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.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES!

NUMBER 1: WHITE HORSES
When I began to make this list, I had to winnow the tunes chosen down to fifty and kept changing my mind. These top three were easy to decide though. Any one of them could have been my Number 1.
This deserves the top spot because it’s a wonderful piece of music that instantly lifts my mood. It makes me feel it’s a Saturday morning and the day is full of youthful hope and possibility! The good associations have been cemented by the times the fabulous Readers Wifes have played this at Duckie. The show was one of those foreign children’s programmes that seemed to crop up all the time on British kids’ TV, badly dubbed and bearing a patina of the glamour of ‘Abroad’. How they made me itch to go there. Probably largely responsible for me studying modern languages at high school and at university.
This theme was written by Michael Carr (who also wrote ‘South of the Border, Down Mexico Way’) with Ben Nisbet and sung by ‘Jacky’ (Jackie Lee). It was a top ten hit in 1968, the year the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia and I started High School. Jackie Lee had another hit with the theme tune to ‘Rupert the Bear’ and sang backing vocals on Tom Jones’ ‘The Green Green Grass of Home’ and Engelbert Humperdick’s ‘Please, release Me’.








Number 2: Robinson Crusoe
I have loved Robert Mellin’s haunting music for this show all through the years since I first saw the show in the sixties and still listen often to the whole suite (ici) on the iPod.
It was another one of those badly dubbed European shows that seemed to me to have added exoticism. The idea of being marooned on a desert island held immense allure for me as a teenager. It would be an understatement to say that I enjoy my own company. I’d be a better Friday than a Crusoe though and the real island that Alexander Selkirk, the model for Defoe’s hero, was stranded upon was not in any way the tropical idyll you see here. It was a happy thing when I finally found the music on a CD back in the 90s because, until then, I used to drive friends mad trying to get them to hum the tune for me when I was drunk.













Number 3: The Avengers
It is barely possible to put a cigarette paper between My Top Three. This is a brilliant, brilliant theme tune and it was a marvellous show. It’s one of the late Sir Johnny Dankworth’s, his second appearance in this list of mine.
I can’t remember the very early shows when Patrick MacNee had a male sidekick but I can remember when the stalwart John Steed was accompanied by Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman) and then by Emma Peel (Diana Rigg). My father used to get very worked up over Mrs Peel. I used to think that I must be heterosexual after all because she got me steamed up too but then I discovered that was just the kinky leather gear she wore. This show foregrounded a lot of transgressive imagery that struck a chord with even a much younger me. I saw Dame Diana on stage at the Old Vic a couple of years ago and she was electrifying.









Number 4: Doctor Who
I loved this show as a child (and I remember watching the very first episode) and I love it still.
This is one of the most instantly recognizable theme tunes ever, composed by Ron Grainer and a brilliant woman called Delia Derbyshire, mainstay of the ‘BBC Radiophonic Workshop’ realised the piece. Without benefit of synthesiser, she used found sounds on tape that she cut up, distorted, and spliced together. Bloody clever, hugely creative, and the result was a theme tune that was startlingly new and appropriately ethereal.






Number 5: The Addams Family
"Their house is a muse-um
Where people come to se-um
They really are a scre-um
The Addams Family..."
It was written and arranged by Vic Mizzy, featuring harpsichord, and finger-snaps as percussion. Lurch the butler (Ted Cassidy) growled individual words: ‘neat’, ‘sweet’ and ‘petite’.
My dad would allow us to sit up and watch this at 11.04 on a Friday night. Was it really 11.04 and why does that number stick in my head after nearly half a century? It was scary when I was a child but I adored it nevertheless or perhaps precisely because of the gothic horror tradition their comedy pastiched. I liked Gomez and Uncle Fester, but Morticia I adored. My baby sister had very long hair as a kid and my dad called her Cousin Itt for years.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #6

Number 6: Take Three Girls
The adventures of three girls (Liza Goddard, Susan Jameson, and Angela Down) who come to share a flat and work in swinging, promiscuous London. It all seemed very grown up to teenage me. Most memorable of all though was this brilliant theme tune by Pentangle, a chart hit for them in 1970.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #7

