Wild Bill Harzia and the Malarial Swamp Dogs - how including the name of a 1980s student band in my latest novel lead me down an internet rabbit hole.

I was a young teenager with an interest in science and geography and a wild imagination when my older sister went up to Cambridge in the late 80s, so it was hardly surprising that when she casually mentioned a band called Wild Bill Harzia and the Malarial Swamp Dogs in one of her weekly letters home (no email, no social media, no mobiles in those days, young reader), it stuck in my mind.

When I was writing the Readbury Festival scene in A Little Treat on Honey Street (see Chapter 38) I decided I’d immortalise their name by nicking it. But, being a conscientious citizen, mindful of the importance of safeguarding others’ intellectual property I thought I’d have a hunt about in “the bottom half of the internet” (thank you, Dave Gorman) and see if there was any trace of the band. For all I knew, they might even still be going, perhaps grey haired and beer-bellied, touring the Senior Common Rooms of the UK’s academic institutions, or doing gigs in pubs or local festivals. Who knows…

And so I hunted.

And I found a trace. The only trace at the time.

It was this blog by Joella (“Two decades of wine-soaked musings on gender, politics, anger, grief, progress, food, and justice.”) https://joella.blogspot.com/2009/11/when-i-grow-up-i-want-to-be-old-woman.html

I contacted Joella asking if she was still in touch with Emma, the friend mentioned in the blog post, whose brother was in the band. And after a couple of weeks, I was amazed when Joella got back to me and said she should ‘go one better than that’ because Stephen Quilley (now an academic in Ontario), who was in the band with Joe (Emma's brother) had also sought her (Joella) out about ten years before I contacted her, having found the same blog post, asking if she had any photos of the band.

And so, I wrote to Stephen.

And didn’t hear anything.

But being a persistent little tick, after a few months I wrote to him again and asked if he’d seen my first message. The reply came back almost immediately. “Hi Joella and Flora, sorry I didn’t see this 😊 It’s hilarious.”

And he gave me his full blessing to use the band’s name in the book, insisting kindly that I didn’t need it. He told me a bit more about some of the members (one of whom has sadly passed away ☹) and he sent me the article below from the Cambridge University student newspaper, Varsity.

1988 Article from Varsity, the Cambridge University student paper, about the band

And all seemed straightforward and Wild Bill Harzia and the Malarial Swamp Dogs went off to the Readbury Festival.

Once I came to write this blog, however, while checking my facts (of course) I realised that since the original correspondence a year or two ago, not only had Christ’s College posted online a copy of their college magazine from 2017, which oddly also mentions the band https://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2025-02/2017%20Magazine.pdf but Ned.Roads.Words on Substack – https://substack.com/@nedboulting/note/p-160485370 had also written a blog about Wild Bill Harzia just a few months ago.

In this, he says how cool the band was, what they looked like and what they played. He says his friend Lee Hall (who wrote Billy Elliot, Rocketman and the libretto for Mark Anthony Turnage’s opera, Festen, which premiered this year) was in the band too and so… down the rabbit hole I went! Eventually, coming back to Stephen, concerned that perhaps it might better not to use the name.  

But Stephen suggested that Ned might have misremembered an evening in the pub when the band were trying to choose a name. Lee (whom Stephen has known since he was sixteen and with whom he is still in touch) was not a member of the band but was there on that occasion and contributed to the discussion. Having rejected Urethra Franklin, they came up with Wild Bill Harzia and the Malarial Swamp Dogs.

Each band member had an equally silly name – Stephen says his was ‘Shrunken Gene Pool’.

My conclusion is that ‘recollections may differ’.

And so I’ve decided to go ahead and immortalise the band in my book, even if it's only so I can tell you this extraordinary tale.

Maybe after this surge of interest on the internet and their fictional appearance at the Readbury Festival, there will be a clamour for the band to reunite and tour the world!

I’d like that because then I might actually get to hear them after thirty-seven years of giggling at their whacky, inventive name.