Innes / Betjeman / Doggerel Bank

For all the many tracks sung by little kids in too cute high pitch voices, this will forever remain my gristly little favourite. Culled from the Miniatures compilation (1980 Cherry Red), this is Neil Innes (Monty Python / Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band)and his then six year old son, doing the most vicious interpretation of Slade's 'Cum On Feel The Noize' I've ever heard -- Girls stab the boys!


Neil Innes & son - Cum On Feel The Noize


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More quintessential Englishness, the joys of Sir John Betjeman. Some cad of a producer decided to pair the then Poet Laureate up with arranger Jim Parker in the mid-70s, a move that could've gone so wrong, and ended up gemlike. Lust, approaching old age, and postwar England, wrapped in gloriously appropriate accompaniment and paced like a dream.




Sir John Betjeman - Narcissus
..a tale of prepubescent love for his 'bosom boyfriend'


Sir John Betjeman - On A Portrait Of A Deaf Man



Betjeman on bitumen, extolling virtues of tarmac - 'Oh smother me in viscous bitumen!'


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Finally, a couple of tracks from Doggerel Bank's 1975 album Mister Skillicorn Dances, another record worked on by Jim Parker, and in a happy circle, released on Charisma Records, who also released the Pythons. Delightful spoken-word, London-centric eccentricity.


Doggerel Bank - Crazy Lips


Doggerel Bank - Valediction (Rondeau Redouble)