Simply Red is a one-man outfit—so how exactly is it disbanding, asks Neil McCormick. Mick Hucknall announced on Wednesday that Simply Red are splitting up. Which rather raises the question: how does a group with only one member go their separate ways?
Hucknall has employed 27 different musicians over the band’s 25-year career, and admitted in 1991 that Simply Red was “essentially a solo project”.

Now, after fulfilling touring commitments that take him up to 2009, he says Simply Red will be no more.
Most bands break up over musical and personal differences. Perhaps Hucknall just got sick of himself. In which case, he will not have been alone. He may be one of the few truly great soul singers this country has ever produced, with global multi-million sales spanning three decades, yet, beyond his fan base, Hucknall is hardly loved.
At the height of his fame, he was the inspiration for a (now defunct) website, 1,000 People More Annoying Than Mick Hucknall, while he was also a regular target for the TV sketch show Bo’ Selecta, which portrayed him as an egomaniacal sex pest.

Hucknall has claimed that much of the antipathy directed at him amounts to a form of bigotry against his red hair. Indeed, he chose the name Simply Red to denote his hair colour, football allegiance to Manchester United and Left-wing political affiliation. A carrot-topped, Man United-supporting Champagne socialist