When I'm putting Snapshot together, I try to get a mix of bands that haven't featured often before, which means that some of the usual suspects and old favourites end up on the operating room floor...
Welcome to the first of two very special editions of the
Cancel Culture Club, renamed the Cancel Christmas Club for the festive season,
and because it turns out we’re all a bunch of miserable old grinches.
If it was up to me, I'd cancel all Christmas songs - they
are almost without exception, unremittingly shite, soul sapping joylessness and
exercises in making me dislike Christmas itself more than I already do.
Especially the hardcore canon of the dozen or so that get played endlessly
everywhere from mid-November onward - Slade, Wham, Shakey, Wizzard, McCartney
et al. They make me want to cut my ears off.
I think the thing I resent the most is the expectation that
if you just put on this funny jumper and listen to this handful of songs,
you'll 'feel Christmassy'. I don't.
Even the good ones bug me now due to overexposure and being
told that, 'well, if you don't like those songs, I bet you like The Pogues...'
I'd just cancel Christmas, or at least all the awful
shamelessly commercial shenanigans leading up to it and certainly all the
plastic disposable shite that gets peddled in.... garden centres!What's that all about, all that synthetic
non-recyclable eco-disaster taking up shelf space in a garden centre?But that's another rant altogether - I'd
better get back to the subject in hand.
What about our friend Walter, over in the land where they
invented Christmas trees? Surely he’s got something positive to say about Weihnachten?
From my point of view, Christmas could be abolished, as I
have been spending this time in Southeast Asia for a long time now, where there
are Christmas decorations, but none of the religious fuss.
OK. Having set the tone nicely, let’s look at our first
contentious Christmas song…
I love the way Shane clearly couldn’t even be bothered to
spit out his chewing gum before going up on stage to mime along to that.
Before we get to the comments, I should reveal that
Fairytale of New York was the second of the two Chrimbo Classics I offered up
to the CC-Committee, but I’ve chosen to feature it first. Why? Well, because
the other one was Band Aid… and hoo boy, wait till you see the reaction to
that. SWC in particular wrote a whole page, scored onto the paper in what I
worry might be his own blood, but I’m more hopeful was the blood of a Bono. And
he wasn’t alone in his vitriol. So consider Fairytale a gentle apéritif – a
prawn cocktail before the full roast turkey dinner that will be Do They Know
It’s Christmas?
All that said, let’s pop over to see how Christmas is
shaping up in Portugal. And it looks like George is scratching his head…
Fairytale: I have no idea why this is a potential candidate
for cancelling, so I need to research it (i.e. go to Wikipedia). And using that
as my sole source, I think the reason for the song's inclusion is the use of
misogynistic and homophobic content. And I'm going to agree with Radio 1 on
this one (and a big "BOO" to Radio 2). I also think Shane MacGowan's
defence (again, reading from wiki) is a bit disingenuous, especially given his
put down of the Pet Shop Boys (there's one very very good reason to dislike
that band without resorting to the pathetic slur he used).
I might as well butt in here with Shane’s defence of the
lyrics…
The word was used by the character because it fitted with
the way she would speak and with her character. She is not supposed to be a
nice person, or even a wholesome person. She is a woman of a certain generation
at a certain time in history, and she is down on her luck and desperate. Her
dialogue is as accurate as I could make it but she is not intended to offend!
She is just supposed to be an authentic character and not all characters in
songs and stories are angels or even decent and respectable, sometimes
characters in songs and stories have to be evil or nasty to tell the story
effectively. If people don't understand that I was trying to accurately portray
the character as authentically as possible, then I am absolutely fine with them
bleeping the word, but I don't want to get into an argument.
…which I have to say, I agree with… to an extent. I think
that defence works in terms of literature (and it’s a similar one that Quentin
Tarantino uses to excuse peppering his scripts with the N-word)… but it opens
up a bit of a can of worms when applied to a pop song, in particular a
Christmas pop song. That said, I always liked the sentiment of Fairytale
precisely because it was so different to all the other Christmas songs that get
trotted out year after year. But shush, this isn’t about my opinion – it’s
about George’s. And what did Shane have to say about the Pet Shop Boys (who
kept Fairytale off the Number One slot)?
"Two queens and a drum machine."
Hmm. Back in 1987, that would have been a lot more offensive
than it is now, I guess… I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Tennant and Lowe
self-apply the term these days, as a lot of my gay friends do.
I’m sorry, George, I keep interrupting you. Not to argue,
just to provide context. I hope.
