After releasing two records on a small Welsh label, in 1973 he recorded his iconic breakthrough album, Live at Treorchy, which went on to sell over half a million copies. Several gold and silver records followed, including We All Had Doctors’ Papers, which went to number one in the UK Albums Chart and is still the only comedy album to attain this feat. He has since toured the world, playing sell-out concerts in some of the world’s great venues, including the London Palladium, Sydney Opera House and the Royal Albert Hall. Boyce has a wife and children, who live away from the public eye in his hometown of Glynneath, in South Wales. [20] He continues to play an active role within this community, having been the president of Glynneath RFC in recent years [21] and the Club President of Glynneath Golf Club, where the "Max Boyce Classic" is held every two or three years. [22] Max Boyce’s career has enjoyed a resurgence since the late 1990s. At Christmas time in 1998, BBC Wales screened An Evening With Max Boyce, which broke Welsh viewing records. [1] The following year, in 1999, he performed at the opening ceremonies of the 1999 Rugby World Cup in the Millennium Stadium, and of the Welsh Assembly. Not long after, Boyce was included on the 2000 New Year Honours list, and received an MBE from Prince Charles in a ceremony at Cardiff Castle on 15 March that year. According to Boyce, "He (the Prince) said he was surprised it took them so long" to accord him this honour. [15] It was difficult to introduce an element of humour at such a sensitive time and I was acutely aware of people’s feelings when ‘just the tide went out’.

In 1982, Boyce went to the United States to be filmed participating at a training camp held by the Dallas Cowboys in California. The resulting four-part series, Max Boyce Meets The Dallas Cowboys was screened by Channel 4 in November that year. He returned to America in early 1984 to try his hand at being a cowboy in the rodeos of the Midwestern United States. The result of his bull riding and rodeo clown antics was Boyce Goes West, which also became a four-part series that was broadcast in June 1984. Top Selling Albums For 1975" (PDF). Music Week. 27 December 1975. p.10. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 March 2021 . Retrieved 30 November 2021– via worldradiohistory.com. Boyce's greatest musical success in recent years was his 2003 tour of Australia, coinciding with the Rugby World Cup which was being hosted there at the time. He held concerts in Adelaide and Melbourne, but the highlight was his sold-out performance at the Sydney Opera House, which was later released on DVD as Max Boyce: Down Under. [ citation needed] Of course it's a bit mischievous, with the bottle used in lieu of a loo given away: "We sympathised with an Englishman whose team was doomed to fail/So we gave his that old bottle, that once held bitter ale." Max Boyce, singer-songwriter, poet and entertainer, was born in the village of Glynneath, south Wales, where he still lives with his wife, Jean. Despite the fact that his father was killed in a mining explosion a month before Max was born, Max went on to work underground in the local colliery at the age of sixteen – a profession he remained in for over a decade.He told WalesOnline in an earlier interview: “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve probably written better songs, but for some reason that one found a special place in the hearts of those that heard it. Davies, John; Jenkins, Nigel; Menna, Baines; Lynch, Peredur I., eds. (2008). The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. p.388. ISBN 978-0-7083-1953-6. Hymns & Arias includes some of my favourite songs, such as ‘Rhondda Grey’ and ‘Duw! It’s Hard’, as well as some unpublished poems, such as ‘Is God in His Paint Shop’, ‘Aberfan’ and ‘With a Whistle in His Hand’.

Ar hyd y nos means all through the night and Max Boyce's lyrics refer to the traditional Welsh hymn of the same name. Boyce continues to make headlines in the British press. On 29 May 2006, Max Boyce headlined at a concert in Pontypridd to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Welsh national anthem, " Hen Wlad fy Nhadau". [16] In August 2006, he hit out against the stereotypical use of the word " boyo" in the media, following its resurgence in reference to Welsh Big Brother contestant Glyn Wise. [17] There are also fine illustrations by Anne Cakebread, Fran Evans, Darryl ‘Gren’ Jones and Rhys Padarn Jones that accompany some of my songs like ‘Close the Coalhouse Door’, ‘Is God in His Paint Shop’, ‘Rhondda Grey’, ‘When Just the Tide Went Out’, ‘The Glory That Was Rome’ and ‘Hymns and Arias’. They have given my work another dimension.The 77-year-old entertainer began on the folk circuit in the early 1970s, establishing a cult following in Wales with his live albums of comic and traditional tunes, before crossing over to a wider fanbase with his third album, 1974's Live at Treorchy, which went gold. I’ve really missed live sport throughout these pandemic times, but thankfully the situation has been restored to some normality.