Jake Thackray

Fantastic, fantastic stuff. But he was always destined for obscurity – Britain’s rubbish at cherishing the non-pigeonholable, no matter what their talent. There was also a BBC4 doc on recently about the history of comic song, which startlingly failed to mention him.

Victor Lewis Smith was indeed one of his biggest champions, and wrote the liner notes on the box set that appeared after Jake’s death.

He was ill-served by EMI, who insisted on putting bloody awful ‘comedy’ light-programme orchestral arrangements and BLOODY CELESTES on his early material. Yet his stuff with the jazz trio swings like crazy – Ike Isaacs is a great guitarist, and he played with John Etheridge later on.

I seriously think he was a genuine star. Off to Spotify now… thanks.

Even aside from Britain’s tendency, while priding itself on how it Gets Irony and Has A Sense Of Humour, to horribly undervalue anyone who puts jokes in their songs (Neil Hannon) or else miss the jokes entirely (Morrissey), Jake was to some extent his own worst enemy – I believe the documentary mentioned his tendency to miss gigs on the most spectacularly flimsy of excuses. If he’d still been playing around the circuit in later years, as against the occasional impromptu show at his local fete, I’m sure he’d have got the obligatory revival which comes to far lesser talents for simple long service.