This lyric was my first attempt at Princess Diana and certainly wasn’t the last. In fact, I adapted this one a good few times over the years to address various Princess Diana news stories; not least a string of 1994 stories – click here.
Needless to say, the Princess Diana mirth industry stopped abruptly five years and one day later. But the mobile phone snooping did not stop in the late 1990s, no siree.
SNOOPING ON THE MOBILE PHONE
(To the tune of “Hanging on the Telephone”)
VERSE 1 – DIANA
He’s on the car phone I am calling from the Palace,
I call James Squidgy but my other words sound callous,
I hate the Queen, Prince Charles and Princess Alice;
Hope no-one’s snooping on his mobile phone,
Hope no-one’s snooping on his mobile phone.
VERSE 2 – THE SNOOPER
I like to listen in on other’s conversation,
I am a banker so I know about inflation,
I sold the tapes and that has caused a press sensation;
Oh I hope they talk again,
Lots of dirty talk again,
That would raise my pork again.
That’s why I snoop on mobile telephones,
That’s why I snoop on mobile telephones.
VERSE 3 – FERGIE
I hate the fact Diana gets all the attention,
Since Squidgy hit the news I’ve hardly had a mention,
I’ll call some old boy friends to get back in contention;
As long as they have mobile telephones,
(They all have mobile telephones).
VERSE 4 – DIANA AGAIN
I gave Charles chances but that big eared fat head blew it,
Why don’t you ride me, Squidgy, we both want to do it,
Sorry, wrong number, James, I thought you were James Hewitt;
This is the third and final part of my 25th anniversary Ogblog trilogy on “how Janie and I got it together”. In case you missed the first two parts and are interested in reading them, here are links to the first two episodes:
So, the ossobuco supper gave me the perfect opportunity to phone Janie to thank her for her hospitality and ask her out.
As luck would have it, I was sitting on a pair of hot tickets, The Street Of Crocodiles at the Cottesloe Theatre. It was my habit back then to book up quite a few such productions a long way in advance, with Bobbie Scully in mind for first dips, but with an unwritten agreement with Bobbie that she couldn’t commit that far in advance and that I might need to find someone else to join me…
…anyway, I had these tickets for 29 August and they seemed an ideal way to reciprocate.
Janie seemed keen on the idea, so the date was set.
I also offered to cook Janie a pre-theatre meal, after first checking that she liked Chinese food.
I can’t remember exactly which dishes I went for, but I’ll guess I plugged for bankable favourites that were reasonably easy to prepare and which needed relatively little clearing up afterwards:
cha chieng lettuce wrap – probably using veal mince or a mix of veal and pork mince;
chicken and cashew nuts with yellow bean sauce;
I thought the second main dish was steak slices with onions, mushrooms and black bean sauce, but Janie reckons the second dish was prawns with ginger and spring onions and now I think she is right;
pak choi with oyster sauce;
steamed basmati rice.
No TripAdvisor review for the meal, but on reminding Janie about it just now, she has described it as “amazing”, so there you go.
But far more amazing than my meal was The Street Of Crocodiles. It really was a stunningly good show.
The play is based on the stories of Bruno Schulz, which (from what we can gather) were weird enough when written, but when given the Complicite treatment, they become a sensory overload of words, music and movement.
Janie had driven to my place and insisted on also driving to the National Theatre – the latter habit being one she rarely deviates from 25 years later.
The evening seemed to have gone splendidly well. Janie was very complimentary about my cooking and seemed very taken with the show.
When we got back to my place, I asked Janie if she wanted to come back upstairs to my flat.
She said no.
I asked her if she was absolutely sure.
Janie said that she was absolutely sure and drove off.
So that was that – although on this occasion I sensed that “no” meant “not this time” and that there would be plenty of other times.
A rare, indeed mysterious visit to the Canal Cafe on a Tuesday.
I recall this only vaguely. The diary helps just a little.
When I dropped off my Woody Allen & Mia Farrow lyric the week before, I think I ran into Jacqui Somerville herself at the Canal. Either that, or I ran into Harriet Quirk who had a message that Jacqui wanted to meet me. In any case, Jacqui and I arranged to meet on a non-NewsRevue evening.
Jacqui had been directing the early spring run of NewsRevue – that was the first show I saw. I shall write up the story of my early correspondence and visits in the fullness of time. Jacqui had her own ideas about the show, including her own pet writers, some of whom were cast, which went down very badly with the regular writers.
Indeed, at the first NewsRevue writers meeting I attended, some told me not to bother submitting for a few weeks, others simply suggested that I don’t lose heart and resubmit material that had longevity for the subsequent run; which was in fact the John Random run that first used my stuff.
