KUNT AND THE GANG - A FACTUALLY ACCURATE TIMELINE

2003
Kunt and the Gang is formed by Kunt, following the break up of his previous group, Pubic Cube. They play their first gig at the Castlemayne pub in Basildon. The original line-up of Kunt and his puppet sidekick Little Kunt, a lifesize effigy of Kunt’s former parasitic twin, remains to this day.

2004
The band release their debut album I Have A Little Wank And I Have A Little Cry and are somewhat surprisingly hailed by the NME as ‘The New Macc Lads’. Unsurprisingly, considering the NME didn’t like the old Macc Lads, they never follow this up with any further coverage.

2005

Kunt and the Gang play their first gigs outside of Essex, after the public forward links to the songs on their MySpace profile and a small following begins to form. Kunt meets Mike Gibbons, an Essex based entrepreneur living in a caravan on the A127 Southend Arterial road, who will go on to become Kunt’s manager and appear in many of the videos.

2006

Kunt and the Gang make their first YouTube video for their music industry opus Use My Arsehole As A Cunt, which climaxes with a hastily arranged dance routine in Basildon Town Square, described by an onlooker as ‘…the biggest load of shit I have seen in my entire life’. A Basildon live show is filmed and released as a live DVD Viva Bas Vegas. A second album I Have Another Wank And I Have Another Cry spawns Fucksticks, which soon becomes a firm live favourite. The album is played out live on the Wanking In The Woods tour, the band’s first foray around the UK which saw them playing in grotty pubs as far afield as Glasgow, Swansea and Southend.

2007
As their profile grows and more videos are filmed Kunt and the Gang’s YouTube channel becomes ever more popular. Their video for Arranged Bride becomes the first of many videos to be banned by the YouTube censor Nazis.

2008
Kunt and the Gang release their third album One Last Wank And One Last Cry, the final instalment in their wanking and crying trilogy of albums. The release is accompanied later in the year by the Men With Beards (What Are They Hiding?) E.P., the tour for which sees many people grow facial hair or wear false beards along to the shows in celebration. Several usually-bearded attendees also shave their chins in an effort to draw attention away from whatever it was they are obviously up to. Aside from this, the band also perform as guests of drug-addled pop ponce Pete Doherty. The video for Fucksticks is plucked from the internet, edited to within an inch of its life (leaving in all the “Fuckstickses” / taking out all the “Mother’s cunts”) and broadcast on Channel 4’s shoddy low-rent web clip show RudeTube.

2009
Kunt and the Gang release an album of rarities/out-takes entitled Here’s One I Knocked Out Earlier. Along with his hapless manager Mike Gibbons, Kunt is the subject of an internet documentary That’s Inter-tainment which was sadly never picked up by TV.
Kunt records a YouTube tribute song in memory of Michael Jackson, which is uploaded the day after the singer’s untimely death and leads to Kunt receiving death threats from mental American Jacko fans who are unhappy with some of the content, despite it being on the whole factually accurate.
2009 sees Kunt and the Gang’s first appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, teaming up with Laughing Horse comedy for 10 sold out shows (at least, 10 free shows which were full-up). Kunt plays to a packed crowd at Rebellion punk festival in Blackpool.
Kunt and the Gang try and reclaim Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl as their own (long story…) with their version of it entitled I Sucked Off A Bloke, which is complimented by a gritty video notable for bringing bukkake to an Essex building site.
Kunt and the Gang finish off the year with a flourish, getting booked to play 3 consecutive weekends on the main stage at The Big Reunion Festival at Butlins in Skegness before being hauled off half way through their first set and banned from returning on the say so of Butlins’ management.

2010
A ‘Greatest Minor Internet Hits’ package Complete Kunt is released, featuring the best loved songs from Kunt and the Gang’s previous four albums and a couple of new tracks. The artwork consists of hundreds of photos sent in by supporters, taken with Kunt. Complete Kunt is also released on DVD bringing together all the band’s videos, many of which had fallen foul of the humourless YouTube censor Nazis.
Kunt and the Gang perform all their ‘Greatest Minor Internet Hits’ in 25 consecutive free late night shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to packed audiences.
Kunt writes and produces Shannon Matthews: The Musical, a full-length audio musical based on the disappearance of the Yorkshire schoolgirl, performed by a small company of amateur performers based in Huddersfield, put together by Jonny Tetsuo who plays Craig Meehan and who will later become one half of controversial techno nobheads Petrol Bastard. Shannon Matthews: The Musical features 11 brand new songs, and manages to name-check everyone from Maddie McCann to Papa Bouba Diop.
A Christmas Facebook campaign to get Kunt and the Gang’s Use My Arsehole As A Cunt into the top 40 sees the band’s first and only venture into political satire, as a new version Use My Arsehole As A Cunt (The Nick Clegg Story) is recorded, which light-heartedly pokes fun at the compromises the Liberal Democrats made to be part of the coalition government. It is mysteriously removed from iTunes on the week of release but still, despite no mainstream press or radio, reaches number 66 in the Official UK Chart.

