Sam had a busy week last week. On Tuesday night, he joined over 300 kids from schools all over the region to perform in a giant choir in Huddersfield Town Hall. As you'll see from the image above (one I found online - we weren't allowed to take photos of the actual concert, GDPR and all that), it's an especially grand stage to perform on, and we were so proud of Sam, because unlike many of the other kids who were understandably nervous, he sang his heart out, putting some real expression in and quite a few (subtle) dance moves. Don't get me wrong, I doubt he's destined for chart success, but he sings as well as any other 9 year old. And he even got to play the kazoo in "Consider Yourself".
I've been on that stage a couple of times myself. Firstly, I played in a brass band contest there when I was a teenager, then a little later it's where I graduated, collecting my degree certificate in cap and gown in the summer of 1994. Almost 30 years ago.
A couple of years later, I saw these guys there...
Huddersfield Town Hall is not often used as a live music venue, but I probably have seen a couple more acts there. The Shirehorses are the only ones I can remember without consulting my big scrap book of tickets though.
Back to Sam's big week...
The following day, show-tunes still ringing in his ears, Sam went to Maths HQ. In our heads, this was an abandoned volcano that had been taken over by Maths teachers, although in reality it was a pretty average-looking building in Skelmanthorpe. And it turns out it wasn't actually called Maths HQ at all, but he was going there for Maths. See, Sam had been chosen to represent his school in an inter-schools times tables competition. Pitted against kids from loads of other schools in the area, he took part in a knockout tournament of rapid-fire times tabling.
5 x 7? 6 x 12? 9 x 8?
You had three seconds to answer or you were out. 31 kids took part. 10 fell in the first round.
4 x 9? 3 x 6? 8 x 7?
And on it went. They brought down the time you had to respond. First two seconds... then one. In the end, there were just 4 kids still standing... but none of them would get an answer wrong. And so... they switched to division.
18 ÷ 3? 21 ÷ 7? 72 ÷ 8?
Three kids left. Then just two.
54 ÷ 6? 121 ÷ 11? 2 ÷ 1?
There could only be one winner.
And somehow, Sam did it.
Football star. Chorister. Maths whiz-kid. I don't know where he gets it from, but he surely doesn't get it from me.
Well done, buddy, we're so proud of you.
This was the best song I heard the massed choir sing on Tuesday night. "That's not from a musical!" I hear you cry. Which is probably why it was the best song. (Apparently it's in Shrek: The Musical.) I was impressed that the music teacher hosting the event knew its origins - before the Monkees got hold of it, this was a Neil Diamond composition. To be fair, Mickey, Davy, Mike and Peter improved on the original, but I still like to give Neil's version a spin every now and then. Won't have a word said against him.
"Hmm, Betty, the doggy’s done a whoopsie on the floor.”
Frank Spencer never actually uttered this line in the popular 70s sitcom, but thanks to Mike Yardwood, the rest of the country started doing Michael Crawford impressions and the line became a legend. And if that wasn't bad enough...
I remember watching Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em when I was a kid and generally finding it annoying in the same way that I would find Adam Sandler's man-child act intensely irritating 20 years later. It never fails to amaze me that Crawford would go on to become a West End legend as The Phantom of the Opera. Quite a leap up from Frank.
Let's kick off our Frank tribute, appropriately enough, in Mu Mu Land...
Today's winner though is a song about thinking that the singer onstage is looking straight at you (and maybe you've got a chance with them!) when actually they can't see the crowd's faces at all because of the stage lights. Which is just the kind of idiotic thing that Frank Spencer would probably do...
One look sends it coursin' through the veins, oh, how the feelin' races
Back up to their brains to form expressions on their stupid faces
They don't want to say hello like I want to say hello
Well, the heartbeat's at its peak when you're coming up to speak
And oh, I'm so tense, never tenser, could all go a bit Frank Spencer
And I'm talkin' gibberish, tip of the tongue but I can't deliver it
Properly, oh, it's all gettin' on top of me
And if it weren't this dark, you'd see how red my face has gone, yeah
I remember being round at my next door neighbours, taping this song off one cassette onto another.
Thanks. I've got you sharing The Smurfs and Sam making me listen to Baby Shark. As if life wasn't bad enough.
Show him the Smurfs Go Pop album.
I think I'll stick with making him listen to the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack again.
I would have thought you were post cassette.
No way, one of my favourite toys as a kid was the Talkboy (TM). It's the thing Kevin has on Home Alone 2 where you can speed up or slow down the playback.
From Tiger Electronics.
I just used to put a penny on the LP.
I also have a lot of cassettes now.
Of course. Because pointless tat comes with Hipsterdom.
Is that slang for going to the toilet?
What, pointless tat? I'll have you know I have very good direction.
You can get plenty of tapes on eBay for dirt cheap.
People do big clear outs. There's never any bidding wars or anything.
I've just started buying up cheap CDs I used to own, then sold when I was skint (and CDs still had value). Now I can get them for a couple of quid each.
My tape player is French as well.
Of course it is.
I donated all my CDs about 5 years ago.
I know. But I'm never going to be able to afford a vinyl collection and I even sold my turntable. CDs are now the cheapest option... except for anything released in the last 2-3 years which is extortionate and never drops in price.
Whereas I don't have anything to play CDs on. Even the laptops in our house don't have CD compartments.
I did buy one of those things that lets you convert old cassettes into mp3s. I've just never had time to use it. I also have lots of old mini-discs that I have a similar intention for.
Mini discs skipped my generation. They were too expensive and by the time we were old enough to buy them, the MP3 players were out.
[They were only a thing for about 3 and a half minutes. But it was when I worked in radio, and we were convinced they were the future after they replaced reel to reel.
I bought a Zune with my first pay cheque.
