The Rats' Tales

For someone who is seemingly afraid of almost everything Garry Stanley is something of a genius, for he has an innate ability to entertain people or more specifically to understand exactly what will entertain Mancunians sufficiently to make them throw a quid or two in a guitar case.

Garry is the inspiration and emotional glue who holds the most famous busking band in the UK, the Piccadilly Rats, together. Each of the Rats has led a colourful life on society’s margins; there is former friend of the Krays Ray Boddington, whose pavement performances were so beloved of Mancunian audiences that his untimely death was commemorated on the front page of the Manchester Evening News and bass player Heath whose personal journey led him to cross three continents before finding his spiritual home on the corner of Lever Street and Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester city centre. 

It is from that hallowed pavement that the Rats blasted their way into the public’s conscience and over the past decade they have conquered the country from London to Blackpool, appearing at some of the biggest festivals in the UK and memorably on ITV’s Judge Rinder Show but their ability to stop commuters and shoppers in their tracks by the sight, sound and sheer insanity of their performance in full flow will have left many onlookers to wonder just who these people were and how the hell they got here...