Yours truly's name-dropping of the Rats at every opportunity over at
the TOTP2 website has finally yielded some positive results.

A mini-site about the Rats is to be posted up later on in the week as
part of the site's Punk Week tribute series. XTC are also being given
one of these little halls of fame.

Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/ for further details as & when the
site is posted up. Remember, it's the ARTISTES MINI SITES section you
want.

I've argued long and hard that the Rats place in the history of Punk
& New Wave deserves to be accredited, often being a lone voice in the
wilderness against the "revisionists" that would like to pretend the
Rats meant little, simply because they never licked the right media
backsides like certain other bands I could mention did...Geldof & Co
preferred KICKING them to licking them!

Here's hoping this is a sign they are finally going to receive their
due, and a whole new generation will give them a listen when their
back catalogue is reissued this April.