2011

Kunt and the Gang start a short-lived new venture, an occasional online series entitled Perverts On The Internet. Each episode incorporates a new song embedded in a far-fetched story of the exploits of Kunt, his hapless manager Mike Gibbons and the staff and regulars of their local pub, the Stem And Helmet in Basildon. The series produces 3 and a half episodes before Kunt realises that no one going on YouTube has an attention span that lasts more than 3 minutes.
To commemorate the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, Kunt and the Gang record a new version of their greatest minor internet hit Fucksticks, cheekily referencing the various Royal misdemeanours and scandals like Fergie’s toe-sucking incident, The Duke of Edinburgh’s casual racism and Prince Harry’s Nazi fancy dress faux pas. This starts another Facebook campaign to get the song in the top 40 although, despite massive underground support, sales irregularities mean the song peaks at number 63.

On April 28th 2011, the day before the Royal Wedding, despite having well over a million views and several thousand subscribers, Kunt and the Gang’s YouTube account is deleted. This may not be unrelated to the Fucksticks (Royal Wedding Souvenir Version) video, which features various members of the Royal Family with their private parts pixelated, sexually satisfying themselves in time with the music.

Kunt and the Gang play to packed crowds at Rebellion and Download festivals and again return to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where they play 23 free shows and win the Malcolm Hardee Award (not the one for being funny or any good, the other one). This is awarded after Kunt and the Gang, rather than print and distribute promotional flyers, print 5000 stickers of a crudely drawn penis and testicles which, when given out to the crowd each night appear all over the posters of other comedians. ‘Cockgate’, as it is known, becomes a big talking point of the festival and several comedians are known to be very irate about seeing their face with a winky stuck on it.
In October they release the album Hurry Up And Suck Me Off Before I Get Famous, which is quickly hailed as the band’s “least shit album to date”. As Christmas approaches this is followed up by the long overdue festive album Kunt and the Gang Kiss You Under The Camel Toe.

2012
The year starts on a bum note when at a gig in North London Kunt is assasinated with piss by an irate Amy Winehouse fan, upset by Kunt’s tribute, brandishing a water pistol full of urine. Concerned for his safety and taken by surprise Kunt accidentally kicks the shit out of him on the floor of the venue.
Later in the year Kunt’s Bangers and Mash tour is their best attended tour to date and coincides with the release of a second compilation of unreleased and rare material, Sloppy Seconds: More Titbits From The Kunt Archives.
Download festival sees a full to capacity Comedy tent with over 1000 metallers joining in shouting ‘Fucksticks’ and ‘Mother’s Cunt’. At Rebellion festival there are similar scenes as Kunt again fills the Arena.
Edinburgh Fringe Festival is once again full every night and, despite Kunt getting involved in an on-stage punch up with a drunk assailant, is the best one to date. An extremely badly rehearsed new show Kunt’s On Daytime TV is on the whole very generously received.
A definitive live DVD Proper Kunt is released in October with a 35 date UK tour to coincide.

2013
Kunt and the Gang make their Australian debut with shows at Adelaide Fringe Festival and Melbourne International Comedy Festival, starting off playing to half a dozen keen locals and through word of mouth finishing both runs with sell out shows.
At Edinburgh Fringe once again crowds pack in to a new, bigger venue at the Free Sisters.
Little Kunt releases Kuntrarian, his debut solo album of cover versions with the words changed. It is met with a general air of confusion and disappointment.

The year finishes with Kunt releasing a video encouraging people to stand up against Simon Cowell’s monopolizing of the Christmas charts - by participating in the world’s first ever virtual dirty protest. On December 15th, literally tens of people take photos of their morning bowel movement and tweet it to the high-waistbanded pop impresario with the hashtag #dirtyprotest. He definitely won’t do that again.

