The following quickie formed part of a medley – well in the end several different medleys, but initially a VE Day Labour medley – click here.
But I’m writing this up today, 20 March 2017, on Vera Lynn’s 100th birthday.
It is strange re-reading this quickie today.
At the time, 1995, when Vera Lynn was a sprightly 78 year old, I think it was funny and it certainly went down very well. It was used/reused many times in NewsRevue – the VE Day and general 50th anniversary of the war ending stories ran and ran in the news and this was ideal material for that.
But now that Vera Lynn is 100, the song no longer has the same humour to it. Usually the passage of time makes material easier to laugh about, but in this case, the passage of time has the opposite effect.
Still, imagine the 50th anniversary of VE day; imagine wall-to-wall Vera Lynn on the radio and TV and you should still get the jokes.
Wheel Vera Lynn, out again, what a din,
Yes they’ll wheel out Vera Lynn despite her years;
Keeps crooning through, although she’s ninety two,
But they wheel out Vera Lynn to raise the tears.
That Vera still bangs the drum, for a six figure sum,
She will sing you a song;
You’ll be moved and be charmed, even ‘tho’ she’s embalmed
And her talent’s all gone.
Wheel Vera Lynn, out again, what a din,
And they’ll wheel out Vera Lynn each fifty years.
Ben Murphy used it on one of his albums – a wonderful rendition at the end of a medley, which included my VE Day Labour Medley – click here – and some of his own material.
I credited this VE Day celebrations medley to “cast” as well as me, so I must have spent some time consulting with the cast over their wishes. In my view, this was mostly padding for the Wheel Vera Lynn song – click here or below.
VOICEOVER: And now we join another relic of a byegone era: one of the many street parties celebrating VE Day.
THE STREET PARTIES OF DOVER (To the tune of “The White Cliffs of Dover”)
There’ll be no Krauts over, The white cliffs of Dover, Cos they’re not invited to VE; There’ll be Frogs and Yankees, And street parties, frankly, We’re all bored with this Jubilee.
SPAM FRITTERS SPAM (To the tune of “Run Rabbit Run”)
Spam fritters, spam fritters, spam, spam, spam, This VE day stuff’s a sham, sham, sham; Bang, bang, bang, that war nostalgia drum, And stuff powdered egg in your tum, tum, tum.
WE’LL HAVE TUMMY ACHE TOMORROW (To the tune of “It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow”)
We’ll have tummy ache tomorrow, Tomorrow all our guts will drag; There’ll be pancrititis and gastro-enteritis, Tomorrow we’ll have urine bags.
The Ben Murphy medley adapts the above material so much I think we can only claim it to have been “inspired by”, but he does a great job with the VE Labour items – click here for the Ogblog of those and of course Wheel Vera Lynn.
In case there’s anyone who doesn’t recognise the original numbers, here are some YouTubes with lyrics.
Strangely, the following year I re-presented the medley 1 May 1996 as a 1996 local election remix – it is marked Version 2 but I cannot see much if any the difference:
LABOUR DAY – LOCAL ELECTIONS 1996 REMIX (A medley to various World War Two tunes)
IN THE LOCAL COUNCIL POLLS (To the tune of “The Quartermaster’s Stores”)
There was Blair, Blair, winning fair and square, In the polls, in the polls; There was Blair, Blair, every-bloody-where, In the local council polls. My eyes are dim I cannot see, A single Tory victory, I can’t see one Tory victory.
EASE UP GORDON BROWN (To the tune of “Knees Up, Mother Brown”)
Ease up Gordon Brown, ease up Gordon Brown, Labour councils won the rout, Chucked a load of Tories out; All you do is grimace, All you do is frown, Ease up, ease up, join in our knees up, Ease up Gordon Brown.
ROLL OUT THE TORIES (To the tune of “Roll Out The Barrel”)
Roll out the Tories, See what the Tories have done; Roll out the Tories, We’ve got those Blues on the run; Read lots of stories, About their former careers; Its sex and cash and arms with Tories, But now it’s Labour’s year!!
