Jump

Dear James,
Tight trousers, big hair and a man playing a guitar which he thinks is a keyboard. No wonder we all loved Van Halen back in the day. And we weren't the only ones. VH1 decided this was the 82nd best rock song of the century. There's no arguing with that. Although I've got Pablo sitting next to me with half a sandwich in his mouth arguing that Charisma by Kiss is the best rock song of the 20th century. The people I have to work with...

Eddie Van Halen is a mystery unto himself. For the whole half of this video he does the worst keyboard miming act ever. That's a guitar, Eddie! Then for the solo he tries to play every single instrument on stage, failing only because he can't work out what those funny hollow drums are for.

David Lee Roth, meanwhile, does his Pamela Anderson impersonation. Even Pamela can't do the jumping splits that well. Have you ever heard DLR's cover of Californian Girls? You have now, and you wish you hadn't.

Pablo's just told me that it wasn't really Eddie Van Halen, but the bass player who was the musical genius in the band, playing all the instruments and managing everything behind the scenes like a puppet master. I believed him, I'm gullible like that.

Anyway, I was watching that video at work, my excuse being that I was stealing lines from the song to put in my characters' mouths. Until I realised I was giving them lines from an entirely different song called "Jump". Can you see why I would've got confused?