Their varied, volatile and long career encompasses post punk, neo-psychedelia and indie pop; the only constant being Treacy’s songwriting. Present and former members include Chelsea childhood mates ‘Slaughter Joe’ Foster, one time best friend Ed Ball (early line-up, later briefly) and Jowe Head (ex-Swell Maps), with Jeffrey Bloom from 1983-94. The threesome of Treacy, Head, and Bloom formed the longest unchanged line-up and as a result is considered by many to be the definitive line-up, performing hundreds of gigs around the world and recording many of the band’s most popular songs like ‘How I Learned to Love the Bomb’, ‘Salvador Dali’s Garden Party’ and ‘Strangely Beautiful’. Despite this, the Television Personalities are best known for their early single ‘Part Time Punks’, a favourite of John Peel’s.

Despite their relatively minor commercial success (their third album was sardonically titled ‘They Could Have Been Bigger than the Beatles’), the Television Personalities are highly regarded by critics and have been widely influential, especially on the C86 generation, on many of the bands signed to Creation Records in the 1990s, and on American artists such as Pavement and MGMT. Treacy’s unconventional but dryly witty and culture infused lyrics, have led to his reputation as a seminal and iconic figure within the independent music scene.

In 2006 music critic Cam Lindsay described Treacy as having “recorded some of the most bizarre, unlistenable and brilliant pop songs in the last three decades”.