Then 29 June 1997, I wrote another “variant”, barely distinguishable from the first version:
LABOUR DAY – 1997 ELECTION REMIX (A medley to various World War Two tunes)
IN THE OLD OPINION POLLS (To the tune of “The Quartermaster’s Stores”)
There was Blair, Blair, winning fair and square, In the polls, in the polls; There was Blair, Blair, every-bloody-where, In the old opinion polls. My eyes are dim I cannot see, A single Tory victory, I can’t see one Tory victory.
EASE UP GORDON BROWN (To the tune of “Knees Up, Mother Brown”)
Ease up Gordon Brown, ease up Gordon Brown, Labour party’s done the rout, Chucked the bleedin’ Tories out; All you do is grimace, All you do is frown, Ease up, ease up, join in our knees up, Ease up Gordon Brown.
ROLL OUT THE TORIES (To the tune of “Roll Out The Barrel”)
Roll out the Tories, See what the Tories have done; Roll out the Tories, We’ve got those Blues on the run; Read lots of stories, About their former careers; Its sex and cash and arms with Tories, But now New Labour’s here!!
I must have been very confident that Labour was going to rout the Tories in the 1995 local elections. I wrote the following medley two weeks before polling day (4 May 1995) and didn’t change a word afterwards.
This stuff ran for months in the show and I think might well have made it to Edinburgh and Christmas special status too.
VE (VICTORY IN ELECTIONS) DAY MEDLEY – LOCAL ELECTIONS
(A medley to various World War Two tunes)
VOICEOVER: And now we go across to Walworth Road in Southwark where the Labour party are holding a street party to celebrate VE Day (Victory in Elections Day)
IN THE LOCAL COUNCIL POLLS
(To the tune of “The Quartermaster’s Stores”)
There was Blair, Blair, winning fair and square,
In the polls, in the polls;
There was Blair, Blair, every-bloody-where,
In the local council polls.
My eyes are dim I cannot see,
A single Tory victory,
I can’t see one Tory victory.
EASE UP GORDON BROWN
(To the tune of “Knees Up, Mother Brown”)
Ease up Gordon Brown, ease up Gordon Brown,
Labour councils won the rout,
Chucked a load of Tories out;
All you do is grimace,
All you do is frown,
Ease up, ease up, join in our knees up,
Ease up Gordon Brown.
ROLL OUT THE TORIES
(To the tune of “Roll Out The Barrel”)
Roll out the Tories,
See what the Tories have done;
Roll out the Tories,
We’ve got those Blues on the run;
Read lots of stories,
About their former careers;
Its sex and cash and arms with Tories,
But now it’s Labour’s year!!
Ben Murphy recorded the above medley, along with some of his own material and including a wonderful version of the Wheel Vera Lynn song:
Just in case any Ogblog readers are unfamiliar with the original words and tunes for these Second World War classics, here are some YouTube links:
Be patient with Roll Out The Barrel: the song/lyrics don’t appear until about 1:20 into the following recording.
I think this artefact speaks for itself. All of the lyrics listed are up or will go up in the fullness of time.
Amipro tables don’t convert into anything, so I have tried to turn the nice neat table thingie into a legible list. Best efforts blah blah.
Denise Thomson/Orita
News Revue
LIST OF SONGS SUBMITTED AND TAPE TRACK LISTING
APRIL-MAY 1995 RUN
Dear Denise
This starter pack consists of songs currently in the show but mainly previously unperformed ones. If you want me to work on a rewrite of an old chestnut of mine that you might have uncovered in the archive, just let me know.
Call me and let me know if you are short of any subjects or styles and I shall try to oblige. Also, if any of these need a bit of rewrite then I am happy to change them on request.
Good luck and I look forward to seeing you soon.
