Following on from last week's tales of unfortunate tourists arriving at the wrong destination, a reader suggested an old music hall ditty, Oh! Mr Porter, by the great Marie Lloyd, also fitted the bill. The song tells the tale of a young woman who gets on the wrong train at London. The chorus goes as follows:
Oh! Mr Porter. What shall I do?
I wanted to go to Birmingham, but they're taking me on to Crewe
Send me back to London, as quickly as you can
Oh! Mr Porter, what a silly girl I am!
It's quite a catchy tune and any reader familiar with the song might find this refrain buzzing around in their head for the rest of the day, for which I apologise. However, anyone who has been to Crewe will understand the young lady's desire to get back to London.
Lloyd had the knack of making plain lyrics sound quite saucy with simply a wink and the pursing of her lips.
Another of her songs with a train theme, What Did She Know About Railways? contains the line, "I've never had my ticket punched before", which didn't require a vivid imagination to guess what she was singing about.
Peas and leeks
Because her songs included a lot of innuendo and double entendre, Lloyd regularly fell foul of the authorities. On one occasion she was hauled up in front of a committee and asked to perform Oh! Mr Porter and A Little Bit Of What You Fancy Does You Good. She did so in a very straightforward manner and drew no complaints from these moral guardians.
However, she was furious at having to experience this humiliating process and went on to perform a very staid song, Come Into the Garden, Maud, in an extremely saucy manner with a lot of winking and pouting, which shocked the committee.
It was her way of telling them obscenity is all in the mind.
On another occasion she ran into trouble with I Sits Among The Cabbages And Peas. When told it sounded too much like a reference to urinating, she agreed to change the lyrics.
When she performed it on stage, she came out with "I sits among the cabbages and leeks", prompting much mirth amongst the audience.
Charmingly creative compere
I think I first heard Oh! Mr Porter, performed by another singer, on the popular BBC TV music hall show The Good Old Days, which ran from 1953-83. The entire audience would dress up in Edwardian or Victorian attire and always had a blast, singing along with the performers.
As a teenager, I was into pop music and didn't really appreciate the old songs, probably because my parents liked them. But I loved the master of ceremonies, Leonard Sachs, known for his wonderful hyperbolic introductions in which he used alliteration to outrageous excess, but with considerable aplomb.
He often included long words not in common use, which were greeted by the audience with appropriate "oohs". He introduced ventriloquist Neville King as a man of "verisimilitudenous (ooh!), ventroquial (ooh!), virtuosity".
On another occasion, actor Barry Cryer was presented as a "therapeutically (ooh!), thermological (ooh!) thespian".
Flabby Buttocks
Unsurprisingly, I never heard A Little Bit of What You Fancy in Thailand, but do recall about 10 years ago the Thai Culture Ministry banning a number of local songs, including one splendidly called Big Flabby Buttocks (Tai Aon Yaon), because of its allegedly saucy lyrics.
One explanation given for the crackdown was "the songs violated the rights of people who dislike them". But if we banned everything that someone might dislike there wouldn't be anything left. Anyway, if you ban something it is almost guaranteed to make it more popular than ever, and happily that's exactly what happened to Big Flabby Buttocks.
A nudge and a wink
While on the subject of saucy songs, we must not overlook another great star of the music hall era, George Formby and his ukulele. Just like Lloyd, Formby would sing songs with an exaggerated innocence, like When I'm Cleaning Windows and With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock.
The lyrics appeared innocent enough, but were open to interpretation, often prompting a nudge and a wink. And then there was With My Little Ukulele In My Hand, which was always good for a naughty giggle. One gets the feeling both Lloyd and Formby would have relished having a go at Big Flabby Buttocks. One wonders how it would sound with a ukulele accompaniment.
Farewell, Acker
It was sad to hear that British trad jazz band leader Acker Bilk has passed away at the age of 85. The clarinettist, with his trademark beard, bowler, waistcoat and rich Somerset accent, was a familiar figure on TV when I was growing up and became something of a national treasure.
He was most famous for the haunting 1961 ballad, Stranger On The Shore, which topped the charts in Britain and the US. It was such a success that Acker referred to it as "my old-age pension".
He originally called it "Jenny", after his daughter, but it was renamed Stranger On The Shore after becoming the theme song of a British drama by the same name.
Acker, real name Bernard, acquired his distinctive nickname from the Somerset slang for "mate", or friend. Stranger was even played in space by the Apollo 10 astronauts in 1969.
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