Thank you for showing your True Colours again this week with your excellent answers to Saturday Snapshots. Time after time, you just keep getting them right! Thank you.
This week's winner was (as is often the case) first to get out of bed on Saturday morning, and this week that was FurryBootsCityBoy. Question, FBCB - is that an alias for Lynchie? The reason I ask is because you (re-)appeared round these parts about the same time Lynchie disappeared and you seem to answer lots of questions from the same eras Lynchie specialised in. My detective's nose senses a link... but I may be completely wrong.
Anyway, answers...
10. A phoney Cooke makes tough mutton for Egyptian royalty.
Another one for C, though I understand how Alyson thought Ann & Nancy look like First Aid Kit here. Way before the shaggy 80s dos they were more famous for.
3. Riches... and better weather for coffee drinkers.
Following on from last week's post featuring songs about defunct retailers, I felt I had to do a post about the ones that are still going strong... well, as I type this, anyway.
Can you ever imagine Neil Tennant setting foot in a Carphone Warehouse?
That Carphone Warehouse boy Has been on the phone He wants to upgrade The mobile you own Have you realised Your computer's a spy? Give him a ring He'll explain why... The bourgeoisie Will get over it Look at me I'm SO over it!
For anyone who thinks William Shatner is the maddest actor to make records, may I present The Dude himself. He abides.
When I die there will be no burial or cremation. I have contracted with spacementary. To store my remains on board an eternal satellite. My body will forever loop around the planet and omit a flashing light whenever it passes over a memorable location. Like that bar at Roundel Beach where we first met. Or IKEA.
And you're standing at the chemist in Boots Coughing up your guts like you're at deaths door All this for a packet of Do-Do's And the assistant gives you a wink and you turn bright red It's at time like this that you wish you were dead And you take the whole packet and you feel like you've drunk A bottle of bleach And you tell yourself 'Never, never again Well, not until next week anyway'
Too long since Eddie Argos and his gang have featured here.
Another time I'd overheard you saying you were going into town And at the time I lived right in between two towns, but I wasn't quite sure which one you meant So I bought a bus pass, I went to both of them, and frantically looked for you everywhere And when I finally saw you at WH Smith's, I got scared
Meanwhile, Alex has his eye on a girl from Topshop...
I fancy you with a passion Oh, you're a Topshop princess, a rockstar, too But you're a fad and you're a fashion And I'm having a job trying to talk to you
See also Art Brut - Bad Weekend, their second entry this week for more Topshop shenanigans.
It doesn't get much more kitchen sink than this... (Do Debenham's sell kitchen sinks?)
Monday morning, wake up knowing that you've got to go to school Tell your mum what to expect, she says it's right out of the blue Do you want to work in Debenham's because that's what they expect? Start in Lingerie, and Doris is your supervisor
Run away from this godforsaken place And hide away from everybody's prying face You told Deborah that he is the one You're going to quit Debenham's Elope and get married in the sun
If you really want a Mars Bar, Feargal suggests you raid the Spar. And I'm sure that by "raid" he means form an orderly queue and purchase it with your hard-earned money.
Thanks to Rigid Digit for suggesting this last week, but believe me, it was already guaranteed a place. Boots and Primark also get a mention in this classic, but it's Millets who take the prize with one of the greatest lines ever written in a pop song. And yet they still gave Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize for Literature instead of Nigel Blackwell.
There's a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millet's
Try saying that five times fast without your teeth in.
1. Mott The Hoople - All The Young Dudes
M&S started life as a market stall in Kirkgate Market, Leeds, not that far from me, way back in 1894. Since then, they've done all right for themselves... at least in term of getting noticed by songwriters.
I could have chosen any of the following (and there are probably more)...
Here I am in Amsterdam I like it here, they speak my language Even though it's not my own It's got BBC for comfort zone And best of all, it's got Marks and Spencer's Equality for the masses never felt better
So I gave myself to God There was a pregnant pause before he said okay Now I spend my days turning tables round in Marks & Spencer They don't seem to mind
Well, you may believe in Jesus, and you may believe in Marx And you may believe in Marks and Spencer's and you maybe believe in bloody Woolworths But there's something missing in this whole bloody stew
But really, there was only ever going to be one winner this week...
And Wendy's stealing clothes from Marks & Sparks And Freddy's got spots from ripping off the stars from his face Funky little boat race Television man is crazy saying we're juvenile delinquent wrecks Oh, man, I need TV, when I've got T.Rex
Although the version they played on the radio at the time made them change the lyric to "And Wendy's stealing clothes from unlocked cars" so as not to breach advertising regulations!
Anyone got a copy of Bob Dylan's tribute to TK Maxx? Do let me know...
I mentioned in my last radio post how on our Saturday morning quiz The Phantom Phonebox, occasionally we'd call a number only to have a bunch of teenagers scream abuse down the line at us. Trying to swear on live radio is an excellent past-time for the chronically short-of-brain cells, but it's one that we had to contend with far more frequently on the phone-in show.
You'd be amazed at the lengths people went to in order to get their carefully chosen swearwords heard by thousands. The smart (and I use that word advisedly) ones knew not to scream their abuse the moment they got on air. Far better to lull the presenter into a false sense of security by talking about a subject of the day seriously for a few minutes before screaming, "YOU'RE A TEAPOT!" (replace teapot with your own selection of choice cusswords) in the hope that the jock would be at the back of the studio getting out some ads or doing some other job that stopped them pulling the fader down straight away.
To deal with this - as anyone who's ever listened to a radio phone-in will no doubt know - there is a wonderful device called the 7 second delay. At some point just before the phone-in began, the DJ pressed a button on the desk that slowed down the output by 7 seconds. I'm sure there is a far more hi-tec way of doing this nowadays, but back then this involved inserting tiny milliseconds of dead air in between what was being broadcast until what you heard over the airwaves was no longer live, it was happening seven seconds behind what was happening in the studio. (Eagle-eared listeners could probably tell when the delay was "charging up" as the output sounded a bit wibbly - the jock turned into a Dalek for a couple of minutes - until full delay was achieved.)
Stopping people from shouting "teapot"on live radio was not the main reason to use delay though. It really came into its own - and repaid the radio station's sizeable investment many times over - when it was used to stop people committing slander (not libel - that has to be written down, you utter teapots... god, the amount of times I had to explain that to people over the years) by naming a personal nemesis on air and then accusing them of putting a teapot up their teapot every Tuesday night, with the curtains open. If any such accusations were made... a quick press of the delay button and the last seven seconds of speech never made it to the listener's ears.
The most important reason for using the seven second delay however involved not slander but subjudice - people trying to talk about ongoing court cases. When a trial is taking place, the law forbids public discussion of it. The facts can be reported as news, but commentary, opinion and speculation are illegal. As "producer", one of my jobs was to always ask people if the issues they wanted to discuss involved ongoing court cases - if they did, they wouldn't be allowed on air. However, just as the "teapot" shouters worked out that they'd stand more chance of getting their obscenities broadcast if they lied and faked their way onto the programme, so did those people who wanted to break the law (and involve us, as accessories, in their lawbreaking for broadcasting their public discussion).
Oh, and sometimes the 7 second delay wouldn't work. That would be fun.
I was never a big Neneh Cherry fan, but I always liked her duet with Senegal's future Minister of Tourism, Youssou N'Dour. And really, what else was I going to play today... apart from maybe something by Delays?