I've never liked Fairytale In New York anyway, there's
something a bit smug in its delivery, and that twee diddly diddly dee music is
beyond annoying. You can't cancel a song just because of the crappy music (that
would put an end to the Pet Shop Boys), but I am saying Yes to Cancel for this
particular song because of the lyrical content.
OK, that’s the first vote cast. Now, having provided the
above context, we can happily return to Manchester’s answer to Krampus, Swiss
Adam…
More specifically I guess with A Fairy Tale of New York it's
the use of the word 'faggot' in the Kirsty sung line 'you scumbag, you maggot,
you cheap lousy faggot' that is the main topic of cancel conversation.
I'm a bit ambivalent. The song was written in character and
that line and the homophobic slur within it is era appropriate and character
appropriate. I have a gay friend who is pretty laid back about it (and he
definitely has a moral compass and would object if he found it objectionable).
Shane's comment about the song being kept off the number one
slot by 'two old queens' doesn't do him any favours but maybe we shouldn't be
looking to Shane McGowan for leadership in this area.
The very idea that we should treat Shane MacGowan as any
kind of role model is, of course, hilarious. I will defend him to the hilt
though, based purely upon that old story about the time Bono had to chuck him
out of his house for… well, here it is in Shane’s own words.
“Bono put in a glass roof and wall,” MacGowan explained in
an interview with The Times. “I used to wave my willy at the train as it passed
and hope that they thought it was Bono’s.”
Adam concludes…
I think on the whole I'd let the song stay - unless we're
banning them all just because Christmas songs are shit. In which case, begone.
So far then, we’ve only heard one definite call to cancel
the song. But wait… who’s this coming down the Cancel Culture Chimney? Only the
wonderful John Medd…
If I never hear this song again, it'll be too soon. It's a
time capsule (like Geldof's effort) and should be treated as such. Tinkering
with it to make it radio friendly is akin to putting lipstick on a pig. All
Christmas records have a shelf life, and this one is way past its.
And with that stark renunciation still ringing in our ears,
let’s move onto the case for the defence. Let’s start with C, shall we?
Fairytale of New York?I love its use of abusive terms and their delivery.Bum, punk (in its original meaning), old
slut, scumbag, maggot, faggot, arse.Why
have just one when you can have many? It's the antithesis of a sickly
"everything's alright in the world even though it isn't, because it's
Christmas!" sentiment in just above every other festive song.
Once again, C demonstrates her skill for using words far
better than my own clumsy attempt to express this sentiment earlier.
I believe too that the slang term "faggot", which
I think is the one that has caused the most issues, is now an example of a word
that has been reclaimed by those to whom it had been pejoratively directed. I
think that's a great way forward for many things.Embrace it, take the sting out of it, and
redress the dynamic of its power, by claiming it for yourself.
“As an English teacher…”
(Oh God, here he goes again!”)
As an English teacher, I like to believe that words only
gain power when we allow them to have that power. But it’s very easy to argue
that when I’m not one of the people said words are being directed at. Nobody
ever called me a faggot, nobody ever threw the N-word at me. If gay people can
take the sting out of faggot in the same way many black people (particularly
rappers) have reclaimed nigger, that’s surely something to applaud. But it’s
still a minefield if you’re not part of that particular community… and maybe
that’s the point. Maybe it should be.
There’s a famous episode of my favourite TV show, NYPD Blue,
in which notoriously racist* detective Andy Sipowicz gets into a mouthy
confrontation with a belligerent black activist who tells him, “you’re dealing
with that one nigger in a thousand who knows what you can and cannot do”. In
response, Andy throws the N-word back at him and gets in a lot of trouble for
it.
(Andy’s racism is given context in the show, and is part of
a long-running redemptive character arc. Prejudice is absolutely not a black
and white subject in NYPD Blue.)
Context is
everything. But back to C…
Does / has this song ever actually caused any harm to be
done to anyone?I can't imagine it,
there are so many more direct and genuinely hateful ways to cause harm that we
should be concentrating our efforts on, surely.So for me, as long as Christmas is here to stay, 'Fairytale' can stay
too.
Presumably the issue is the line "a cheap lousy
faggot", an insult said in anger in a stormy row between two lovers.
I'm sure most of us have done something similar at one stage
and now regret it.
Nowadays it is edited out and that's enough for me.
Good point there, CC, and one that hasn’t been made yet, but
it links back to what we were just saying about the power of words and how, in
moments of anger, we might reach for the most hurtful epithets in our quiver.