Song Title/Original Title/Artist on Tape
Aprox. No. of weeks performed: 7+ 4-6 1-3 New
side 1
the shit of araby/the sheik of araby/spike jones – New
There’s a “delicacies shopping list” to die for on the Maundy Thursday page of Janie’s diary, with prosciutto ham, guinea fowl breasts and Aberdeen Angus fillet all listed next to “Harvey Nics” opening times. Back then Janie used the butchers there.
On the evening of Good Friday, I went to my parents’ house for Pesach sedar night, which Janie skipped that year. Janie acquired more of a taste for such events than me by the end of my parents’ lives, but at that time, Janie wanted some well-earned rest instead and who could blame her.
We played tennis on the Saturday morning – the first reference to playing that year. Janie booked Court 8 it says.
Court 4 of Lammas Park, as was, more than 25 years later
Janie’s diary says we had dinner at Noughts & Crosses on the Saturday evening, although I am struggling to work out when we were supposed to eat all that yummy grub she brought back from Harvey Knickers. I suppose one of the meals was Thursday night and one intended for the Monday.
Sunday dinner at The Mainellis (or accurately at that time I should say Michael Mainelli & Elisabeth Reuss). This event was at Elisabeth’s place in Chiswick/Gunnersbury. It was possibly revenge…I mean reciprocation…for the Wild Boar evening a couple of months earlier:
Elisabeth proudly served us sauerbraten, a German national dish. We had a very pleasant evening and of course sank more-than-reasonable quantities of alcohol; it would have been churlish of us as guests to do otherwise.
Both Janie and I struggled to digest all of that in the night. What I didn’t realise was that my “almost to be expected” digestive struggle was as nothing compared with the pain Janie was feeling.
We called the doctor, who suggested that she brave out what was probably just over-indulgence or food poisoning. Once Janie was doubled with pain, we called the doctor again and a locum came to Sandall Close to see her. He diagnosed food poisoning, “which can be very painful” and gave her a pain-killing shot.
The pain-killing shot provided Janie with some temporary relief. But once that shot wore off and she was doubled over again in agonising pain, I called for an ambulance.
Which was just as well.
Because it transpired that Janie had pancreatitis resulting from a gall stone getting trapped in her pancreatic duct. Her gall bladder was over-flowing with stones. Just the thought of it is agonisingly painful.
The A&E doctors seemed very young and they gave us reassurance in the way that only well-trained, following all the protocols doctors can.
They told us that they thought they had the matter under control and that most people of Janie’s age and health (normally very good) would recover fully from the ordeal…but that pancreatitis is an extremely dangerous and serious condition so it was possible that Janie wouldn’t survive.
I had driven to the hospital in my own car, behind the ambulance, as advised by the ambulance crew. I drove back to Sandall Close alone in the early hours of the Tuesday morning. I put on the car radio for that short journey. The DJ was playing Miserlou by Dick Dale & His Del-Tones on the radio…
…well it was 1995 when Pulp Fiction was all the rage. I can no longer hear that tune without thinking of that lonely drive home.
SPOILER ALERT! Janie didn’t die. In fact, she recovered well and quickly.
A fortnight later, she had her gall bladder removed on the Monday to ensure that no such episode could happen again. She had the stitches removed on the Saturday and we played tennis the next day and the day after that, which was Bank Holiday Monday.
Tough cookie, is Janie. But I haven’t noticed her choosing to eat sauerbraten again since that Easter weekend.
I don’t think this got used much, if at all. Slow ones need to be so spot on, as the laughs still need to come fast enough.
Good lyric, though, worth the read at least for a few of the lines. Talking of “read”, the line about Lou Reed’s demise is far more topical now (2017) than it was in 1995.
POSY BAND
(To the Tune of “Perfect Day”)
VERSE 1
Just a posy band,
They’re known as Duran Duran,
Just like Barbarella’s man,
In that flick.
Such a posy band,
They wear New Romantic shoes,
Gauche tunics and weird hairdos,
Makes us sick.
