There was some bloke who recently wrote a book about television programmes. Not my idea of fun, but a much more respectable job than writing about pop music in the positive. However as part of this tome he decided to subject himself to a comparative job of working out what the best theme song ever was.
To which I would always reply the TV show without a theme song. Unfortunately there have not been many of them. Still I would not have committed myself to the stupid task to start off with. This fella (like I say, I forget his name due to excessive consumption of my new favourite drink Tonic’n’Gin) managed to raise the hackles of the amassed tabloid press by picking some ridiculous show about a horse of some such nonsense in the sixties. Where, they all clamoured, was the theme tune to Only Fools And Horses?
Shall I tell you. It was in the bin where John Sullivan should have left it in the first place. Those of you who are not aware of this, the UK’s most beloved comedy program, it is the everyday tale of a nasty, pernicious villain and his idiot brother who week in week out try to swindle people of their money whilst dropping lovable cockney catchphrases. If you were being charitable you could call it Crimewatch UK with jokes – except Crimewatch UK generally has better jokes. And it has a theme tune in which a sullen cockney voice intones the key points about swindlous trading: “no income tax, no V.A.T, No money back, No guarantee”. The line missing from this song is obviously no bloody quality either.
People who did not turn off the moment the song came on were often lulled into the assumption that the piss poor vocals had to be done by Nicholas Lyndhurst, star of said TV programme belov’d for his gormless voice, expression and existence. In truth it was the writer of the song, who was also the writer of the show illustrating his vibrant personality. The idea that a colloquialism for the life of a conman and a French expression could rhyme could only spring from the well-font of an imagination that thinks someone falling behind a bar is the funniest thing ever. “C’est magnifique – Hooky Street!”
Worse still was the fact that there were actually two theme tunes to the show (presumably Sullivan thought he could stretch this to an A-side and a B-side rather than the more apt up his own backside). Why do only fools and horse work? So they can afford to go to the pub and not sit at home watching and listening to claptrap like this.