was in just four of them. As soon as the films were developed Ian came round and we immediately chose the same shot. We were so excited by the picture that we went straight into my darkroom and made the first print. The album title New Boots and Panties was subsequently coined by Ian." Dury and Stiff's in-house designer Barney Bubbles cropped the photo and added the hand-drawn lettering on the front and back covers. The phrase 'There's nothing wrong with it!!' appears on the back cover below the track listing: this was apparently the reaction of the Blockheads upon hearing the first playback of the finished record. Dury later discovered that, unknown to him at the time, his father Bill had died in 1968 in a bedsit just around the corner from where the photograph was taken. Axfords closed its London store in 1990 to concentrate on running the family business from its Brighton factory. Critical reception New Boots and Panties!! received overwhelming acclaim from the music press upon its release. Allan Jones in Melody Maker described the album as "a tense, harrowing account of urban degradation, that conveys with more vocal, musical and lyrical vehemence than any so-called 'new wave/punk' combo has yet been able to muster, the desperation and squalor of the social conditions (and the effects of those conditions upon individual personalities) it so provocatively illustrates." In Sounds Vivien Goldman gave the record a five-star rating, saying, "Lawless brats from council flats have finally found a voice that speaks from, of and about the people. A voice that combines passion with the vernacular 'she got into a mess with the NHS' – sage street advice, plus cinematic observation, plus humour." Record Mirrors Tim Lott observed that "if you can grapple with the sheer unorthodoxy of it it's easy to fall in love with for its quaintness, its limerick simplicity ... The character of New Boots and Panties is indomitable, like Dury. It's a curiosity piece and a pop album and a good joke and sometimes a bad pun and a shot of Bohemian romantics and a load of crap and totally fascinating." Roy Carr in the NME said: .. it's impossible to bag Ian Dury, except to say that he has taken the essence of the Cockney music hall and utilised rock as a contemporary means of expression. On occasions, Ray Davies has dallied with a