George Formby and an audience with the Pope

I was having a George Formby session on my ipod this morning while getting the Sunday lunch ready, which meant I was peeling potatoes and wiping tears of laughter from my eyes at the same time.  NB;  don’t confuse which hand is holding the tissue and which the potato peeler.  That is painful.

I love George.  I remember reading an article by Clive James he wrote years ago on the strength of a TV documentary about Wigan’s favourite son.  Clive James noted (with more than a hint of wistfulness) that after years living in Britain, he never felt more Australian and un-British than when he listened to George Formby. Clive, who isn’t exactly short of a sense of humour, just couldn’t get it.  When George was at the height of his fame, everyone, from the King to the cleaners with coal miners, clerks, clerics and cashiers in between (I could go on listing jobs that start with K or C but you get the point) loved him, but not Clive.  Not a titter.  Perhaps the ability to riff off a few bars of When I’m Cleaning Windows could become part of the Britishness test (a profoundly unBritish sort of idea) that Ye Gov talk about.

My favourite George Formby songs are, as you might have guessed, the funny ones. Here’s some of the lyrics from Hi-tiddly-hi-ti Island.

In Hi-tiddly-hi-ti Island, everybody wears a smile; Hi-tiddly-hi-ti Island, everybody lives in style The girls out there are full of sport, and wear their frocks a trifle short, Some are simply wrapped in thought In Hi-Tiddly-Hi-Ti Isle.

Yeah, OK.  Maybe you have to have the music and the voice to go with it, but it makes me laugh.

It was one of George’s sincere songs though, that made me have A Thought. It’s I’m Leaning On A Lamp-post. Here’s the link to the You Tube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e53eJBwiKw

Because, you see, Lucy, home from Uni for the weekend, wandered into the kitchen to see what I was laughing about.  Lucy (bless her) is deeply tolerant of my ipod habits and well versed in G. Formby’s output, but she does listen to more up to date music, too.  Lucy loves Elbow, for instance.  She listens to my songs and I listen to her’s.  Fair enough.  One of Elbow’s songs which I love is An Audience With The Pope as in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4d7oMxsBMI

And – wait for it – here comes The Thought.

The theme of An Audience With The Pope and I’m Leaning On A Lamp-post are exactly the same.  Wow.  And that bears out the truism, so well known to anyone who’s ever taken a stab at a creative writing class, that there aren’t any new ideas, just new ways of telling the story.