So I do remember Jacqui’s rendezvous request sort-of feeling like an assignation. What would the other writers think if they found out about it? Was she going to try and recruit me into the comedy writing dark side? Or to spy for the Russians or something?
In fact, I recall finding Jacqui quite delightful company, very encouraging and full of good advice/ideas for my writing. I had a little burst of creativity over the subsequent bank holiday weekend, which I’m sure was somewhat inspired by that Tuesday evening chat.
I don’t know whether Jacqui met up with any of the other regular NewsRevue writers over that summer to build bridges, but she certainly won me over and used plenty of the regular writers’ material (not least mine) in future runs she directed, not least the 1992 Christmas run.
I also recall running into Jacqui and her more serious theatre work in subsequent years.
I wonder whether Harriet remembers much about this tiny incident or indeed whether this short piece might be a magnet with which to re-establish contact with Jacqui, as part of our “class of ’92” reunion project?
This lyric ran and ran in NewsRevue in the second half of 1992 and was also recorded by Ben Murphy the following year (recording below).
It was still early in my NewsRevue “career” so I have a few very clear memories about the writing and initial performing of it.
The first memory is that the Woody and Mia rift story broke early in the week and the song popped into my head very quickly. I recall jumping in the car and dropping a lyric sheet and cassette at the Canal Cafe Theatre, probably on that very (Tuesday) morning.
I also recall Jonny Hurst confronting me on the Thursday evening, when the song was first performed, because he had also used the rhyme “Manhattan…shat on” (in a lyric that resembled Maria from West Side Story); Jonny found it hard to believe that I might independently have had the same thought. Fortunately I had a good evidence trail that my lyric had been submitted independently and indeed earlier than his; Jonny not only went on to become the chant laureate but he is also a lawyer!
Here is my lyric:
MAMA MIA FARROW
(A Song for Mia Farrow, Woody Allen and Sprogs To the Tune of “Mama Mia”)
VERSE 1
MIA:Woody’s cheated on me since I don’t know when,
WOODY:I like Mia’s daughters once they’re nine or ten;
MIA:Look at him pry at them lustily,
WOODY:I’m goanna try to get custody,
I have thought,
I might fancy a ward of court;
MIA:God you look a bit like Bernard Levin,
WOODY:Sling your hook go back to Andre Previn.
CHORUS 1
SPROGS:Wo oh oh oh, Mama Mia, here they go again,
My my, listen how they bicker;
Mama Mia, hear them blow again,
My my, like one of his flickers.
WOODY:Central Park came between us,
MIA:He has a massive – genius,
SPROGS:Why why, do they have to argue so?
Mama Mia, now we really know,
Why you’re name is still Mia Farrow.
VERSE 2
WOODY:I’ve been dating Soon-Yi and we’re both having fun,
MIA:You’re an aging loony and she’s just twenty-one;
WOODY:I’m sorry I’ve broken etiquette,
MIA:You’ll go to gaol in Connecticut,
Yankee States,
Won’t allow you to have young mates;
WOODY:Our love tryst should have been in Tennessee,
MIA:Analyst is who you should go and see.
CHORUS 2
SPROGS:Wo oh oh oh, Mama Mia, here they go again,
My my, like the film Manhattan,
Mama Mia, hear them blow again,
Mia, thinks she has been shat on;
WOODY:We both shunned matrimony,
MIA:But still found acrimony,
SPROGS:Why why does this have to carry on?
Mama Mia now he has done wrong,
Shove him up his own Orgasmatron.
Here is Ben Murphy’s recording of the lyric:
And just in case you want to see Abba singing Mamma Mia, here is a vid:
Or if you’d sooner see the Abba lyrics:
Postscript: I have subsequently noticed that my creative process is captured on my diary page for 18 August 1992:
Ossobuco – picture by Stu Spivack via Wikipedia Commons
Since I published my “25th anniversary of meeting Janie” piece last week, I have had, literally, several people ask me how Janie and I ever got it together after she refused to give me her telephone number the first time we met.
The answer, of course, is “ossobuco”.
It happened like this.
After Janie’s refusal to give me her telephone number, I simply assumed that she wasn’t interested at all and I got on with my next week. My next week looked like this.
My guess is that I was actually out every evening that week apart from the Monday – I probably had impromptu drinks/food with work colleagues Thursday and Friday evening.
Saturday evening I can see was a dinner with Caroline at the Pavilion in Poland Street. This will have been her birthday bash on the eve of that landmark day. (Happy birthday, Caroline, if by chance you read this piece on the day I post it).
