BOMBALURINA – “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”
Timmy Mallett is one of those horribly British professional funsters who seem to find employment as DJs and TV hosts and then worm their way to the heart of the UK’s pop culture. Pop, and life, is for them a kind of cosmic struggle between the serious and the fun, and it’s their duty to take balancing action any time the former seems like winning. So when pop in 1990 showed signs of being vibrant, original, and relevant to its audience it fell to Timmy to enter the studio and produce a record of such thundering witlessness it could ruin a whole year at a stroke.
“Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny” is that single. The second Brian Hyland cover to top the chart in little over a year, its original is a chirpy bit of beach kitsch, annoying, utterly undeserving of revival, but not atrocious. Mallett improves on it in only one way – trading up the schoolmarmish “one two three four” vocals for something more giggly. In every other sense this is a horror show. The pin-up cheekiness of the song is swapped for Mallett’s mocking leer, as he takes an Aslanesque relish in knocking pubescent vanity down a peg. Hyland made the song a silly high school anecdote, but for Mallett that’s too subtle. The Mallettian kind of fun is like an ideological tyrant, one which turns allies into enemies and liquidates them. Joy, summer, music, sex, pop and finally playfulness itself – all remorselessly ground down into abstract unthinking FUN as this ghastly record trots on.
It had one practical effect: it immediately made unusable a whole category of overdone but not hateful samples, staples of chart dance records up to this point. “I LIKE it”, “Woo! Yea!”, “uh YEAH” – all put beyond use by this record. To this day, I flinch when I hear “Uno! Dos! Uno dos tres quatro!”. As it happened, the funster class was about to face a crisis of sorts, but they had a few more chances to horrify us first.
1
Nothing to see here – please move along
A “Smile. You might even like it” sticker made into a record.
Very difficult to argue with that. I was 9 when this came out – and thus squarely in the Mallett demographic. I hated him then. I hated this then. Time has mellowed me a bit on Mallett – I still don’t like what he does but I’ve less inclination to actively loathe him (and thankfully anyone else to be honest) – but this record is still crap.
The Hyland original of this got to #1 in the US – in that horrible period in between Buddy Holly dying and The Beatles playing Ed Sullivan. At least in this country we had Joe Meek to keep things interesting – though he did manage to export Telstar and a few others to the US.
I believe that the 11-year old me was on holiday with my family at Butlins in Minehead when this was #1. This was played everywhere there at the time, a truly appropriate and horrific soundtrack.
Strange man, Mallett. Very, very strange man. Even as a child I remember finding him distinctly creepy.
Interesting to note that he was happy to front this frothy bit of female objectification, but he famously got into a strop and refused to allow Kim Wilde’s (fairly tame even by the standards of the late 80s) Say You Really Want Me video to be broadcast on his show.
Was Suzanne Vega still at #2 when this was on top? If so, unluckiest song ever? Held off by two of the worst #1 singles ever.
#3 yeah for all my hyperbole I don’t hate the funsters as people, least of all TM – it’s a role British pop culture seems to demand *someone* fill and he did it no more nauseatingly and less evilly than many. This record is actually a low point for Mallett himself, he kept himself to kids’ TV by and large.
I loved Timmy Mallett as a kid and I loved this too. 2nd year juniors (no-one got the hang of ‘Year 4′ until we got to ‘Year 5′) was the peak of puerile humour, with 85% of the school day taken up with boys saying ‘b00bies’ and ‘bum’ (the two RUDEST words, Uncle Stew) and the remaining 15% being Mrs Field telling them off. So the prospect of a tiny bikini that showed ones’ unspeakable nether regions was the utmost of hilarity – IBTWYPDB is very nearly the ‘Allo ‘Allo of UK #1s. Anyway, I like to think that the looks on everyone’s faces when I ‘dropped’ it during my first ever Poptimism DJ set made its existence is totally worthwhile.
A Tweeter writes: “Sky used that song for a montage of super-slo-mo Ashes-winning England moments. It was, therefore, glorious.”
I admit it would make a change from Elbow.
#6 Yep – there is always someone out there on kid’s TV plying the same/similar sort of schtick that Mallett did; Dick and Dom seem to be the current main culprits on BBC, unless anyone else can find someone more into the funster angle for kids.
Fact is, this sort of wacky (pun intended) personality and associated gungings, pratfalls and silliness do go over well for kids even now. The audience for Hole In The Wall and Total Wipeout as far as I can tell is mostly kids. Maybe that’s where the funsters have gone now – they’re not actively on TV making programmes or utterly awful records; TV just gets members of the public to do the stupid stuff kids like instead. It’s probably cheaper in fairness.
I was nine too, and I remember really, really, hating this. Timmy Mallet, like Bodger and Badger, only made sense to me later in life: “oh right – he was for the thick kids!”
I think this might have been a crucial moment in the development of my critical faculties, because I don’t remember hating a song like this before. However, I do remember being about the same age and thinking to myself “I don’t really understand what people mean when they say they didn’t enjoy a film – going to the pictures is great”. I know that I enjoyed going to see The Bodyguard two years later, so cinematically I was more of a slow learner.
