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about

Tanky Smith was a famous detective who worked in Leicester and adopted a range of disguises to enable him to catch crooks and whose house off London Road has a series of gargoyles which portray some of these disguises - written by Steve.

lyrics

Tanky Smith

1.Well, our Tanky was a canny lad ‘e were full of wild surprises
He’d ‘ave them villains from their lairs
With his myriad disguises
As a bishop or as a quaker, as a jockey or a cook,
He’d get the local lowdown on them villains and them crooks.

2. If a villain was out upon the run or gone deep into hiding
You could guarantee our Tanky Smith
Would be the first to find him
Deep in the depths of Derbyshire or way down in Devizes,
He’d flush ‘em out and get ‘em to the next county assizes.

Chorus:-
Tanky, Tanky, he were lean and lanky,
He were a copper what could spot
A bit of hanky panky

3. And when he weren’t out catching crooks he’d sometimes have a mind
To trip across the sea a missing person for to find
To seek out James Winstanley, he got an urgent call,
The ‘igh Sheriff of the County,
What lived ain Braunstone Hall.

4. By using all them little grey cells, he set out on the trail,
What led him into Deutschland where he ‘eard of a sad tale,
The tragic truth he came upon and very quickly found,
A body from the river pulled proved poor old James was drowned.

Chorus

5. In a house on London Road was where our Tanky lived,
His son wanted to leave something in memory of ‘im,
So when he died he copied the disguises that he’d used,
And stuck ‘em up as gargoyles on the front of Tanky’s mews.

6. And there on Top ‘At Terrace, you can see ‘em to this day,
In 16 gargoyles carved in stone, Tanky is displayed,
The ‘eds of bishops, cooks and quakers all in hats and wigs,
A rather fitting tribute to old Francis Tanky Smith.

Chorus x 2

credits

from Legends of Leicester & Leicestershire Vol. III, released December 22, 2022
Main vocal - Steve Cartwright - harmony vocals, piano and banjo by Dave Taylor who also does the silly voices at the end.

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about

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Steve Cartwright Leicester, UK

I am a singer/songwriter (of considerable repute), a poet and an artist and I’ve been around for centuries. I write great songs and you’ll find they span a variety of styles and cover a very wide range of topics. My poems (like my songs) are designed to inform and challenge and to make you laugh and cry. ... more

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