FIFTY FOODIE TUNES (20 to 11)

#20 Herb Alpert: A Taste of Honey
I like honey well enough but its consistency troubled me as a boy, so I preferred jam on my toast. These days, the only time I consciously consume honey is when I have it with lemon and paracetamol to ease a sore throat. Although, on holiday in Istanbul recently, I became fond of yogurt with walnuts and honeycomb on top for breakfast.
The Tijuana Brass had the big hit with this, in 1965, but it was originally written by Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow five years earlier for the Broadway opening of Shelagh Delaney’s West End stage hit.

#19 Dean Martin: That’s Amore
Martin (born Dino Crocetti) first sang this in a Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis comedy called ‘The Caddy’ in 1953. It was nominated for the Best Song Oscar but lost out to Doris Day with ‘Secret Love’. It’s in this list because of the repeated food references, to a big pizza pie and to pasta fazool.
I adore pizza but it has to have a proper thin, crusty base. I have no patience whatsoever with ‘deep dish’ or ‘stuffed crust’. Last time I was in Italy, Stu and I ate pizza for breakfast every day. In my case, it was always anchovy-strewn Pizza Napoli.
‘Pasta fazool’ is a Neapolitan dish of pasta with beans, called ‘fagioli’ elsewhere in Italy and ‘fasule’ in Naples. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten it.

#18 Millie: My Boy Lollipop
Don’t much like lollies. Never have. Did see some interesting ones with insects and worms inside them in Fortnum and Mason not long ago. I loved this song as a kid. Its essential rudeness quite passed me by. This 1964 recording was reputedly the first international ska hit and the first big moneyspinner for Chris Blackwell’s nascent Island label.

#17 Beastie Boys: Intergalactic
"If you try to knock me you'll get mocked
I'll stir fry you in my wok
Your knees'll start shaking and your fingers pop
Like a pinch on the neck from Mr. Spock"
Was I not just recently lamenting the absence of lyrics about the glory of the stir fry? Then I thought of this, courtesy of a Joe My God reference. I love a stir fry. Excellent Atkins-friendly meal if you up the meat content, miss out the noodles or rice, and substitute beansprouts.
The Readers Wifes play this at Duckie regularly and that has tweaked my interest. Not particularly fond of these homophobic prep school co-opters of rap otherwise.

#16 Barnes & Barnes: Fish Heads
Barnes & Barnes were Robert Haimer and Billy Mumy. Mumy was the little boy in ‘Lost in Space’ (Danger, Will Robinson!) and later the Minbari ‘Lennier’ in Babylon 5. This song and this video are both gloriously barking, although the video takes a wee while to get going. Might want to jump ahead to the middle. Fish heads are disgusting but they make great stock for bouillabaisse or chowder. Eat them up, yum!

#15 The Searchers: Sugar And Spice
I’m more Frogs and Snails and Puppydogs Tails, myself, but I remember this with affection from my youth. The Searchers coasted the Merseybeat wave in the wake of the Beatles and I really liked their Needles and Pins.

#14 Lieutenant Pigeon: Mouldy Old Dough
Wikipedia tells me that this is the only UK Number 1 record to feature a son (Rob Woodward, who co-wrote the song) and his mother (Hilda Woodward on piano). I assumed they were singing about stale bread all these years but have just read that they were commenting on the recent decimalisation of the currency. I remember £sd and pennies with Queen Victoria’s head on them. Thrupenny bits! Silver sixpences!
Dough is great stuff. I’m sure it can’t be good for you but, as kids, we loved to lick the spoon and the bowl when my mother was baking something and Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough is my favourite ice cream.

#13 The Stones: Brown Sugar
Nothing to do with Muscovado or Demerara sugar and all to do with the sexual abuse of young black female slaves and with cunnilingus. Gets us all shaking our beary booty on the Duckie dancefloor though.

#12 Hot Butter: Popcorn
An early Moog synthesiser tune that was a hit all over the world in the early 70s, even behind the Iron Curtain.
I’ve never been particularly fond of popcorn but I munch a bit when Stu buys a big carton of it at the cinema. I have occasionally popped my own and that is always dripping with butter and salt. I gather that you can buy it in foil packs and put these in the microwave. I have seen people do this. Takes all the fun out of popping it surely. Partner also buys Marks and Spencer’s chocolate covered popcorn. That’s good.

#11 The Strangeloves: I Want Candy
This is the original. Groovy, baby. Bow Wow Wow’s cover is great too.
‘Sweeties’ sound much more appetising than 'candy'. My grandparents called them ‘boilings’. I was thinking about ‘soor plooms’ or sour plums the other day. What exactly were those? There was a little flat, flowerless plant too that grew in the grass and we would chew it as kids, thinking it tasted of ‘soor plooms’ too.

