Garry Bushell

Garry Bushell (born 13 May 1955) is an English newspaper columnist, rock music journalist, television presenter, author, musician and political activist.

Bushell also sings in the Cockney Oi! bands GBX and the Gonads.

He managed the New York City Oi!

band Maninblack until the death of the band frontman Andre Schlessinger.

Bushell's recurring topical themes are comedy, country and class.

He has campaigned for an English Parliament, a Benny Hill statue and for variety and talent shows on TV.

He has been a columnist for several newspapers, including The Sun, The People and the Daily Star Sunday, and has worked as the review editor for the Sunday Express.

The son of a fireman, Bushell attended Charlton Manor School and Colfe's School (which was then a grammar school).

At secondary school, he first performed in the group Pink Tent, which was heavily influenced by Monty Python.

They wrote songs and comedy sketches; performed at parties and at each other's houses.

Bushell was involved in the National Union of School Students and the Schools Action Union, a socialist organisation that had a strong situationist streak that led them to mix schoolboy hijinks with student activism.

He worked for Shell as a messenger, and then the London Fire Brigade before attending North East London Polytechnic and the London College of Printing simultaneously.

In 1973, at the age of 18, Bushell joined the International Socialists and started writing for their newspaper Socialist Worker.

He also wrote for Temporary Hoarding, Rebel, and his own punk fanzine Napalm, and edited the North East London Polytechnic Student Union magazine NEPAM.

Pink Tent evolved into 1977 punk band the Gonads, who have also described themselves Oi!, punk pathetique and "Oi-Tone" because they play ska and street punk.

Many of their songs are comical party tunes, but they have occasionally written more serious material.

Two examples of their songs that include social commentary are "Dying for a Pint" (which comments on nightclub bouncer brutality) and "Jobs Not Jails" (a critique of the Margaret Thatcher government's policies).

Other Bushell musical projects have included the bands Prole, Orgasm Guerrillas, the Ska-Nads and Lord Waistrel & the Cosh Boys.

Prole was a socialist punk band that also included Steve Kent, the original guitarist of the Oi!

band the Business.

Bushell managed the Blood and Cockney Rejects, getting them their EMI deal.

He also got Twisted Sister signed in the UK to Secret Records.

He compiled the first four Oi!

compilation albums and contributed songs to later collections.

From 1978 to 1985, he wrote for Sounds magazine, covering punk and other street-level music genres, such as 2 Tone, the new wave of British heavy metal and the mod revival.

Bushell was at the forefront of covering the Oi! subgenre, also known as real punk or street punk.

In 1981, when Strength Thru Oi! was released, it was controversial because its title was a play on a Nazi slogan "Strength Through Joy", and the cover featured Nicky Crane, a British Movement activist who was serving a four-year sentence for racist violence.

Garry Bushell, who was responsible for compiling the album, insists its title was a pun on The Skids' EP Strength Through Joy and that he had been unaware of the Nazi connotations.

He also denied knowing the identity of the skinhead on the album's cover until it was exposed by the Daily Mail two months later.

The original cover model had been Carlton Leach.

The same year, Bushell wrote the book Dance Craze – the 2-Tone story, and in 1984, he wrote the Iron Maiden biography Running Free.

His scathing reviews of the early punk incarnation of Adam and the Ants led to him being name-checked, along with veteran NME writer Nick Kent, in the band's song "Press Darlings", containing the line "If passion ends in fashion, Bushell is the best dressed man in town."

On the studio version, immediately after this line, lead singer Adam Ant can be heard muttering "You can say that again, the Scruffy sod!"

Bushell also attracted the attentions of Crass who responded to his criticisms with the song "Hurry Up Garry" and the Notsensibles who released the song "Garry Bushell's Band Of The Week".

Bushell moved to Fleet Street in 1985, working for The Sun, Evening Standard and the Daily Mirror.

He went back to The Sun to write its "Bizarre" column and to be the showbusiness editor.

In the mid-1990s, Bushell hosted the TV programme Bushell on the Box, commenting on the week's TV programmes.

In 1991, he briefly became assistant editor of the Daily Star, where he wrote a current affairs column called "Walk Tall With Bushell", as well as his TV column.

Three months later, he quit and returned to The Sun.

In 1994, Bushell was named critic of the year at the UK Press Awards.