CHORUS 1
Cos they’re a pretentious band,
We thought at last they had gone;
Bog off Duran Duran,
With that git Simon Le Bon,
Don’t you hate that Simon Le Bon,
VERSE 2
Just a pompous band,
How come they are still at large?
It’s years since we’ve seen Visage,
Or Japan.
Such a painful band,
Should’ve died out like Frankie Valli,
More stuck up than Spandau Ballet,
That Duran (Duran).
CHORUS 2
And it’s such a putrid disk,
Sung without zeal really slow;
It’s an appalling disk,
With a ghastly video,
Don’t you wish those arseholes would go.
OUTRO
You’ll make Lou Reed turn in his grave;
(GIT 1: I didn’t realise Lou Reed was dead.)
(GIT 2: Well, effectively dead.)
(GIT 3: Is now.)
You’ll make Lou Reed turn in his grave.
Here is Lou Reed rendering the wonderful song, Perfect Day, with lyrics in the description:
I didn’t have a television set between 1990 and 1999, so I probably wasn’t the most suitable person to write a critique lyric on the BBC.
There are one or two good ideas in there, not least the muddle you can get into when trying to be even-handed, but it’s unsurprising that this lyric was, as far as I know, never used.
Bits could be recycled still, though…
BBC
(To the Tune of “ABC”)
VERSE 1
Do, do, do, do-do-do, do, do, do, do-do-do,
We pissed off Mr Aitken,
Which we’ve never, never done before;
We simply said that he’s paid by Mr Al Fayed,
And he made on Iran’s last war.
But now we’re duty bound to show you {show you, show you}
That we are unbiased {we cannot be biased}
There’s graft in Labour too,
We’ll also show the sleazy things that the Liberals do..
CHORUS 1
BBC, we offer neutrality,
We’ll show it repeatedly, one-two-three, times to see, sleaze equably.
BBC, Charge a big licence fee,
Show a repeat or three, BBC, That’s how great TV can be.
MIDDLE EIGHT
Tories trail dismally, blame the BBC,
Alan Yentob knows the way to sort it out,
Suppress half of the programmes and just watch the talent fleeing out.
VERSE 2
FROM RIGHT: The Tories are in disarray,
FROM LEFT So the Labour party must be split;
FROM RIGHT: And now John Major takes the rap, the public say he’s crap,
FROM LEFT: So Tony Blair must be a heap of shit.
ALL: Now old John Birt is goanna show you {show you, show you},
How to make it pay {make a cut a day};
He’ll bump up licence fees,
And sack broadcasters who have got the nerve to disagree.
CHORUS 2
BBC {it’s easy}, Broadcast unbiasedly {we report unbiasedly},
Else we get mad Tories, Crazily, claiming we’re to the left of C.
BBC {it’s easy}, It’s simply accountancy {it’s just counting beans you see},
Less creativity, BBC, And that’s the state of our TV.
And it’s not the way it has to be,
BBC, crap TV!!!!
Then it dawned on me; Harold sent me a recording of Marion Ryan singing the song, so the second version must be my transcription of their tweaked version of the lyric.
It also dawned on me that I might even find the recording somewhere…
…and so I did.
So here is Marion Ryan singing Arthur:
…and here is their slightly tweaked version of the lyric.
ARTHUR
(To the Tune of “Laura”)
VERSE 1
Arthur,
Mr Crames who is sixty now,
Share deals, they just rise, never fall;
Self made, warm-hearted and from Bear Stearns,
But won’t say what he earns,
At all;
VERSE 2
You won’t see Arthur,
On the plane that is passing through,
He likes, beach and pool to be near;
He has the very best meals for you,
So for Arthur,
Let’s all give a big cheer.
…and here (again) is Sinatra singing Laura. Sadly no recording of him singing Arthur:
Billington on l’Homme Qui Sat, Mar 13, 1993 – 28 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Coveney on The Man Who Sun, Mar 27, 1994 – 78 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Butterworth on The Man Who Tue, May 10, 1994 – 25 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