WTF...?
What? The Zune rocked. It was indestructible.
What did it do?
Played mp3s. With the most unintuitive user interface ever.
I bought a CD player with my first pay packet. Then spent ages taping CDs so listen to in my dad's car. I taped Diamonds & Pearls, the album, when I got it. Put it on repeat to fill the C90. Only I'd pressed repeat one track only. So driving to work that night, I listened to 40 minutes of Thunder. It took me ages to realise what I'd done. I just thought Prince had recorded a reeeeeeally long song.
I bought a CD player by skipping eating lunch at school for three weeks so I could use the lunch money to buy it. £20 Alba CD player.
That sounds like a plot from Grange Hill. They'd call in a social worker if you did that nowadays.
Most kids at my school didn't eat at lunch. There was a McDonald's at the end of the road and we were near the city centre so most kids saved it as we couldn't leave during lunch.
So you just sat in the playground and watched the drive-by shootings...
It was a Catholic school so it was a few stabbings. And a lot of teenage sex.
But you all felt very guilty afterwards.
The guilt was ever present. You knew you'd fucked up when you got sent to see Fr Adrian over the assistant principals.
To be fair, he was a nice guy.
Just made you do a lot of prayers.
Perfect song for you...
Settle a debate.
Pink custard at school.
It was just pink, not strawberry flavoured, yeah?
I don't think it was strawberry flavoured but it didn't taste like normal custard. I love normal custard but I hated red custard and green custard. Chocolate custard was ok.
Green custard and red custard. Did you go to private school!?!
Grotbags was the head teacher. I thought you didn't eat school dinners anyway...
What did green custard taste like? Apple?
Horrible. There is only one true custard.
Birds or Ambrosia?
Yellow.
All you other custards are just imitating.
Cold or warm?
And I mean refrigerated, not room temp.
Hot. Like coffee.
Red hot dessert, cold custard.
Freak.
How is custard even allowed for you? It's not vegan.
Alpro. Or Birds packet mix.
Sigh. Custard must be hot. End of.
My other half has it hot. Have to keep half in fridge, half in cupboard for her to heat up.
At least there's one sane person in your household.
Me.
There are two exceptions... Crumble... and Christmas pud.
At least you're not part of the Brandy Sauce Brigade.
Brandy has a place in lemonade. Not a cool drink. But a tasty drink. Like dirt cheap lemonade.
Even when I drank anything, I drew the line at brandy.
It was excellent as a 14 year old in car parks.
What would Fr Abraham say?
Adrian? He's still a good friend so he'd probably just tut and shake his head at me...
I gave up on Radio One completely soon after I got the full time job in local radio. Instead, I immersed myself in that station - and as I was working there all hours (really, all hours), I never had any time for listening to anything else anyway.
Until.
Until Mark 'n' Lard.
I'm not sure how I ended up getting into Mark 'n' Lard, but I'm pretty sure it was through the recommendation of others. They made quite a stir, coming from virtually nowhere to replace the egotist supreme, Chris Evans, on the Radio One breakfast show, and although they were an ill-fit for that time of the day, they soon found their place on mid-afternoons, at which point I became addicted.
This was the height of Britpop, a very laddy time, and on the surface a lot of Mark 'n' Lard's humour was laddy too: smutty and foul-mouthed, yet laced with an undercurrent of irony and self-deprecation that Evans never had. I was in my mid-20s, at the height of my gigging history, and Mark 'n' Lard soundtracked late night drives home and long, lonely walks across the moors on my days off.
They did this because I taped their show. This seems such a long time ago now, such an old-fashioned way of doing things in this era of iPlayers and on demand, but I had a hi fi with a timer and a dual cassette deck, so every afternoon while I was at work it clicked on about 15 minutes into their show, recorded a full C90, and then clicked off just before they were done.
I loved that show. Fat Harry White. Beat The Clock. The American Sports Network. The Cheesily Cheerful Chart Challenge. Slim & Shady. The Shirehorses.
Yes, it was puerile. Yes, it was corny. But it was too northern blokes (with northern accents - no elocution needed!) having a laugh, and it felt so natural (even though I suspect much of it was tightly planned, maybe even rehearsed) that it reflected everything I always thought radio should be. I didn't have a lot of friends in my 20s, and those that I did were mostly in radio. But Mark 'n' Lard were my radio mates.
I cried when they broadcast their last show, but I understood why they had to go. They'd become an anachronism at Radio One. Two middle-aged blokes on a station aimed at teenagers? It was time for them to move on. Me too. The day they left Radio One, so did I. There was nothing to keep me there. It was another of those Last Time For Everything moments I keep mentioning here. We all put away those childish things.
Luke Haines and Cathal Coughlan's alternate history of the British Isles throws up an unlikely hero in the shape of failed actor and Inspector Morse costume designer Tony Allen who leads a double life as "...the hidden hand behind the paintings of Sir Francis Bacon, the
secret lover of Sid James, a patient of R.D. Laing, an assiduous curator
of Northern Soul, and the probable catalyst for the least tedious
stretches of the career of Fleetwood Mac..."
More bullying... with tragic consequences this time. Patty recalls the suicide of an old highschool classmate... heartbreaking stuff: and yet, it rocks.
I hated every day of high school
It's funny, I guess you did too
1. The Shirehorses (M&M) - Tony
I love Stan, I think it's one of Eminem's best songs... but I can't hear it anymore without wanting to listen to Mark & Lard's hilarious parody.
Anyway, how the kcuf are you? I'm alright, thanks for asking I'm listening to the new album By Dave Stewart and that old Barbara Gaskin
Listen to Stan first, then listen to Tony... and if you don't laugh your boils off, I'll give you your money back. (Plus, the woman from the canteen beats Dido any day.)