FIFTY FOODIE TUNES (30 to 21)

#30 Monty Python’s Flying Circus: Spam
The excitement of the Pythons’ playing around with form as well as content is perhaps lost on us forty years on but not the memory of my Granny’s spam fritters, chips and beans. Wonderful. None of your vegetable oil in her chip pan either. It took a good ten minutes to melt down and boil up the dripping then chips, eggs, all sorts would go in. She did die fairly young after several strokes and heart attacks though :(

#29 Carpenters: Jambalaya
The Cajun version of paella! I tried it when I was in the States and it was OK but, like paella, it made me long for a biryani or a good kedgeree instead. We went to our favourite restaurant, The Wolseley, for breakfast on our anniversary last year and I had an excellent kedgeree.

#28 Arlo Guthrie: Alice's Restaurant and
Part 2
The song’s narrative's well captured in Andrew Colunga’s cartoons.

#27 Food Glorious Food! from Lionel Bart’s ‘Oliver’
This is a depressing film that ruined a Boxing Day for me once, when dragged to the cinema to see it as a child. But there are more than a few fine tunes in it and this is a good one. Didn’t Mark Lester grow up to be an occupational therapist or the like, and also one of Michael Jackson’s best pals?

#26 Squeeze: Pulling Mussels from a Shell
I didn’t really eat any seafood until long after I’d grown up and left home. As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown to like it a lot. I think my late mother avoided it because we lived so far inland that we were lucky to get fish for tea every Wednesday off the travelling fish van. Also because, as we discovered to her chagrin on one visit to the theatre in Soho, my mum was allergic to some kinds of seafood. She certainly had a violent emetic reaction to scallops! Not me. I love them. Love squid and have had great octopus, even carpaccio of same, in various foreign parts. Prawns, razor clams, abalone, so many Frutti di Mare to try! Mussels I like, but only served as Moules Marinière or the like. Never yet tried a sea urchin though.

#25 Spike Jones: Yes, We Have No Bananas
Sheer, exhilarating, nonsensical anarchy. Loved lots of Jones’ stuff when I was a kid. I do like bananas though. Perhaps explains all the banana-themed tunes on this list.
One thing we saw while wandering around Iceland recently was the banana cultivation in glasshouses, heated geothermally. Iceland is a net exporter of bananas, one of the biggest, apparently.

#24 Dusty Springfield: Breakfast In Bed
Lorna Bennett later had a hit in the UK with her reggae version of this but this is the incomparable Dusty! One of the Greatest Albums of All Time too. Have never been a big fan of breakfasts in bed. Too much Crumb Danger. I would like to try it, like Barbara Cartland, with the finest crockery and silver on a big wooden breakfast tray with feet, and an ironed copy of The Times from 1930something. Full English, side dish of kedgeree, toast with marmalade, gallons of Choice Mysore coffee in a Bialletti stovetop pot with hot, frothy milk in a little white jug.

#23 Harry Belafonte: Banana Boat Song
I went on holiday to Greece with my sister and her family many years ago and woke everybody up in the middle of the night by singing this song loudly in my sleep. I had only recently seen the fun Tim Burton had with the song in Beetlejuice. My dad played us lots of Belafonte’s songs when we were kids and, as well as having a fine voice and a very pretty face, Belafonte fought hard for civil rights over his long career and was particularly critical of the last Bush.

#22 Toto Coelo: I Eat Cannibals
Silly 80s-tastic girl group that included Bob Holness’ daughter, Ros. For my thoughts on cannibalism, I refer you to my comments on #38 (aforementioned).

#21 Blondie: Eat To The Beat
One of the best live gigs I was ever at was watching Blondie support the Scissor Sisters (who were pretty bloody good themselves) at a Hogmanay gig below the castle in Edinburgh years ago. This one’s off the eponymous album, which also offered up Union City Blue, Dreaming and Atomic. Phew! Hard to beat. Haven’t tried to eat to a beat, ever. Maybe some classical Spanish guitar or some Portishead would be good for the digestion.

FIFTY FOODIE TUNES (40 TO 31)

#40 Led Zeppelin: Custard Pie
Foodies must be disappointed. This list is turning into a list of songs about sex, such as this Zeppelin crudity: Chewin' a piece of your custard pie. Listen to Jimmy Pages' guitar whine and wonder, and Planty's harmonica frolics.
I discovered custard pies when I moved to Little Portugal, in Lambeth, South London, where every local deli sells glorious Portuguese flaky pastry cases filled with thick custard. To die for, to quote Nicole Kidman.