Next up is Martin, who appears today with an eye-witness
testimony…
I once had the good fortune to see Kirsty and Shane sing
this live together. She was the support act for Morrissey, at a December gig at
the Ally Pally. For her closing song she invited Shane up on stage and they
sang this together. He was so drunk he could barely stand, and his lyrics were
unintelligible most of the time. Kirsty's were crystal clear but I can't
remember whether she sang any of the controversial lines. There's the one
everyone knows about, subsequently changed to "You're cheap and you're haggard",
and there are others that no-one cares about any more (surely?), like
"arse" (at the time the Beeb requested that that be replaced with the
somehow less offensive "ass" for TOTP).
I was amused to read on iffypedia that, “When Katie Melua
performed the song with the Pogues on CD:UK in December 2005, ITV censored the
word "arse", but left "faggot" uncensored.”
Bloody ITV. You wouldn’t get that on the BBC, eh, Martin?
By 2007, things had moved on still further and both
"faggot" and "slut" were edited out by Radio 1, before the
revised "haggard" version became the broadcast norm. Is that the only
issue with this song - the sweariness and derogatory terms? Or is there
something more I don't know about?
In 2019, BBC Radio Solent DJ Alex Dyke announced that he
would not be playing the song on his show, calling it a "nasty, nasty
song" and "an offensive pile of downmarket chav bilge". Yet
still the world turns.
I hate to break it to Alex, but there are still lots of
people who talk like this. And it might be chav bilge, but it's also a love
song, of sorts, and the antidote to Yuletide saccharine. Cancel this at your
peril. Accept the "haggard" edit and move on, I say.
If you ask me, the “chav” response opens DJ Alex up to
accusations of snobbery, or at the very least coming from a privileged
background and being out of touch with the common man. But what do I know? I
grew up on a farm.
Next up is Ernie, who’s thinking of resigning from the
committee because he doesn’t believe in banning anything… and to be honest, I’m
coming around to his point of view. Maybe this feature has outstayed its
welcome? We’ve covered all the major causes of offence by now – sexism, racism,
homophobia, underage sex, Bono (next time, I promise)… I’m worried we’ll just
end up repeating ourselves, or I’ll begin to take advantage in terms of my entreaties
on your generosity. Perhaps it’s best to quit while we’re ahead? I’ll consider
this in the New Year. In the meantime, Ernie…
Pogues - if the f word offends you, then listen to the
version where Kirsty sings 'haggard' which has been readily available since
1992. Other than that, leave it alone.
Which brings us back to Walter, who echoes Ernie’s
sentiment…
Ever since the BBC toned down certain lines in the lyrics,
there has been an annual debate about whether crude swear words are suitable
for young ears. The song is about a couple who once had big dreams, but which
burst like soap bubbles due to drugs and alcohol. Each blames the other,
culminating in verbal insults. There is no doubt that these words are not
exactly pleasant, but they stem from a gutter vocabulary that is appropriate in
this context. Not that I approve of offensive swear words, but crude expressions
are part of every language. A fool is always a fool, even if I call him a
blockhead or a moron.
I always quite fancied being a Blockhead myself, if it meant
I got to hang out with Ian Dury. But do continue, Walter…
I do believe that crude language should be avoided, but
these words should not be censored. It is up to each individual to express
themselves appropriately. In my home country, Nina Hagen and BAP sang this song
in German and translated the swear words pretty much exactly. It's strange that
we, who have made gender equality our cause, have not yet had any discussions
about these lyrics (perhaps only once my words have been published).
I want to thank Walter for introducing me to that version,
in which the vocal delivery seems to switch – Nina Hagen sounds far more like
Shane MacGowan than Kirsty!
And that’s a much better cover than the Bon Jovi version
which… no, no, please don’t listen to it… don’t do that to your ears*. (And I
say that as a unashamed fan of Mr. By Jove, from back in the day.)
(*Anyone who defied my instructions above, you may note that
Mr. BJ appears to have rewritten the offending section of the song… but… unless
my ears deceive me… appears to have included the phrase “kick in the c*nt”
instead as part of his version. Or do I need some new batteries in my hearing
aid?)
Irish singer-songwriter Rob Smith apparently commented, "I
have heard Bon Jovi's cover of Fairytale of New York. It's the worst thing to
ever happen to music, and I am including both the murder of John Lennon and
Brian McFadden's solo career in there. This is worse!"
Final word today goes to The Vinyl Villain himself, JC, who
readily admits to being just as much of a grinch as Adam, C and Walter – and
even used the phrase “Bah humbug” in his response. When it comes to Fairytale
Of New York though… well, JC refuses to accept it’s even a Christmas song.
