There was music and laughter, lays were sung:
the veteran of the Scyldings, versed in the sagas,
would himself fetch back far-off times to us;
the daring-in-battle would address the harp,
the joy-wood, delighting
-- Beowulf
The "joy-wood, delighting"? Crap! Joy-wood or Glee-wood are olde Anglo Saxon words for the harp. Interesting names, sure, if a bit gay, and they both sound Carry On funny, but that's where the upside ends. You see, harps bring me little joy and even less glee; they merely make a bloody awful strummy noise which gets right up my nose.
This rheumy reaction stems from the Marx Brothers where Groucho's marvellous wisecracks were prone to be interrupted by Harpo's dire noodlings. Better than smile beatifically, Margaret Dumont should have bopped him on the noggin with the nearest ornament. "Stick THAT in your horn, Mute-o!" Credit to Leo McCarey for directing Duck Soup sans musical numbers.
Something, though, that brings me even less joyful gleeness than the harp, are TV shows that introduce rock/pop bands to hint at the coolness of the show's participants. You can see where I'm boing [Ed: going, you idiot!] with this, can't you?
You can't? You fools.
Well, it's wasn't Suzy Quatro on Happy Daze; vile as that show was. Nor even Suzy Quatro on Minder; great as that show was. The other day I was watching Lovejoy. The first series of Lovejoy was excellent, but last Sunday's episode was from one of the let's-see-if-we-can't-recapture-the-magic series' in the 90s and, as such, was a dud. Lovejoy, like Frasier, didn't age well. The original Lovejoy was a likeable rogue, a used-furniture version of Arthur Daley. For the most part his disinterred 90s incarnation was a glossy spiv. Eric was a goose still, but now a sappy goose. Tinker looked ready to drop dead. Perhaps he was dead, but preserved by booze. Lady Jane had lost whatever it was that made her so attractive in the mid-eighties. Purdy Whatsername was in on the caper, too. Joanna Lumley. She's a dud, certainly not the G-Lamour everyone seems to think, bit af a scrag if you ask me. On the bright side, she was excellent on Parky, and seems to have far too many clues for a TV person. Here she was Lovejoy's squeeze.
Anyhoo, the particular episode in question brought together a harp as the objet d'antique AND a pop band. The band was called Hothouse Flowers. At first, as I read the opening credits, I thought Hothouse Flowers was an actor; someone in the Honeysuckle Weekes mold perhaps. Someone with sad hippy parents. Further viewing, though, revealed her to be an an Irish band. Lady Jane, naturally, went all plaster-caster gooey at the prospect of a rock band staying in her mansion. Eric, of course, confessed his untapped musical ambitions. Tinker just saw it all as another chance to get into the sauce. Not altogether a bad thing as it turns out.
Naturally the harp went missing. But where do you think it turned up? The office of the dodgy band promoter? The front window of the opposition antique shop? Arthur Daley's lock-up? No, none of those places. It turned up in a nunnery. Yes, a nunnery. And not only that, when Lovers, Lady Jane, Eric and Tinker walked into the main hall of this esteemed retreat, there was sat one of the nuns, blissfully strumming the harp whilst Hothouse Flower and all the other groovy nuns sat round beatifically absorbing the sacerdotal sounds. And from where I was sitting, you could see it coming a mile away - Flowers and the gang were going to join in for an improptu session of jamming for Jésu while Lovers and the gang sat round tapping their feet and nodding their heads. Christ!
But. I didn't see that happen, I turned it over to the football. THAT was a risk I wasn't prepared to take. And no bloody apologies if they didn't join in, either, the show was still crap.
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