Earworms and Wags

Earworms: it’s now officially in the dictionary, so I hear. Earworms are those annoying snippets of tune you get stuck in your head and can’t get out. I wake up most mornings with an earworm delving about inside the void. In one week alone I’ve woken up with:
“Black boys are delicious,” from Hair; “You’ll never walk alone”, Carousel; “London Pride,” Noel Coward; “Another ditch in the road,” Savage Garden; Shostakovich Symphony No. 5, 1st movement, (all of it!) “The wheels on the bus go round and round,” and something quite unprintable from Jerry Springer The Opera.

My subconscious taste is clearly eclectic. I find the only way to exorcise the earworms is to sing the burrowing annoyance out loud, which isn’t a problem with “The wheels on the bus” but was hard going with the Shostakovich. And I don’t think the neighbours appreciated the Jerry Springer: “Put your ******* clothes on, you stupid ****.”

And talking of stupid ****s: now for the Wags.

Apparently WAGS are much in the English ‘newspapers’ these days. A revue company in England has commissioned me to write a short sketch, including two songs, about WAGS. They had to explain to me what a WAG is, apparently it’s a top football player’s wife/girlfriend/latest female hanger-on. I had to research on-line as I’ve not seen a copy of the Sun for… oh, days. (Neil gets one when he goes to Rhodes, brings it back lovingly and I put it in the laundry basket until it turns yellow. The laundry basket is in the bathroom so the ‘newspaper’ is always on standby in case we run out of…) So I was looking for suitable songs to rewrite lyrics for, hence the My Fair Lady research instead of watching the cup final. (See July’s update.)

I’ve had some preliminary ideas for changed lyrics. Sing along, make up the rest and pray you don’t fall prey to an earworm:

“In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, Hintelligence hardly ever happens.” (Apparently Beckingham Palace is in one of those counties)

“All I want is a football jock,
Some young chip off of some old block.
With one enormous…chair.”

“When Wayne’s in Spain the team goes down the drain,” - not sure if that’s going to be crude enough, or is even relevant.

I am also trying to track down the Mary Poppins soundtrack:

“Super scally Wags in lipstick let’s be all ferocious
Wearing skin tight leather jeans and acting all precocious,
Flash your b**bs occasionally, you’ll never go unnoticed
Super scally Wags in lipstick - something quite atrocious!”

Sadly I still don’t know enough about footballers’ wives, WAGS and the footballers themselves so I need to do more research. But it’s a start.

Oh hell! I’ve now got Dick Van Dyke in my ear: “Gawd blimey Maary Poppins. Chim chimney, chim chimey, chim chim che Rooney!”

A cure for earworms? See Alan's entry in the guestbook