As a rule their early albums contained a higher ratio of live material and were less musically-driven than their singles, often focusing on McGough's poetry and Gorman and McGear's extended comic vignettes.

By this point the group had also recorded enough tracks for a new studio album, but apart from a few songs that found their way onto singles that year, much of this material remained unreleased until it was included on a 1998 compilation, The Scaffold at Abbey Road 1966-1971.

In early 1971 The Scaffold provided some catchy tunes for inclusion in a television publicity campaign heralding the introduction of decimal currency to the UK.

In this series of informative five-minute programmes, titled Decimal Five and shown on BBC1, their songs included such relevant lyrics as "Give more, get change" and "Use your old coppers in sixpenny lots".

In the same year, in order to broaden their musical palate further the trio and erstwhile collaborator Andy Roberts merged into the expanded line-up of Grimms with performers such as Neil Innes, Vivian Stanshall and Zoot Money, alongside McGough's fellow Liverpool poets Adrian Henri and Brian Patten.

Innes and Stanshall can also be heard contributing to The Scaffold's final release for Parlophone, Do The Albert, which also featured Keith Moon and Les Harvey.

In 1972, the group made a half hour musical movie entitled Plod based on an earlier stage production that centred around Gorman's long-running "P.C.

The trio then concentrated on their work as part of Grimms, until the end of the year when McGear left that group after frayed tempers on another demanding UK tour led to an altercation with Brian Patten.

Since then he has arguably maintained the highest-profile and most sustained post-Scaffold career, still appearing regularly as a vocal performer on British radio and television, and continuing to be a highly regarded poet and author.

In 2009, the classic lineup was reunited in Ronnie Scott's London Jazz Club for a BBC TV programme, and in October 2010, they reconvened for a Gala Concert in Shanghai, to celebrate the end of the Liverpool Pavilion as part of the World Expo.

[citation needed] On 9 April 2020, the original members of the Scaffold released a re-worked version of "Thank U Very Much" in support of the British National Health Service staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.