Number 7: Lost in Space
Someone had the bright idea of taking the children’s classic “The Swiss Family Robinson” and turned it into “The Space Family Robinson” in comic form. I remember watching the first episode and being enchanted by
1) The spooky theme tune (written by the great John Williams; he who wrote the music for Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars, and many, many more)
2) Angela Cartwright from “The Sound of Music” (which musical was an obsession at the time)
3) The Robot, who seemed to me then like the twin of Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet (“Danger, Will Robinson!”)
and, perhaps most of all,
4) Pathetic, selfish, treacherous, cowardly Dr Zachary Smith. It was thrilling to have such an anti-hero in a major tv series in those days when it was usually all about Robin Hood and William Tell types.
Incidentally, Billy Mumy, who played the boy Will Robinson, went on to play Lennier (Minbari aide to Ambassador Delenn) in excellent Babylon 5 thirty years later.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #8

Number 8: The Saint
More by Ted Astley (see TOP TV THEME TUNE Number 38). I was never fond of Roger Moore and perhaps that started with this series but I loved the theme tune. I have read somewhere that they’re remaking The Saint with Dougray Scott as Simon Templar. Not at all sure how that would be. He’s pretty but he was like a piece of wood in The Day of the Triffids. I saw him in something else recently on TV where he impressed me but can’t for the life of me remember what it was. Which says it all really.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #9

Number 9: The Tomorrow People
“Let me make it plain. You gotta make way for the Homo Superior." David Bowie: Oh You Pretty Things
When I started this list, my lovely partner asked whether this one was in it. I was able to reassure him it was Top 10. He must have been a sperm when this was on though, given that we have the same age difference Charles and Di did.
I gather that there were attempts to revive this series. I’ve not seen them, just the brilliant original and I used to rush home from school to see that. Partly that was being in lust with goodie goodie John (Nicholas Young), the oldest of the teenage male characters. The whole ‘breaking out’ theme with these kids who were radically different (Homo Superior: ‘Tomorrow People’) declaring themselves and finding emotional sustenance from the company of others similar came to have huge depth when I decided to ‘come out’ later.
When intrepid partner and I went to The Azores on holiday a couple of years ago, it fulfilled an ambition I’d had since first learning about those remote, mid-Atlantic islands when an alien species came to Earth there in an episode of the show.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #10

Number 10: Bewitched
I posted a link to this on Facebook once under with the soubriquet: ‘My Favourite Theme Tune OF ALL TIME!’ Clearly, I lied then but it is in my top ten. I particularly adored Endora and Aunt Clara but the whole thing was great fun, including the music. Apparently, the show’s pilot had used Frank Sinatra’s ‘Witchcraft’ but Warren Barker, who composed all the music for the show, came up with the theme we all remember. I clearly remember trudging home through dark woods and turnip fields on cold, dark Winter nights to our village and settling down in the warmth on the hearth rug to watch this show. The titles and the theme tune had a sparkle to them that warmed even very cold nights.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #11

Number 11: Mary Tyler Moore Show
“Who can turn the world on with her smile?

Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?

Well it's you girl, and you should know it…
”
Bless you, Mary Tyler Moore. How I identified with your spunky, independent, career-woman character when I was a youngster, apprenticed to the adult world, and Sunny Curtis’ theme tune was so optimistic and exuberant that Doris Day could have sung it.


AND NOW: THE TOP TEN!

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #11

Number 11: Mary Tyler Moore Show
“Who can turn the world on with her smile?

Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?

Well it's you girl, and you should know it…
”
Bless you, Mary Tyler Moore. How I identified with your spunky, independent, career-woman character when I was a youngster, apprenticed to the adult world, and Sunny Curtis’ theme tune was so optimistic and exuberant that Doris Day could have sung it.

AND NOW: THE TOP TEN!

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #12

Number 12: Top Cat
"Yes, he's a chief, he's a king,
But above everything,
He's the most tip-top
Top Cat!"
My dad loved The Phil Silvers show and this seemed to borrow characters and plot from that, turning it into a fast-moving, quick-witted, wise-cracking cartoon. I loved them all: TC himself, Benny the Ball (voiced by Maurice Gosfield who played Doberman on The Phil Silvers Show), Fancy (apparently based upon Cary Grant), Spook, Choo-Choo, The Brain, and even earnest, luckless Officer Dibble. Incidentally, a few days ago, I scored 100 points playing Scrabble with Stuie with the word DIBBLED.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #13

