Noughts and Crosses

Dear Daniel,

I'm surprised neither one of us has posted George Formby yet. Actually, I'm rather surprised you haven't posted George Formby yet. I thought you had, but a quick look back proves otherwise. I must have mis-remembered Noel Cowerd.

The first time I heard this song, it was being played by a young man called Benjamin Wetherill in a Leeds bar. Could be five years ago. I was enthralled and knew that one day I would drive from London to Leeds with him. Two years ago, I did.





It's a shame that the George Formby performance is part of the 1938 movie "I See Ice" which appears to be filmed using three immovable cameras and have been directed by a hen, randomly pecking at the buttons which switch between each.

Honorable mentions for the versatility of noughts and crosses:

Famous sporting noughts and crosses.
Nostaligic promotional noughts and crosses. (Petrol stations don't advertise any more. Did the "tiger in your tank" not work?) Noughts and Crosses in the movies. And finally,
Noughts and Crosses as a way to pass time in the supermarket. Alternatively, buy what you need quickly, leave the supermarket and do something more interesting in the big, wide, world; possibly in the sunshine.

Dear James,

I'll tell you something, George Formby's girl is rubbish at noughts and crosses. He's letting her win and she still fucks up. Useless. Maybe she wanted to get it over and done with so she could go to the pictures. Or the zoo.

That´s a very nice cover of Leaning on a Lamppost. It must be very hard to do a George Formby cover without a) sounding like a tosser or b) crying out "turned out nice again!" at the end of the song, so Mr. Wetherill pulls himself off with considerable panache, and you can tell him I said so. Reminds me of the John Hegley poem:

London Kings Cross
To Leeds
You don't have to change your underwear
Or trains.

I've never previously posted George Formby because a) I kept getting his name wrong and youtube would only give me boxing clips and b) when I got his name right I couldn't find my favourite Formby song, The Blue-Eyed Blonde Next Door. Favourite nudge-nudge line
"She calls me in there daily to sing and have a chat, she plays my ukulele
And she’s getting good at that." You can see the lyrics here.

Re: Petrol station adverts. I fondly recall the football coin games. You had to match, say, the Liverpool club crest coin with the Ian Rush coin and you'd win 10,000 quid. I remember we had the two Liverpool crests, and sister Clare knew of someone on the estate who had a spare Ian Rush, but my parents felt that to swap them would go against the spirit of the game. And if you cheated, you were only cheating yourself. Out of 10,000 quid, clearly. And to think, they had moral issues about cheating in a game run by ExxonMobil, the world's most evil enterprise. Of course, I've worked for them as well as Mr. Murdoch. I'm hoping to get some kind of internship with Nestlé soon, make up an evil trinity.

Mad Dogs and Englishman

Dear James,
Let it not be said that this blog is a sad 70s throwback by two middle-aged men trying desperately to be ironic by pretending to like dodgy MOR tunes which they actually do like because they crossed the fine line of irony many years ago and are now clinging onto a vinyl copy of Tigermilk as their last shred of musical credibility. I've heard people say that about this blog.

No, this blog can also be a sad 50s throwback too, and who better for our first glimpse of the days when people wore dinner suits for light entertainment television and talked proper than that staunch heterosexualist, Noël Coward. I'm only pretending to like him because Freddie Mercury was compared to him so often. But look at how fast he sings! He's like Eminem in a tux.

Some interesting facts about Coward I cribbed off Wikipedia:
-He was a spy and in the Nazis' Black Book. That's their book of people to kill, not to be confused with their Red Book of hot flings from their decadent Weimar days.
-His chum George VI tried to knight him but Churchill blocked it because he thought Coward was a bit of a whoopsy. Has Graham Norton been knighted yet? No. And it's all that homophobe Blair's fault.
-Peter Collinson, Italian Job director, was an orphan at The Actors' Orphanage, of which Noël Coward was president.
-Noël Coward's neighbour in Jamaica was Ian Fleming.
-The Doctor Who novel "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" features a version of Coward who has allied himself with alien poodles and gained time travel technology. I wish I'd made that up, but apparently it's true.

Dear Daniel,

You'll have to shoulder that confidence-crisis yourself. I take no responsibility for the massive splurge of 70s nonsense for which Genesis was the, er, genesis. And bearing in mind I'm pretty sure something's going to get me by the time I'm fifty, I was middle aged at 25. I'm currently sliding pleasantly towards dotage.

I know virtually nothing about Noel Coward, beyond him being wonderful in the Italian Job. And the chorus to this. I didn't realise it was quite such a performance piece. It really only just manages to stay clear of rampant xenophobia, tricking you into thinking it's a harmless, self-effacing jibe at the niavity of Imperial toffs and at the same time slipping in a few stereotypes and ubba-jubba laffs at African dialects like a street magician with a charming smile who's secretly going for your wallet.

Eminem in a tux indeed.