I will expend a little bit of energy on this one, for the
simple fact that I don’t regard it as a Christmas-themed record despite the
fact that The Pogues wrote it specifically as one while their record label was
happy to play the game and release it as a single at a particular time of the
year, in November 1987.
Twisted logic on my part?Maybe…. but bear with me.
Is this going to be like those people who try to deny Die
Hard is a Christmas movie?
I saw The Pogues play one of the most manic and memorable
gigs in my life at Strathclyde University Students Union back in 1985.It turned me into a fan.
Singles and albums were purchased as they were issued, but I
didn’t buy Fairytale of New York.I
loved watching the video over the festive period, and also being a fan of
Kirsty MacColl, it made for a fine listen, and as I got increasingly familiar
with the song, I found myself singing along every time to ‘The Boys of the NYPD
choir still singing Galway Bay and the bells are ringing out for Christmas
Day’.And I mean every time, to
the annoyance of my soon-to-be in-laws whose house I was living in at the time.
I bought the album If I Should Fall From Grace With God in
January 1988, and quickly realised it was a classic. The album the band had
been threatening to make since that gig a few years earlier. A perfect blend of
rock and what I thought was traditional Irish music, played and produced to
perfection.The songs all seemed to be
short stories set to music – some were rollicking and some were tear-jerking
ballads, with ‘Fairytale’ striding both.It was a record full of tunes that I imagined would be sung at the
wildest parties in Ireland – the fact I hadn’t yet set foot in that country was
neither here nor there! (That’s something which would change many years later
and I’ve now got proud and loving connections with the country.)Fairytale in this context was way more than a
Christmas song, and I still feel the same the best part of 40 years later.
As to the supposedly offensive lyrics...In what is clearly an exchange fuelled by
alcohol and indeed a love for one another as the rest of the lyric makes clear,
the male character, played by Shane calls the female character, played Kirsty,
an old slut on junk and she replies by calling him a scumbag, maggot and cheap
lousy faggot.It’s poetic and quite
magnificent.
I’d agree with JC that expressing love by using words like
these – rather than the usual barrel of cliches pop songs rely upon to
represent that emotion – shows a genuine understanding of both character and
storytelling technique that goes above and beyond.
Worth remembering too that not a lot was made of these
lyrics back in the late 80s.The only
thing folk were worried about back then was the use of the word ‘arse’ which
Kirsty was asked to amend to ‘ass’ for a live rendition on Top of The Pops.
The hullabaloo only really kicked up when the single was
re-released in 2005.A different time
altogether and an era when the notion of individuals and organisations having
platforms to express their supposed anger, hurt and offence, and being noticed
as they shouted from the sidelines, was becoming increasingly the norm.
While it seems some offence was taken prior to 2005, JC
makes a good point here that at the beginning of this century, with the rise of
the nasty old interweb, Professional Offence-Taking became an active sport, a
kind of cultural one-upmanship which has become so ingrained in society it’ll
no doubt be recognised as event in the next Olympic Games.
But in terms of today’s tune, I think JC sums it up for me
when he says…
I’ll never tire of Fairytale of New York.It’s a magnificent song that still sounds
wonderful all these years later. It shouldn’t be messed with.
Thank you all for your thoughts.
Join us back here to give Bob, Midge and (especially) Bono a festive kicking... it's the true spirit of Christmas!
I will readily admit that Diane Ladd means more to me as the mother of Laura Dern than as an actress in her own right. Probably that’s down to my age – Laura, who’s just a few years older than me, appeared in some of the most important films of my youth, particularly the David Lynch triple bill of Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart and Inland Empire.
Diane appeared alongside her daughter in two of those movies, and elsewhere, most memorably playing Laura / Lula’s crazy, lipstick-smeared mother, Marietta Fortune, in Wild At Heart.
Sadly, Diane’s name doesn’t appear in any songs I could find, so I went looking for songs relating to some of her most famous roles. Of course, there’s Chinatown, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (!), but the one I settled on was a little-remembered Burt Reynold vehicle from 1973.
Why that one, you ask?
Well, because it gives me the excuse to play three excellent versions of the same song. Firstly, the original, written and recorded by one J.P. Richardson, aka The Big Bopper, back in 1958.
A few months later, the legendary George Jones took the tune to Number One on the US country charts. Sadly, The Big Bopper never got to appreciate its success as he died in the same plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens... just 6 days before George Jones’s version was released.
