Boff Whalley

Boff Whalley (real name Allan Mark Whalley [ [http://archive.thisislancashire.co.uk/1999/7/10/765327.html This is Lancashire article] ] , born 1961, Burnley, Lancashire), is the lead guitarist for the band Chumbawamba. Before joining Chumbawamba he attended Art College in Maidstone and worked in a supermarket and as a postman. Together with his fellow members of Chimp Eats Banana, Midge and Danbert Nobacon, he moved to Leeds in 1981 and studied at the University of Leeds, dropping out after a year before moving into the South View House squat in Armley. He became guitarist despite describing himself as being of 'limited ability'. He continued to play guitar and sing while doing a series of other jobs – shopworker, newspaper delivery, typesetter, cartoonist and other crappy stuff. He has remained guitarist since then and has discovered that 'songwriting' is (apparently) a proper job. He is married to American photographer Casey Orr who he met in San Francisco in 1992.

The name Boff comes from being nicknamed 'College Boffin' by other workers at the Supasave supermarket in Burnley, where Boff worked after leaving school. Boff's first band 'Chimp Eats Banana' had a song about Supasave, called (you guessed it) 'Supasave'. A 'boffin' in England is a nerd, a geek, a scientist/mathematician with little or no life.

References

Further reading

* "Footnote*"- Boff Whalley (Pomona books 2003)- an autobiographical account of the history of Chumbawamba; mixed with the messed-up history of Boff's growing up in Lancashire and his idiosyncratic views of culture, history and politics. And football, of course.