I wanted a picture of a famous dressmaker holding a camera today - but no luck with Vivienne Westwood or Coco Chanel... so here's a famous Taylor instead.
Songs you might find in a haberdashery shop. Unless you're in the US, where haberdashery doesn't mean sewing supplies and accessories, but means men's clothing instead. Apologies for any confusion.
Instead of any of that funny business, I'd advise teenagers to enjoy a nice Crepe Suzette today. Because, yes, hard as it may be to believe, it's also National Crepe Suzette Day.
I was shocked by how many songs there were featuring Crepe Suzettes in the title... including offerings from Danny Kaye, Kenneth Williams and Cyril Watters with The New Century Orchestra. Thank God for The Descendents.
You may choose to wash your crepe suzette down with a nice beverage. Which is good because it's also National Beverage Day. The word "beverage" always reminds me of The Dude...
And what is The Dude's Beverage of choice, that he really doesn't want to spill?
A White Russian, of course... that's vodka, kahlúa and double cream (milk powder will apparently suffice if you don't have any cream) over ice.
Back to Richard Herring's Emergency Questions, and this week we're asking for your darkest confessions...
Have you ever had the opportunity to assassinate a public figure?
Now clearly there are a lot of people in this world right now who might want to assassinate a certain orange demagogue... although I'm sure most of us realise that doing so would only make a martyr of him, and that's the last thing anyone wants. Better to let such people die on their own swords, methinks.
I also feel I should clarify that I don't condone murder, even the murder of complete tosspots, and I'm sure none of the good folk who waste precious minutes reading this guff once or twice a week condone it either. Still, there are, I'm sure, some people out there in the world who you definitely feel would be deserving of a good slap. So have you ever been in a position to administer such an admonishment... and had to hold yourself back?
The first came back in the late 90s when I had the misfortune of going to see Oasis at Sheffield Arena. Now It's no secret that I am not, nor have I ever been, a fan of the Gallagher brothers and their brand of plodding, humourless, psuedo-Beatles Brit-rock. With that in mind, you may well wonder how I ended up at one of their gigs? All I can tell you is that this was during my radio days, the tickets were free, and my mate was a much bigger fan of the Brothers Dim, so I was persuaded that it might be a good ticket to have in my scrapbook. A couple of years earlier, when the lads were just starting out, that might well have been true. However, this was the Be Here Now tour, and all I can remember of that travesty was that they had a red phone booth on the stage. (A little research reveals that even Noel Gallagher now admits Be Here Now was a bag of shite. Whereas Liam says it's his favourite album. Make of that what you will.)
The support act that day were Travis. Now I know what most of you think of Travis, but let me tell you this: They blew the Swaggerlers off the stage. I can't have been the only one in the audience who thought so. In fact, Liam Gallagher himself even came out to watch them... and herein lies my tale.
We had pretty good seats in the arena. Front row, just above the tunnel. There were no seats below us, that area was fenced off for the sound guys. And that's where Liam came to watch Travis. He walked out directly beneath us, stood by the sound desk for a few songs, then mooched back into the tunnel. And this would have been my moment. At the time, I confess (and it's not a particularly nice confession), I briefly considered spitting on his head. It's lucky I didn't have a brick at hand. I mean, imagine if I had... I might have denied the world that Beady Eye record. It doesn't bear thinking about...
Comedy is a very subjective thing. What I might do a LOL at, you might roll your eyes and breathe a deep sigh. And vice versa. With that in mind, I take on board the idea that some of you might consider the comedian Michael McIntyre worthy of the space he takes up on this earth. I certainly do not.
That aside, the one trait I find off-putting in celebrities and commoners alike is arrogance. Hence my disdain for Frank & Betty Gallagher, and the intense irritation I feel whenever I see Michael McIntyre's smug mug on the TV. Imagine then, coming across that detestable countenance in real life. The horror!
Such a thing occurred the last time Louise and I visited That London. This might have been about 15 years ago. We were staying in the leafy borough of Hampstead, and one day were were mooching around the shops when we heard a loud, braying voice in the street behind us. A voice that chilled our blood.
There he was, the so-called "funny" man himself, large as life, peacocking down the road with his mobile phone pressed to his ear, talking loudly to his agent (or some other amenable sycophant), loud enough so that everyone could hear, so that everyone would look, so that nobody could fail to notice that they were in the presence of "greatness".
I'm not a violent man. I've never thrown a punch in my life. But it's no exaggeration to say that Louise had to physically restrain me that day. McIntyre got off lightly.
Thank God I've never been in the same room as Bono. I'd be serving ten to life right now. Either that, or somebody would have given me a medal. Maybe both.
Because I couldn't find a picture of Herb Alpert taking a photo, here's Herbie the car. He's going bananas for today countdown of songs with herbs in them...
(Oh, and in case you were wondering about Marlene yesterday, the surname "Dill" is apparently "from a pet form of the personal name Dietrich", according to the people who know about such things.)
10. Makes a lot of parkin.
Parkin is a ginger cake. Some debate on the interweb about whether ginger is a herb or a root veg. That doesn't matter though, because we're not here for the ginger, we're here for the basil...
On Wednesday, George complained about the "recent lurch to modern times" this feature had taken by featuring contemporary celebrities such as Bill Bixby and Nerys Hughes (God help him when I do my Scarlett Johansson post). And so, to keep Celebrity Jukebox's biggest fan happy, I've chosen someone today he should be more familiar with.
Louise Brooks was a Ziegfeld Follies dancer who signed a five year movie deal with Paramount in 1925 and became one of the biggest female stars of the Silent Movie era, although her career never really transitioned into the talkies and her star fell quite dramatically in the 30s.
Coincidentally, I came across a song that I never knew was about Louise Brooks while compiling my Top Ten Greek Mythology Songs last week. The intro to the video of OMD's 1991 single Pandora's Box tells how the Louise Brooks movie of the same name was banned by Adolf Hitler as "degenerate art". I bet he kept a copy for himself though. The song tells Louise's life story far better than I could...
Born in Kansas on an ordinary plain
Ran to New York but ran away from fame
Only seventeen when all your dreams come true
But all you wanted was someone to undress you
And all the stars you kissed could never ease the pain
Still the grace remains and though the face has changed
You're still the same
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark don't mention Louise by name though. To find an actual lyrical mention, we have to listen to 15 minutes of post-Fish Marillion...
Or... you might subject yourself to some Campag Velocet. Now I'm just the right age to have been regularly reading the NME when they proclaimed Campag Velocet the next big thing. Which probably explains why nobody's heard of them since.
Are you wearing your whole badge collection out tonight?
That made me smile.
But I think today's winner is Nashville-based, Boston born "street rocker" Tom Ovans, who... and I'm just spit-balling here... might own a Bob Dylan record. Or two.
Well, she looked like Louise Brooks from one of them old silent movies
I think it was the one where she gets beaten to death
But when her eyes caught mine down in that city of crime
