Hitchcock and John Otway. Or even Ray Davies. Or Wreckless Eric. These four comparisons are perfectly satisfactory. However, there really is something about Murphy which marks him out, quite distinctively, as the bastard son of Steve Harley while his see-sawing English Dylanisms even recall Dave Cousins of The Strawbs. None of these people sound like Julian Cope either.

But Sergeant Buzfuz does peddle a similarly skewed look at everyday life.