Fast-forward thirty odd years to 1990 when Mark E. Smith decided to release his own unique interpretation… initial copies came with a free miniature bottle of “White Lightning" Tequila.
I know this will be a controversial statement, but I reckon some of the best tracks The Fall ever recorded were cover versions…
Anyway, this seemed like as good a tune as any to play in tribute to Diane Ladd. This whole world's wild at heart
and weird on top.
You can pretty much tell AI didn't come up with that image, can't you? What can I say, I'm an old-fashioned guy, and I wanted a picture of a square dude holding a camera. Unlike yesterday when I showed you one of the residents of Albert's Square holding a camera.
All in aid of - with great thanks to our resident Maths teacher, George, for suggesting the theme and many of the tunes - songs about Square Numbers. Working our way from the square of 15... down to the square of 1.
Roland arrived at Grange Hill a year or so before I went to High School. He didn’t have a good time of it, being the fat kid who everyone picked on… his only friend being annoying Janet with the whiney voice. He was singled out by school bully Gripper Stebson, who made his life a misery, and towards the end of his first year, he ended up in hospital after running out into the road in front of a speeding car.
I missed the episode where Roland got run over, so somehow I managed to convince myself things had got so bad he’d tried to commit suicide. The internet tells me, years later, that it wasn’t actually a suicide attempt, but Grange Hill went to some dark places, so I’m not 100% convinced.
The reason I’m telling you about Roland is that when I started High School, the bullies and the wags soon twigged to the fact that I share the first three letters of my Christian name with the Grange Hill character played by Erkan Mustafa. And even though the end of my name was different – who cares? Rol became Roland… and the sound of kids mimicking whiney Janet’s catchphrase, “I only want to help you, Ro-land…” was soon echoing through the halls of our Secondary. And I hated it.
Author and neurobiologist R. Douglas Fields created the acronym LIFEMORTS to summarise nine triggers in our brains that cause us to get angry, lose our shit and full on HULK out. Last time, we looked at the first of these – L for Life or Death Situations. Today, we’re looking at I… for Insult.
I’d argue that many times, getting hit by a stick or a stone – even if it caused us the long term inconvenience of a broken bone – is preferable to many of the insults we’ve received in our lives. The insults the cut us to the quick. The insults that we lay awake at night recalling. The insults that leave permanent scars.
Unsurprisingly, scientists have studied the way our brains react to insult, and they compare the effect to a “mini slap in the face”…
The researchers found insults uttered by a fictitious person triggered short bursts of brain activity in the front part of listeners' brains, regardless of who the insult was directed at, themselves or somebody else.
These very rapid responses, which the researchers say are akin to a slap in the face, did not diminish over time; offensive statements continued to grab the brain's attention, generating large responses of similar magnitude, regardless of how often the invectives were heard.
Insults elicited a larger response in brain activity than compliments, and they continued to do so throughout the session, the experiments showed.
Ouch. Insults have a bigger impact and stay with us longer than compliments. So much for “names will never hurt me”!
It's a telling reminder of how our brains tend to fixate on negative events more intensely than they do positive things – what's known as the negativity bias.
Get that – what they’re basically telling us here is that our brains are much more likely to brood over negative things than they are to get zuzzed up by positivity. Our brains are essentially miserable emo/goths. It’s a wonder we’re not all on Prozac.
The reason our brains don’t like being insulted goes way, way back to the dawn of man when our very survival often depended on being part of a fledgling community, and hierarchies became suddenly very important. The higher you were up the hierarchy, the more chance you had of surviving. Of getting food and water, or having others help you by sharing resources and skills. Of finding a mate and being in with a chance of passing your genes on to the next generation. However, even back then, there were lots of buffoons who made it their business to try and batter other people down, and if they couldn’t do it physically, maybe they could do it verbally. The insult became as much a threat to our position in society as the stick or the stone… and our brains, whose primary job is to keep us alive, began to realise that insults could be deadly.
When Swanny chanted out, “I only want to help you, Ro-land,” and the other kids laughed, he was knocking me down the hierarchy ladder, and cementing his own position near the top. And this made me angry.
According to Psychology Today though, Anger is the absolute worst response to Insult. Whereas the strongest way to respond might well be… acceptance.
When someone insults us, we ought to consider three things: whether the insult is true, who it came from, and why. If the insult is true or largely true, the person it came from is reasonable, and his or her motive is worthy, then the insult is not an insult but a statement of fact, and, moreover, one that could be very helpful to us.
