Rat Scabies

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Scabies at the time of the release of The Damned single New Rose, October 1976

Christopher Miller (born 30 July 1957), better known by the stage name Rat Scabies, is a musician best known for his tenure as the drummer for The Damned.

Scabies was born in Kingston Upon Thames, Surrey. He played drums with Rot and London SS before founding The Damned with Brian James, Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible. In 1995, disagreements about the release of the album Not of This Earth caused a fallout between Scabies and Vanian, and Scabies left the band. This had the effect of reuniting Vanian and Sensible, who had left The Damned in 1985, to sue Scabies and form a new line-up of The Damned without him. He remains excluded from The Damned to this day. Recently he has worked and played with Flipron [1].

Scabies currently lives with his wife Viv and their three children in Brentford, and is the central character of the 2005 book Rat Scabies And The Holy Grail, written by former music journalist Christopher Dawes. The book was published in May 2005 and is billed as "A road trip, a rich historical yarn, and testimony to the odd nature of a great many friendships". He will be giving a talk on this topic, "Rennes-le-Château & The Grail", at UnCon 2006.