Today’s song is ‘Tiger Feet’, a popular song by the English glam rock band ‘Mud’. The song was written and produced by the songwriting team of Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn and was released in January 1974. It was the band's first number No. 1 single in the ‘U.K. Singles Chart’. ‘Tiger Feet’ was a huge success, it was Number 1 in the United Kingdom and Ireland charts for four weeks in 1974 and also topped the charts in the Netherlands. It sold over 700,000 copies in the UK alone and over a million sales globally. It was also the best-selling single in Britain that year.
'Tiger Feet' was featured as part of a medley on Mud's album ‘Mud Rock’, which reached Number 8 in the ‘UK Albums Chart’. The song has been used in numerous promotional features such as:
The song featured in the Mr Bean episode ‘Mind the Baby, Mr Bean’.
In 2009, the song appeared in television adverts for ‘Flora Margarine’.
The song featured as part of the ‘2012 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony’.
A version of the song by ‘New Hope Club’ featured in the 2018 film ‘Early Man’ and was subsequently released as a single.
A version of the song was featured in the 2018 miniseries ‘A Very English Scandal’.
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My greatest memory of ‘Tiger Feet’ was it being one of those songs which produced instantaneous involuntary foot-tapping and an urge that could not be ignored to ‘get up and dance’. The beat is simply one of the most infectious beats I have ever heard, so much that the words are essentially rendered meaningless and are not essential to the elicitation of one’s pleasure. As to the nature of one’s dancing partner, it didn’t matter whether it was the most beautiful woman on the crowded dance floor your eyes were gazing into or simply the mop or brush handle from the utility cupboard you held tenderly; you could even be dancing to the beat without a partner as you listened and rocked your body.
For almost thirty years, I was one of the country’s leading authorities on Relaxation Training and Stress reduction management, especially with people whose aggression often was involuntarily expressed and when it was, it invariably became out of control. My group work received national acclaim in the Social Work field and was frequently referred to in some Psychiatric journals and at the meetings of numerous Psychologists. My work was even mentioned in print in French medical research paper.
Between 1970 and 1995, I ran hundreds of groups teaching thousands of people how to relax, to appropriately express their anger states and how to reduce their stress levels. The membership number of each group might vary from twelve to thirty (I have even held halls of Relaxation groups totalling up to 500 people being taught how to relax). My groups were held in Probation Offices, Hostels, Hospitals, Drug and Alcoholic Abuse Centres, Prisons (I was the first Probation Officer in Great Britain to introduce Relaxation Training into H.M. Prisons and even worked with groups of Lifers at Newhall Prison in Wakefield). Relaxation Training Groups were also held in all Educational Establishments such as primary, secondary and grammar Schools, Colleges and a few Universities; Psychiatric establishments, Training establishments like Probation Officers, Police, Fire Men and Women and Prison Staff. Last, but not least were the Churches and the wider community in Community Halls where I held regular Relaxation training classes throughout Yorkshire.
When I worked in Huddersfield, there was an establishment in Kirkburton which carried an instant stigma for any patient resident there. The name was ‘Storthes Hall’. It was here where (apart from the prison lifers I worked with) that I met my most challenging work. Most patients in this psychiatric establishment were heavily medicated. Some had been a resident there over twenty years, and some of the more aggressive patients or those whose behaviour was inexplicable, antisocial and wholly unacceptable would be placed on locked wards; sometimes restricted to their rooms for most of the day and even confined to padded cells. Indeed, the establishment resembled both prison and mental institution combined. As a rule, the more balanced of all the resident/patients could best be described as being severely disturbed in mind or emotionally unbalanced in temperament. Almost all were extremely restricted in movement, agility and dexterity.
When once asked by a colleague why I would want to work with such people who could never learn to sit down for five minutes, let alone ever understand their aggressive behaviour, reduce it in practice or learn to relax, I replied, ‘Because you or I could easily have been one of these ‘unfortunate forgotten’, and for the better part of one year of my mother’s life, she was resident there for three months on two occasions while she underwent E.C T. (Electroconvulsive Therapy (an extreme method of treatment that was introduced in 1938 to induce seizures but which became much derided by medics and Social Workers before the end of the century).
A brief history of ‘Storthes Hall’ is as follows: Part of the heavy woollen area of Kirkburton, Huddersfield, this monolithic mansion in heavily wooded grounds comprises of a single road, Storthes Hall Lane which links Kirkburton with the nearby villages of Farnley Tyas and Thurstonland. Two of the most significant properties in the area are ‘Storthes Hall Mansion’ (now private property) and, further west, ‘Storthes Hall Hospital’ (partly redeveloped as a student village in the 1990s but with the main administrative block surviving as a derelict building in the New Millennium).
‘Storthes Hall Mansion’ was built as a private house for the mill-owning ‘Horsefall’ family in about 1788. An area to the west of ‘The Mansion’, closer to Farnley Tyas, was developed as a psychiatric hospital in the early 20th century. The facility was designed by J. Vickers-Edwards on a compact arrow layout and opened as the ‘Fourth West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum’ in 1904. The facility became known as the ‘Storthes Hall Mental Hospital’ in 1929, as the ‘West Riding Mental Hospital’ in 1939 and finally as the ‘Storthes Hall Hospital’ from 1949.
‘Storthes Hall Hospital’ was one of several hospitals investigated in 1967 as a result of the publication of Barbara Robb's book ‘Sans Everything’. The accusations covered a thirty-two-week period of serious violent assaults with fists or weapons against male patients of all ages, committed by four named male nurses. It was also alleged that it was like Belsen because it was a “brutal, bestial, beastly place, no better than a ‘hell-hole’.
However, the same report found none of the allegations against any named or unnamed member of the hospital staff to have been proved. ‘Storthes Hall Hospital’ closed in 1992 in conjunction with the ‘Care in the Community’ government policy (a policy of ‘de-institutionalisation), treating and caring for physically and mentally disturbed people in their homes rather than in an institution. Institutional care was a target of widespread criticism during the 60s and the 70s (about the time I was running my Relaxation and Anger Management groups there with both patients and staff), but it wasn’t until 1983 when the government of Margaret Thatcher adopted a new policy of care after the ‘Audit Commission’ published a report called 'Making a Reality of Community Care' which outlined the advantages of closing down these establishments.
Like all government policies (whatever the political complexion of the party in power), reduced cost to the government takes priority over increased care to the patients/residents. When I engaged in my Relaxation Training groups there, I had stand up battles with the senior administration when I insisted that any member of my group who wasn’t mentally insane or had bipolar would be preferably removed from medication two days before each weekly session and one day after.
Back to ‘Tiger Feet’. As it was easier getting the patients to express their anger once they were not medicated up to the eyeballs than getting them to relax for any significant lengthy periods, music and movement was an ideal way to release their tension.
So, like the former group member of ‘Storthes Hall Hospital’, whether you are bedbound, chair bound or mobility restricted, as the song is heard, do your dance, jump, stomp your feet, tap your feet, shake your body, move your head from side to side, clap your hands and even raise your eyebrows up and down…..and feel the benefit of that expressed energy escaping from your body in little balls of anger being shot out in every direction.
Love and peace Bill xxx