I have had an exchange of messages with Caroline to establish what happened – I’m sure there were quite a few of us there at The Pavilion that evening. She replies:
I have to say that with the help of your diary your memory is much better than mine. The restaurant is in fact exactly the same now as then. It was a local from when I was working at the Burton group. Vasco and Piero ran it all those years ago. The food was always excellent. The decor was very pink! It’s amazing how quickly 25 years go.
I’m not sure what I ate at the Pavilion but I am sure that it was an Italian dish but not ossobuco.
The other thing I remember clearly, although the diary is silent on this matter, is that I went out for an impromptu lunch on the Sunday with Annalisa. We went to Lee Fook on Westbourne Grove, a Chinese restaurant near my flat which was very much one of my favourites at the time. The excellent chef there was named Ringo, I remember that wonderful fact too.
If that review ever bites the dust on the ES site, I’ve saved the Wayback machine the trouble on this one by scraping it here.
In short, by mid-afternoon I had eaten my fill that weekend and ambled home after lunch.
The telephone was ringing off the hook as I walked through the door.
I should point out, at this juncture, that, in those days, I had no answering machine for my phone. No cellphone either. Just the one, old-fashioned telephone.
“At bloody last”, said a female voice.
“Hello”, I said, “who’s calling?”
“It’s Janie, we met at Kim’s party last week.”
“Oh, hello”, I said, intrigued.
“You are impossible to get hold of”, said Janie, “I have tried to call you loads of times. Your answering machine isn’t switched on.”
“I don’t have an answering machine”, I said, while thinking to myself that if she had given me her telephone number in the first place she might have spared herself these difficulties.
“I have been out rather a lot this week”, I continued, “in fact, if I sound a little out of breath, it’s because I have just been out to lunch and heard the phone ringing as I came up the stairs.”
“Oh, that’s a bummer,” said Janie, “I was going to invite you over for ossobuco with Kim and Micky this evening, but if you have already eaten you obviously don’t want…”
“…no, hold on a moment”, I persevered, “I love ossobuco and I’d very much like to join you, Kim and Micky for dinner. But if I don’t eat a vast quantity of food, you’ll know the reason why. Is that a deal?”
“OK”, said Janie.
“You’ll have to give me your address and telephone number now”, I said, trying hard not to sound triumphal about it.
Given that the only way to resolve the matter was now for Janie to phone me, they came up with this “chaperoned Sunday evening meal at Janie’s place” idea. The only problem with that grand scheme was that Janie had tried and failed many times to phone me; basically because I wasn’t at home much and only took telephone messages through work in those days.
But all’s well that ends well.
The evening was a great success. I didn’t have room for seconds but I did discover that Janie can cook a mean ossobuco. Even to this day, we think of slow cooked shin of veal (not always done ossobuco style but all variants qualify in our book) as “our dish”.
Just feast your eyes on it again. Yum.
Osso Bucco – picture by Stu Spivack via Wikipedia Commons
It’s a bit all over the place (much like its non-evil twin song), but I think it was used a couple of times over the summer, if for no other reason to reprise (reuse) the springbok masks from the Terre’Blanche song. If you want to know more about Jani Allan, some of the newspaper headline links – here – are at least as funny if not funnier than my lyric.
I FEEL PETTY
(To the Tune of “I Feel Pretty”)
VERSE 1 – JANI ALLAN
I am Jani, yes I’m Jani, I am canny, my man ‘e is white,
And my fanny, is with Eugene Terre’Blanche tonight;
I feel Nazis, private parties, though my heart is not party to crimes,
Even tarts see that the Nazis are bunch of slimes.
See the article in the Mirror there,
Why does everyone libel me?
I shall sue the Sun, and sue Channel 4, and the Guardian and I shall sue me.
I am petty, oh so petty, but I bet ‘e can get me a pile,
Cos I’m now the most soughter reporter for miles.
MIDDLE BIT – CHORUS
Have you seen my friend Michael Jackson,
The crazyist guy on the screen,
The strange parts that his surgeon tacks on,
Have made him look so weird and some say obscene.
He thinks he looks good, he thinks he’s a brain,
He doesn’t look good, he’s really insane.
Write a word or two about Michael, and he’s bound to sue you for libel;
VERSE 2 – MICHAEL JACKSON (LOOKING IN A MIRROR)
Woooo,
I look pretty, woooo so pretty, though this city is shitty I’m white;
It’s a pity that the papers libel me through spite.