Number 13: Man in a Suitcase
This theme tune was written by Ron Grainer (who also wrote the ‘Doctor Who’ theme tune) and was more upbeat and energetic than the show itself usually was. You young folk will realise that Chris Evans borrowed the tune for ‘TFI Friday’, not a bad show in its trashy way but not in the same league as something as complex and iconic as ‘Man In A Suitcase’.
This show was largely what the team behind ‘Danger Man’ (see TOP TV THEME TUNE Number 38) did next after their star, Patrick McGoohan, went off to make ‘The Prisoner’. McGill, whose first name we never learned, was a former US CIA agent, who moved to the UK because of some career catastrophe in the US. In exile, living out of a suitcase (hence the title), McGill made ends meet by working as a private eye in the UK and in Europe. I loved the show because it was so cynical. He was a good man in a bad, bad world and he was pretty flawed himself, a refreshing antidote to the gung-ho stereotypes you would normally get in those days.
Also, Richard Bradford (playing McGill) was such a shag and a great actor. Years later, I discovered that Morrissey felt the same and used a photo of Bradford on the cover of the single version of Panic.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #14

Number 14: Dallas
Who shot JR? Lovely lonely lush Suellen (my cousin Linda). Poison Dwarf: Lucy No Neck. Bing Crosby’s daughter. Poor, luckless Cliff Barnes and his Chinese takeaways. Aquaman in the shower. The changing faces of Miss Ellie. The epic theme tune by Jerrold Immel. All too much to describe in more detail. It was a camp juggernaut: an outrageous soap that preoccupied the media in the 80s.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #15

Number 15: Top Of The Pops
Whole Lotta Love, the opening track on Led Zeppelin II, was reworked twice as the theme tune to Top of the Pops from 1971 to 1981 and again from 1998 to 2003. Top of the Pops was real ‘Must-See TV’ in the days of b&w, only 2 channels TV, and for a long time after the advent of more channels and more colours. It was the only TV pop/rock music show, pretty much, until the Old Grey Whistle Test started in the 70s. And, while this isn’t Led Zepp, the pukka version is a Duckie staple.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #16

Number 16: True Blood
Godric, Vampire Bill, Erik Northman, whipped puppy Sam Merlotte, Hoyt, Alcide, and above all: Lafayette! So many hott boys in Bon Temps! And the opening titles are some of the best, with Jace Everett’s Tom-Waits-lite sound.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #17

Number 17: This Week
I had several thoughts of pieces of classical music that were fitted to new TV theme tune purposes and decided that might be cheating. But this one made it through anyway. It was probably the first Sibelius I ever heard and I have gone on to listen to much more of and to love his music ever since.
As a child, I heard that the Finns had adopted a piece of his (Finlandia) as their national anthem and I decided this (the intermezzo from The Karelia Suite) was it. I was, I have to confess, a little disappointed when I later realised my mistake. I can remember nothing about this show and probably never watched it but I loved the theme tune.
In the clip above, I want to march about the sitting room to the last half of the piece, from about 1.45 onwards. It’s brilliant stuff! Quite glorious. When I have my own country, this will be the national anthem, for def.
If you want the original TV titles, they’re here on this TV Ark (Rediffusion Television) page – the penultimate link. Can’t link more directly.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #18

Number 18: The Munsters
OK, it’s a total rip off of the Addams Family but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and they did a bloody good job with this. The theme tune was written by Jack Marshall. Incidentally, Jack Marshall’s son Frank is a film producer and director who founded Amblin Entertainment with his wife, Kathleen Kennedy, and Steven Spielberg.
I remember seeing the first episode broadcast over here in the UK and nearly wetting myself with pleasure. Couldn’t wait for the next one, a whole week later, and a week is long time when you’d a kid.

MY 50 TOP TV THEME TUNES! #19

Number 19: Star Trek TOS
The theme tune to The Original Series was called ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ and written by Alexander Courage. Wikipedia suggests that Courage borrowed heavily from Mahler and Bruckner here.
My best friend had an uncle in the U.S. who sent him a kit, from which a model of the USS Enterprise could be built. It sat on top of the piano in his playroom (he was much further up the social scale than was I) and we marvelled at its elegantly strange design. This meant that when T.O.S. began to be shown in the UK every Monday night, we were primed to become fixated upon it and that was the start of a love affair that lasted until the last episode of Deep Space Nine, decades later. From the opening bars of the utterly crap theme tune to Enterprise, I hated that fag end of the franchise so that was the end of the love affair but The Original Series and its music still enchants me today.