The United Kingdom of Song #5: Margate

Our destination today: Kent seaside town Margate.

Tracey Emin, Trevor Howard and the Major from Fawlty Towers all came from Margate, though its most famous musical son is Mike Stock of Stock, Aitken & Waterman, a man about whom, the best I can say is simply this: at least he wasn't Pete Waterman. Fortunately, Margate has one other musical hero: Brian Fahey.

No idea who Brian Fahey is? Well, he's the man who wrote this. Not 'arf, pop-pickers.

Lyrically, Margate crops up in Salad's Man With A Box...

A man with a box made a train escape from Euston

While his butterflies went wild in the woods

The police report stated that every year at Margate

The daisies grew a different shade of brown

And in Bob Geldof's Love Like A Rocket... a song which cheekily updates the story of Waterloo Sunset's Terry & Julie (I wonder what Ray Davies thought of that?) with a video which will NOT persuade you to give Bob your fookin' money... especially when Eric Clapton pops up.

Julie cries a lot but she tries to hide the tears

From the kids coming in from school

She's looking at a picture taken, Margate '66

Of Terry on the pier looking cool

She tries to remember the boy in the snap

But the baby's woken up from her afternoon nap

She runs a wrinkled hand through her tired hair

Then sighs and mutters something sounding close to despair

However, we come to Margate today to pay tribute to one of two men who immortalised the town in song, the one who sadly left us just last week...

RIP, Chas.

You can keep your Costa Brava!


While we're down in this neck of the woods, I figured we'd keep going south on the coast road. It's only about 60 miles or so... see you there next Friday.