Neil Hannon's lost Promenade-era biography poem

Long time correspondents will be aware of my near obsessive love of Neil Hannon's band The Divine Comedy. I declared them as my favourite when I was an awkward sixteen-year-old and have held that line ever since. The first few albums - Liberation and Promenade - are particular favourites. They're full of songs about slightly literate, slightly awkward people trying to find their place in the world. Young Ben loved albums that had songs based on F Scott Fitzgerald short stories, or Wordsworth poems, or that had a checklist of authors. Older Ben still does too. The albums went out of print in the mid-2000s and were extensively remastered and reissued in 2020 with reference to old notes, press releases, and reviews. Obsessive fans have collected and collated much Divine Comedy material over the years including demo tapes of pre-Divine Comedy Hannon groups and appearances as a choirboy on Songs of Praise. It's very unusual to find anything new, particularly from that early era. I'm a…

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