#39 John Lennon: Cold Turkey
Not at all about food in any way shape or form. But, wtf, I love it. And I love turkey, whether at my American expat friend’s annual Thanksgiving-in-Exile or in some fancy restaurant at Christmas. I also eat cold turkey, with relish. And, anyway, I couldn’t find the other ‘turkey’ song I like which is a Thai song we heard a lot when we were over there, the lyrics of which my lovely partner swore were ‘tie your turkey tins to cans’.

#38 Hall and Oates: Maneater
OK, pushing it a bit to pretend this is a song about food but, wtf, I love Hall and Oates and one hears them so seldom these days. I’ve never eaten a man but I’ve had a good chew on a few through the years…

#37 Ralph Marterie & his Orchestra: Shish Kebab
When my lovely partner first moved to London, I was still living in Scotland and commuting up and down to see him at weekends. He was living for a while in North West London and there was a big restaurant called ‘Shish’ there that we frequented. It was part of a chain because there was another one up in Shoreditch we’d go to when we went to Columbia Road Flower Market in later years. They seem to have gone now but I enjoyed their slightly upmarket Middle Eastern fast food feel. Also got good shish kebab in the Turkish restaurant down the road from my office, until it went under new management, got all tarted up, the prices doubled, the food went downhill, the portions shrank, and it went bust. Then my lovemonkey and I went to Istanbul on holiday this year and devoured the whole range of shish kebab from marvellous to mediocre.
I know nothing about this record but it sounds suitably twirly and ramshorny.

#36 Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell: The Onion Song
Ah, Motown. Lovely, lovely Motown. Lovely, lovely Marvin. I was never that convinced by Terrell but Marvin was. Despite being married to Berry Gordy’s older sister, he was rumoured to have had a long affair with her, until she died of a brain tumour, after which he attempted suicide. When I was at High School, this man was about the coolest, sexiest thing imaginable, until Bowie.
And, onions? What can one say about the onion. Love onions. Base of countless dishes. Carol Ann Duffy, our splendid Poet Laureate, wrote a fine poem for Valentine’s Day, with an onion theme:
“I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are...”

#35 Lynsey de Paul: Sugar Me
Sugar? Filthy stuff. I use saccharine in my coffee, nothing in my tea, and avoid starches of all kinds in my foods. That is why I look like the young Robert Redford and can leap mighty buildings in one bound. This was some pleasant hokum from Lynsey. Shame she was such a Tory.

#34 Stephen Sondheim: A Little Priest (from Sweeney Todd)
More cannibalism! Brilliant Tim Burton and outstanding performance throughout from Bonham Carter and Depp (who sounds a bit Bowie-esque). Have never eaten priest but I have eaten all sorts of pies in my time. Seeing Ken Livingstone a few days ago reminded me of the time I baked a special Ken Pie for the last mayoral Election. It was a tasty pie with his name spelt out in pastry on the crust but clearly did not contain the necessary magic to help him win the vote.

#33 Gracie Fields covering: If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked a cake
Gives me a very warm nostalgic glow. When I was a kid, people did still bake cakes, all the time. ‘Shop bought’ was unusual and rather frowned upon. One of the joyous discoveries I made when clearing out my mother’s house was her Be-Ro Flour cookbook with all my favourite childhood recipes for cakes and biscuits.

#32 Tom Waits: Chocolate Jesus
Perfect Easter song:
“Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied.”

#31 Dean Martin and Helen O’Connell: How do you like your eggs in the morning?
This was nearly ruined for me by overexposure in a recent advertising campaign but my longstanding fondness for Deano saved it: the old Latin lush.

FIFTY FOODIE TUNES! (50 to 41)

I am a gourmand. I love to eat. I have eaten wonderful food all over the world and in all sorts of places and I am therefore now, in my fifties, a very fat bloke. Here are some gourmet tunes that I shall post each dinner time as I wait for my snail porridge to cook.













#50 Herbie Hancock: Canteloupe Island
The only melon I really like is watermelon and Hancock did of course have a big hit with his Watermelon Man but I prefer this tune, even if canteloupe wouldn’t be my choice of a starter, even wrapped in Parma ham as it often is on these shores. My partner recently ate a melon stuffed with haggis in Istanbul and it looked delicious. I sampled the 'haggis' and it was splendid. This was at Matbah restaurant, at the back of the Ottoman Palace Hotel, beside Hagia Sophia. When I say haggis, I mean stuffing made with rice, pine nuts, minced beef, spices, and so forth. His verdict was "Haggis in a melon rather than a sheep's stomach, Turkey WINS!"