2014
With 6 months away from gigging at the start of the year Kunt grows a rapey looking beard which he sports in a high concept 3 minute video re-make of Planet Of The Apes to commemorate the 10th anniversary of live favourite Wanking Over A Pornographic Polaroid Of An Ex-Girlfriend Who Died.  

A new album Jap’s iTunes is met with excitement and praise from people in general, presumably after having had their expectations lowered from last year’s Little Kunt album. Apart from The Abortion Song. Jap’s iTunes is promoted with a 50 date UK tour, selling out several dates including 2-300 capacity venues in London, Southampton and Nottingham. Kunt condenses his Edinburgh Fringe run to two nights in a bingo hall, where the crowd participate in the world’s first ever ‘Celebrity Nonce Seance’, summoning up the ghost of a renowned and much maligned deceased former disc jockey and philanthropist.
Kunt and the Gang finish the year with a second video, Jesus (Baby With A Beard), again in heavily edited form, being featured on Channel 4’s RudeTube.

2015

A second greatest (minor internet) hits album is released entitled Kunt’ll Fix It, which also includes a few new tracks to try and flog it to the people who’ve already got everything else. One of the new songs Paperboy is a highlight of the tour set.

On the Kunt’ll Fix It tour, supported by his former manager and minor internet hit wannabe Mike Gibbons, Kunt maintains he has invested in and is trying to win back public confidence for the ’ll Fix It brand. In order to do this at every gig he fixes it for a member of the audience to join him in a rendition of his third greatest minor internet hit Use My Arsehole As A Cunt. The Kunt’ll Fix It tour is their best attended tour to date.

Following 2 sell out shows in Edinburgh Kunt is invited for a rare TV appearance on Before The Morning After, a subscription only show on Seeso/NBC Digital singing Paperboy in front of an enthusiastic Brendon Burns and a less enthusiastic Marc Watson who looks like he’s done a bit of sick in his mouth.

2016
Kunt announces plans to call it a day and records a final album, the ambitious Blue ROFL,  then sets out on one last tour, again supported by Mike Gibbons. The tour mostly sells out and in amongst hugging it out with 17 stone men in various stages of grief, Kunt receives all manner of strange, mental and often worrying gifts, including a plethora of wankmags, a signed picture of Rolf Harris and a 14 inch gingerbread phallus.
The artist formerly known as Kunt begins work on an autobiography, “I, Kunt. (How I became and remained a minor internet hit singer).”

After thirteen years, and mainly by old-fashioned word of mouth with only the occasional crumb of media coverage, Kunt and the Gang was mostly an uncompromising underground success story in true Punk tradition. Kunt himself is proud to have become Basildon’s most famous export - apart from Depeche Mode, Vince, Denise Van Outen, Terry Marsh and Big Brother housemate Brian (black, not gay).

KUNT AND THE GANG - A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

If you’ve never heard of Kunt and the Gang you’ve probably had Google Safe search on. Kunt and the Gang’s lowbrow comedy songs and videos have made them Basildon’s most famous export - apart from Depeche Mode, Vince, Denise Van Outen, Terry Marsh and Brian from Big Brother (black, not gay).

In recent years Kunt and the Gang have played sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, Adelaide Fringe and Melbourne Comedy Festival, featured on Channel 4’s RudeTube, written and produced a dozen albums including an original musical about missing schoolgirl Shannon Matthews, won Album Title Of The Year in NME and scored two of the most inappropriately titled top 75 UK hit singles of all time with their tracks F*cksticks and Use My Arseh*le As A Cunt.

In this time Kunt and the Gang have also been banned from Butlins, excommunicated by the Catholic Church in Edinburgh, had their YouTube channel with over a million hits closed down, received death threats from mental Michael Jackson fans over their tribute video, been assaulted on stage, assassinated with piss and given an award for encouraging people to deface posters of comedians with stickers of a crudely drawn penis and testicles. And been the only music act to duet with the ghost of ex-philanthropic paedo DJ Jimmy Savile.

Having played over 2000 gigs before calling it a day in 2016, Kunt and the Gang probably played in a town near you.

"Life-affirmingly puerile stuff, set to one of the most infectious and upbeat melodies imaginable."
CHARLIE BROOKER IN THE GUARDIAN

"A one man filth machine."
BIZARRE

"… jaw-dropping, potty mouthed style."
NME