See that pretty boy in that mirror there {CHORUS WITH PAPERS: this mirror here};
Doesn’t he look slightly like me {CHORUS: who what where who}
Such a pretty nose such a pretty face such a pretty hair pity its not me.
Woooo,
I am petty, oh so petty, like Paul Getty I’ve earned mega bucks,
I don’t care if I look like the back of a truck.
If you want to hear Natalie Wood sing I Feel Pretty and see the lyrics to that song, see below:
All the diary entry says is “Kim & Michel 1:30”. A daytime, summer party. But that summer party was no ordinary passing event for me…nor for Janie.
On that day, at that party, Janie and I first met.
Writing this piece 25 years (to the day) after the event, my recollection of the day is a bit patchy.
I hadn’t seen Kim and Micky for some time; since my back injury, two year’s before, I had been a bit less sociable and had not been so good at keeping in touch with people. I remember being pleasantly surprised when Kim called, out of the blue, to invite me to that party.
There were quite a lot of people at the party – a few dozen I would guess. I chatted at some length with a pair of lively, friendly “girls”; Anthea – a photographer friend who had been at school with Kim, as had the other young woman, Jane, who was Kim’s chiropodist friend.
I vaguely recalled Kim having spoken with me in the past about these good friends; in particular Jane. I also recalled Rene Knight (who worked for Kim’s family for many years) telling me a funny story about Jane.
When Kim first started dating Micky, Rene mentioned to Jane that Micky was from Belgium and also that Kim’s new hot-shot boyfriend drove a Mercedes. Jane had asked whether the Mercedes was petrol or diesel. Rene wondered why Jane wanted to know. Jane told Rene that a Belgian diesel Mercedes must be a cab and that, if the Mercedes was diesel, Micky was clearly not the hot-shot he held himself out to be. Rene passed on this pearl of wisdom to Kim, who confirmed that the car was indeed propelled through the use of diesel fuel. By all accounts, Kim challenged Micky with this “fact” about his occupation the next time she saw him, but, despite Janie’s error of judgment on that matter, Kim & Micky progressed with their relationship and the two of them persevered with Janie’s friendship.
In some ways it is odd that Janie’s and my path hadn’t crossed before, through Kim & Micky, but in the late 1980s, when I would see Kim & Micky socially a few times a year, it tended to be dinner or lunch parties and I guess they saw Janie and me as part of different circles. In any case, we were both otherwise attached most of the time during those years.
Anyway, Janie and I ended up as part of a smaller group that was still around into the early evening, at which point Kim suggested that we all go across the square and play tennis.
I had just started playing tennis again post injury, although quite tentatively still. Goodness only knows how useless I was after quite a few drinks at the party. But most of us had been drinking quite heavily, so I don’t suppose the quality of the tennis was very high.
I’m struggling to remember who was still around for that impromptu tennis. Janie, Kim and Micky of course; I think also Gary & Clifford. Perhaps Anthea also, but I have a feeling that she ducked out before the tennis. Others might remember.
I do recall thinking that Janie was pretty good at tennis. It probably helped that she was the only sober person among us. It also helped that she had grown up in a house with a tennis court and sisters to play with, but I didn’t know that fact at the time.
Janie had mentioned several times that she had driven to the party in her car and therefore wasn’t drinking. After the tennis, I asked her if she could drop me at a tube station. She said that she would, but that she wasn’t prepared to go out of her way and that the only tube station she’d be passing was Hanger Lane. That was ideal for me, as Hanger Lane and Notting Hill Gate are on the same line.
Janie and I chatted some more on the fifteen minute car journey.
She said that she liked poetry.
When she stopped the car to drop me off, I asked Janie for her telephone number.
Janie said no.
In order to get out of the car with my dignity intact, I took from my wallet one of those sticky labels with my name, address and telephone number on it. I stuck the label on her steering wheel, saying, “in that case, you can have my address and telephone number”.
Janie thanked me and said that she would write me a poem.
I went to see this show with Andrea, Maz and Daniel – normally the “three musketeers” of our bridge four.
Not sure whose idea it was to see this show…but I’ll guess that Maz was the ringleader for the trip.
I don’t remember much about it, but the diary says we met at 6:30 so I guess we had a drink before the show and a quick meal afterwards. I’m guessing The Mayflower Chinese, as I have a hint of a memory of dining with those three at that place, but I could be wrong.
Andrea or Maz might remember. Even Daniel might. I’d love to learn of any lingering memories from that evening.
My log simply says “fun”, which I recall it was. A rather silly show, of course, but that’s the idea of it.