#49 Las Ketchup: The Ketchup Song
Apparently the Spanish all girl group took the name because their dad is a famous flamenco guitarist called El Tomate (The Tomato). I chose this song because we heard it a lot when we were touring round Thailand and Cambodia years ago and were pursued by this earworm. Shame I really don’t like tomato ketchup. Like mushroom ketchup lots though. Can't abide raw tomato either. My grandmother used to force me to eat them when I was a lad and I'd throw up. My sister and I still gag when faced with an uncooked tomato.

#48 Sammy Davis Jr: The Candy Man
I have never liked the word Candy. It's American for sweets and makes me think of those disgusting tooth-hurty candy canes you get as Christmas decorations. This is a song from the original film of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley specifically for the film. I always assumed Candyman had another meaning. Sammy Davis Jr had a big hit with his cover. Unfortunately, after Davis inadvertently sang the song three times in a row while looking into a mirror, the Candyman came and chopped him up and he was never seen again.

#47 The Kingsmen: Jolly green giant
The men who gave us Louie Louie in 1963. In 1965, they had another Top Ten Hit with this. I was terrified of the Giant when I was a kid. And I had grown up and left home before I ever ate sweetcorn. Love it, though. Usually have it dripping in butter and poisoned with salt.

#46 Supertramp: Breakfast In America
I don’t think I ever bought one of their albums at the time but everyone I knew seemed to like them. Over time, I have warmed to this. Maybe it’s just the nostalgia. Reminds me of Judi Pulver. Remember her? They’re Dancing On The Moon? I have to say that I don’t have great memories of breakfasts in America. Bagels were good but grits were disappointing. Hush puppies and hash browns were interesting. My culinary thrills all came later in the day.

#45 Weezer: Pork and Beans
Not a bad wee song. The video’s fun though, with its litany of references of internet memes from the past few years. And pork and beans is a great combination. Boston baked beans; cassoulet; sausage, chips and beans; whatever…

#44 Moby: Honey
Saw him perform on the Edinburgh Castle Esplanade one Hogmanay. Still have the t-shirt (that I wear only to the gym). Like this tune a lot, hearing it after such a hiatus. And honey, according to Barbara Cartland (who died at the age of 111 while riding to hounds with her Argentinian lover), is very good for you.

#43 The Drifters: Sweets for my Sweet
A year before Up On The Roof and two before Under The Boardwalk, The Drifters developed a sweet tooth. My Sweetie’s favourite sweets are Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and Tangfastics. I never eat sweets, but if I did, I would kill for chocolate limes and sherbet lemons. And Green & Black’s Maya Gold chocolate.

#42 Don McLean: American Pie
Loved this album and several songs from it. Madge covered this song of course but I still prefer the original, which has nothing to do with food. American Pie to me means the pecan pie I had in the U.S. and which I produce each year for an expat American’s fabulous Thanksgiving Dinner-in-Exile. Not that any of us has room for pie after all the delicious traditional fare like turkey stuffed with marshmallows or whatever.

#41 Blue Dots: Saturday Night Fish Fry
This jolly celebration of convivial fish eating ably sums up the joyful experience of going to visit a friend of ours who lives in a fishing town on the South Coast. She goes out to the fish market when we come down and, having once been a chef, produces outrageously good fish feasts.

Blog Resurrection!

My dear partner has recently posted to his blog after a gap of some many months. Shamed by his sudden industry, I shall do the same. And shall decorate with some photos from birthday trip to Italy - my return to Florence after 33 years!

I don’t know why I stopped, really. Just found I had less time than I'd been used to and something had to give. For about nine months, I was going to the gym every day (lost 20kgs), busy working on a sequence of demanding assignments for my MSc (two at once at one point), and monumentally busy at work. Over the past few months, the gym fell by the wayside, I went supernova with the two simultaneous assignments and haven’t picked up a textbook since handing them in, and work became much less intense (always does over August when everybody is on holiday, as was I).

Some highlights of the past few months:
I put all the weight back on that I had spent months shedding. Oh well. So it goes. But I did eat some lovely food in the process, particularly when on holiday in Florence. I had pizza at least once everyday (usually Pizza Napoli) and most days I had a risotto of some kind. Italian food must be the best in the world. Have been making risotto twice a week since getting back. I am currently in the process of psyching myself up for another monster slimming down programme. I think I’m almost disgusted enough and uncomfortable enough with my present weight and shape in order to be driven to dire measures like abjuring carbohydrates entirely for many months, having a limb amputated, or having my mouth sewn shut by the Bad Mother from Coraline.