Which seems fair enough… although in that case, it is really an insult? Aren’t we just talking about constructive criticism there? Some people have a hard time with that too – any form of criticism – but it still differs from an insult.
On the other hand, if you think that the person who insulted you is unworthy of your consideration, you have no reason to take offence, just as you have no reason to take offence at a naughty child or a barking dog.
I think that as we get older, it becomes a lot to ignore insults from dingbats who aren’t worth expending a breath on… but when you’re a teenager, that’s much harder. Everyone’s opinion matters to you in the deadly hierarchy of the school yard.
As kids, we’re more likely to return the insult… I know you are, you said you are, but what about me? That doesn’t quite work when the insult is linked to your name though. I suppose I could have tried to come up with an equally stinging riposte linked to Swanny’s name – yeah, well, you look like a swanee whistle (maybe I could have imitated the sound of a swanee whistle every time he walked past?) Or could I have compared him to a Swan Vesta – you’re a hothead, Swanny… where’s your vest? It’s hardly Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker, is it? And chances are he might just have (to use another swan analogy) broken my arm in return.
The fundamental problem with the put-down, however brilliant it may be, is that it equalizes us with our insulters, bringing them up to our level and us down to theirs. This gives them, their behaviour, and their insult far too much legitimacy. Returning the insult also risks injuring the insulter (who, in all probability, is fairly fragile) and inviting further attacks.
Depending on the power differential in the relationship, fighting fire with fire is rarely a smart move… not when the other side has bigger fists and is more than prepared to use them.
If you can’t use humour to deliver a stinging rebuke then, perhaps you can use it to defuse the situation in another way? When Swanny piped up, “I only want to help you, Ro-land,” maybe I should have replied, “Cheers, Swanny – any chance you can do my Maths homework for me?” Or turn the mockery back on myself to show him it didn’t bother me at all. “Ouch – that hurts. I’m going to have to go do what Roland would do in this situation… eat a few pies and wash them down with a gallon of Irn Bru.” Of course, it’s all very well thinking of witty ripostes after the fact (shades of L'esprit D'escalier), particularly 40 years after the fact! But I think eventually this was the strategy I began to adopt in terms of dealing with insults. I got in there first. I insulted myself, put myself down, before anybody else could. Take the insulter’s power away by showing them I had an even worse opinion of myself than they did. It works… to a point… but no wonder I ended up with low self-esteem.
Another conversation starter from Richard Herring's book Emergency Questions...
Which conspiracy theory do you think might actually be true?
Rich thinks Paul McCartney really was replaced by a lookalike in the late 60s. You may well agree with him, but I'd argue that the replacement was far more interesting in that case.
These days, conspiracy theories get rather a bad rep. I blame the internet and all the right-wing loonies who have ruined the good old conspiracy theory for everyone. I used to love a good conspiracy theory... nowadays, I'm more likely to keep that to myself in case people think I'm a Trump supporter.
But if I had to choose a conspiracy theory that I still feels needs further investigation... despite all the (redacted) files that have been released in the intervening years, I would go for the JFK assassination every time.
Look, I know the Oliver Stone movie was a bit dubious in places, but there were still far more questions than answers. Do I really believe Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman? What about the shots from the grassy knoll? Why did Jack Ruby kill him before he could be properly interrogated?
Come on... the guy was a Patsy! Even the Manic Street Preachers think so...
What about you? Were the moon landings faked by Stanley Kubrick? What about the Roswell Incident? Was there something in David Icke's Lizard People rantings? Is the Illuminati controlling our every move? Go on, we're all friends here...
Yesterday we had a picture of John Lydon at the top of the page because I thought he was surely the best / worst example of a pop star appearing in an advert. And then I discovered Snoop Dogg in the Money Supermarket ad. And John had some competition.
Here is George's choice of the best "pop" "songs" used in adverts... although George would like to qualify that, "I think the link is best described as “songs related to UK adverts”, as some of the songs were not actually used but were the basis for the advert. For example, “Que Será Será”, because I’m 100% sure Doris Day did not sing about mushrooms and fried onion rings."
We hope it's chips, it's chips, we hope it's chips...
1. Confused band, ft. Lelah.
"ft. Lelah" was an anagram for one of George's favourite groups...
The Fall - Touch Sensitive (Vauxhall Corsa)
Thanks again to George for suggesting this week's songs. As someone who worked in advertising for far too many years, I couldn't have done this one myself.
12. Legendary, according to Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins.
Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins starred together in a film called Legends of the Fall. Sadly Brad did not play Mark E. Smith. And neither did Sir Anthony.
