An interesting piece on Phil Hartley by Rhodri Marsden on one of his 'Timewasting' blogs:

“The Amazing Roy North Penis Band”, they ditched that slightly dubious moniker fairly swiftly, eventually settling for something more palatable.
They soon grabbed the attention of John Robb, of legendary noisy Northerners The Membranes, and lo! the band’s first 12”EP entitled “Let Them Eat Bogshed”  duly appeared on his own Vinyl Drip label. The record set a blueprint for the future: repetitive, rickety, seemingly unplayable guitar riffs, a monster bass sound bludgeoning its way from one groove to the next, and on top, Phil Hartley’s deranged vocal, sometimes crooning, sometimes screaming, always utterly ludicrous but still strangely melodic and crammed with vivid imagery, buzz-words and slogans. “This week the score draws are plentiful!” quoth he at the end of “Slave Girls”, and he was right; the band were the toast of the town, with weeks on end spent in the Indie Top Twenty and fawning praise from John Peel, of the like only heard when he received a new record by his darlings The Fall. A couple of sessions were recorded for his programme, mainly featuring material from the soon to be released LP “STEP ON IT BOG SHED”. The LP was somewhat one-dimensional in sound, some might say poorly recorded, but it gave the record a great deal of character. By now the band were as recognisable for their sleeve artwork as for their music; the hideous characters penned cartoon style by bassist Mike Bryson fitted perfectly with the Bog Shed sound. “Run To The Temple” was lifted from the LP and appeared on the NME cassette ‘C86’, and the future looked rosy.

John Peel coined the term “shambling” one night to describe the music of Bog Shed, and to the disgust of many the term was picked up by the music press and hurled back in the faces of most of the bands featured on C86; few had the strength to battle through unscathed. Bog Shed were certainly affected; the catchy single “Morning Sir”, released around the same time as “Step On It Bog Shed” did nowhere near as well as “Let Them Eat...” and soon Hartley moved to Liverpool, at which point writing and rehearsing became more difficult. But nevertheless, the 12”EP “Tried And Tested Public Speaker” appeared swiftly, featuring six tracks from the two most recent Peel Sessions (unfortunately omitting the marvellous cover version of Benny Hill’s “Gathering The Mushrooms”.)

In March 1987 the band started work on the next LP called “BRUTAL”. Owing to severe cock-ups on the printing front the brilliant sleeve, featuring almost- too-lifelike puppets of the band, took over six months to finish, and when the LP was eventually released the NME and Melody Maker were not really interested as by this time they considered the band’s music purely student fodder. However in other circles, such as the newly launched “Underground” magazine, it was hailed as a work of genius. With a lot more light and shade, variety and subtely, the LP made for much more rewarding listening than its predecessor. The gigs were as magnificent as ever, despite Phil Hartley’s claims to the contrary. For those who saw them perform, the memory is still vivid.....
Hartley with hand on hip, Bryson with his hands a blur on the fretboard, and Mark McQuaid playing guitar whilst seemingly competing for the national gurning championships... But times were hard, and Bog Shed’s fortunes were diminishing...

With sales declining rapidly, they saw their last hope as the magnificent single “Excellent Girl”, as all were certain it was the best thing they had done to date. They triumphantly pulled it out of the bag, released it, and watched it unceremoniously sink into oblivion. Now heavily in debt, Bog Shed shelved the next single, “Stop Revolving” and called it a day. But not before recording one final Peel Session, which contained some of the band’s finest (and longest!) work. The 7 minute long “Into Me”, and the uncharactaristically garagey “US Bans” showed that the band were artistically at their peak, despite morale being in a rather deep trough.

Mike Bryson went onto take his ghoulish artwork into the world of animation, whilst Tris King drummed with Jackdaw With Crowbar and later A Witness. Phil Hartley made a few attempts to launch a solo career, first with a band, then a tape machine, then another band, but eventually gave up, leaving us with one solo Peel Session, which was a somewhat hollow version of Bog Shed musically speaking, but still with all the wit and humour of that fine band very much intact."