Watched some excellent films. Five of the best were:
Let The Right One In, which I watched on holiday and adored! Hard to describe and ‘Swedish teen vampire movie’ does it no justice. It’s brilliant.
Moon, which I went to the picturehouse to see and very much liked. The apple obviously hasn’t fallen far from the tree in the Jones / Bowie family. Pleased to have watched Sam Rockwell performing so well when I thought I didn’t even like him. Great little film, much deeper than it appears on the surface and more complex than its apparently simple design suggests.
The Baader Meinhof Complex, which I downloaded from iTunes and hugely enjoyed, if enjoyed is the correct word. It was enjoyable to be reminded of that very potent period in my memory, when the Red Army Faction were great popular bogeymen, but the film did more than evoke nostalgia for the 70s in a divided Germany. It examined many levels of faith and doubt, freedom and control, innocence and corruption. Clever film.
Dead Snow, which is undoubtedly the best Norwegian zombie horror flick I’ve ever watched. A delight from start to gloriously over the top finish, all in the snowfields of Norway. Observed the requirements of the formula and then torqued them up.
Brüno, which I didn’t think I’d like and was rather coerced into by partner. I didn’t watch the Ali G movie and wasn’t all that taken with Borat although I did laugh quite a lot. To quote Julia Roberts in ‘Pretty Woman’, I near enough peed my pants. I was sore from laughing at some points and barely stopped chortling long enough to draw breath between start and finish. I was also in awe at Baron Cohen’s balls of steel, particularly in that final section where they’re making out in the cage at the wrestling match. He both enlightens and delights as he trots along poking shibboleths in the eye.



Books wot I red!
Just finished The Poisonwood Bible which has been burning a hole in my bookshelves for years since a friend gave it me to read on holiday. Books recommended by friends often acquire a curiously leprous association that somehow causes me to read anything else I come across first. Don’t ask me why, makes no sense. And when somebody actually gives me the book, to put on my shelves to gather dust, the effect is magnified. Thus it was with Barbara Kingsolver’s book and I can’t believe I have been denying myself this marvellous treat all this time. It’s exceptional. Her observation of place, biology, anthropology is all outstanding. The sweep of the tale is enormous, from the US to South Africa but mostly centring on a small Congolese village. It takes you from post war Georgia to the Reagan presidency. It puts you inside the heads of grown ups and of children, of whites and blacks, of mighty and humble, of Christian and heathen, even recounts the narrative from the point of view of an Okapi at one point. It is a joy and I was sad to have finished it.

Similarly with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I gather this has just been made into a film with lovely and very talented Viggo Mortensen as The Man. Partner insisted it was excellent but I thought it just looked too bleak. He gave it to all his friends and family for Christmas, which seemed like an odd choice. Those who read it loved it though and so I finally cracked the spine. It was describing a bleak world but it’s not a bleak book. There’s a strong narrative despite the limitations and the vivid conjuring of the inner lives of the two protagonists and the (sometimes horrific) events that unfold around them makes this one of the best books I’ve ever read. Can’t see how the forthcoming film is going to match it in any but the most desultory way. It’s such an intelligent book and tells you so little by way of explanation of anything. It leaves you to figure out which is or might be happening and why. I think a Hollywood film will feel obliged to explain too much.

One last happy literary find from over the Summer. Dirty White Boy by Clayton Littlewood is a series of blog posts gathered into a touching little book. Dirty White Boy is a shop that Clayton and his partner ran for a short time on one corner of Old Compton Street. If you know Compton St, you’ll recognise so much of what he describes of the life he sees through his big plate glad corner window while jotting his musings in a notebook under the shop counter. It’s Queer Street now, awash with gay bars, cafes, shops, but there’s still lots more going on in the neighbourhood than the noisy bars spilling their pink punters onto the pavements. And there always has been that mix, to judge from the history Littlewood serves up, gulled from his encounters with so many local characters. Its blogging origins mean it’s composed of several short chunks, so it’s a perfect book for someone like me who has trouble devoting long periods to reading. I tend to want to read a short bursts these days, my concentration span shrunk by my excessive laptop use. When I saw that it had been made into a piece of theatre, performed at the Soho Theatre recently, I wondered how that would have been structured, but there are some robust threads running through it upon which one could hang a drama.



Hmmm, I seem to have written a lot, without much effort. All it took was a free half an hour. Maybe there will be more. Maybe not. Who can say?

The Bears #2: BEAR WATCH