Wikipedia’s summary of Timmy Mallet’s early 80s radio show:
“The programme he hosted at Piccadilly was Timmy on the Tranny, a popular weekday evening show that ran from 8pm-11pm and took its name from Mallett’s show on Radio Oxford. Among Timmy’s team of helpers were Chris Evans known as ‘Nobby Nolevel’, Andy Bird who played the pirate radio character ‘Radio Diggle’, Karen Walsh was the original ‘Aunty Boney kneecaps’”
Just reading that paragraph has me fuming. I am really incapable of liking this kind of thing I think. (Tiswas being an exception but square that I was I liked Swap Shop just as much.)
I was in Year 3 when this came out, and I loved it at the time, as I did the bizarre accompanying album of 50s novelty songs given a hi-NRG makeover by Andrew Lloyd Webber (and I believe the same studio team who pumped up the Donovan-era cast recording of Joseph?). My Mallett fandom reached a peak when he opened the Tunbridge Wells Pantiles and ‘malletted’ me, but didn’t last long afterwards, and my ownership cassette of this very soon became an embarrassment.
Some years later, while DJing a college disco, I attempted to test the limits of ironic student appropriation of nostalgic tat by playing this, and cleared the dancefloor, perhaps reasonably.
Interesting to see Tom bring up the samples, it’s jam full of them – and because I came to this first rather than some of the ‘cooler’ tunes that made use of it, many of my later explorations of early dance music threw up unwanted recollection of Mallett and his kin. Has anyone bothered to list what all the sample are and where they’re from? (Probably not.)
And wasn’t there a rumour a few years back that Mallett doesn’t sing on this?…
[I rated this a 2, the extra point purely being for the nostalgia, however unwelcome.]
What actual age is someone in “year four”? #ironicgrandad*
*Except I actually do want to know
This is my least favourite and most hated number one of all time, much much worse than the Jive Bunny trio, and more than any bunnyable others to come.
In part it’s because I genuinely hate this record, although there are others that fit the biull. But mainly it’s because its stint at number one coincided with the year of the biggest chart music obsession of my life, and so there was no avoiding it. It genuinely upset my teenage tastes that anyone could even dream of buying this, I couldn’t think of a single redeeming feature – it even had the effect of making me flinch when I heard those overused dance samples in records that I’d previously liked, so it didn’t just ruin the charts for me it ruined other records. The memory of this is making me shudder at the memory, and unlike other awful records that we’ve seen here before, I’m not even mildly tempted to click on the video link to hear it again.
#13 – about eight or nine. I can only work it out by counting backwards, because my school introduced the new year names when I was in Year 6, which is the top year of primary/junior school. In much the same way as how no one born between 1970 – 1990 knows either metric or imperial measurements properly, just a confusing mish-mash of both.
#14 I sympathise! My own least favourite number one – still to come – is so awful I have never actually been able to get to the end of my MP3 to check it works.
I’d stopped thinking Mallett was a good thing a few years before this shower of shite – it really is the worst #1 covered for some time (yes I will take Belfast Child and assorted charity bobbins over this).
Good point about Mallett doing us a “favour” by rendering all those cliched samples totally uncool from this point on but I have to say the follow up single ‘Seven Little Girls Sitting On The Back Seat’ is actually a tad worse.
A better Mallett pop vehicle might’ve been a few recorded rounds of Mallett’s Mallet over Coldcut beats, scratches and weird noises – “7 Minutes Of Mallett” etc.
Was Mallett responsible for “sheet, pillow, dooooovet” on Wacaday? Was he also responsible for introducing Michaela Strachan to the public? In both cases, that means I’ll let him off the fact he was clearly in his mid thirties with the haircut of someone a third of his age and looked like he would be NO FUN AT ALL if you had the temerity to ask for his autograph.
I’m not letting Brian Hyland* off so easily. At least Timmy didn’t follow this up with Four Little Heels (The Clickety Clack Song) and Lopsided Overloaded And It Wiggled When We Rode It.
Shoreditch/Dalston types remind me of junior Mallet funsters.
*unsurprisingly made cataclysmically great records once his teen pin up days were over – Rainy April Morning, You, You’d Better Stop, all moody loner orchestrated pop.
A redemptive revisionist reading? Not here! Unlike ‘Sealed With A Kiss’ or ‘Tears On My Pillow’ this was a highly objectionable record in the first place – but at least it didn’t go on for FOUR SODDING MINUTES. Apart from anything else, this elongation dilutes the cheeky narrative effect.
I’ve just watched the video. Two thoughts – The two female dancers 1990 hairstyles, perms that end abruptly at the top of the neck, strike me as highly attractive now, but I would have seen them as being a bit common twenty years ago. And those two male dancers are clearly more interested in each other than the micro-bikinied lovely.
And you would have thought that Timmy Mallet’s pop career would have had ‘One hit wonder’ written all over it, but – Oh no – there he was back in time for Christmas with No. 18 follow-up ‘Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Back Seat’.
There was even an album, ‘Huggin’ & A Kissin’. Do you suppose that anyone got that, the Gazza & Friends album and the second Jive Bunny LP that Christmas?
#2 Watch. Two weeks of Deacon Blue’s highly tasteful ‘Four Bacharach & David Songs EP’. The tune-free version of ‘I’ll Never Fall In Love Again’, with fullblown Ricky Ross throaty emoting was the lead track. Its certainly a different approach to doing a cover version than Bombalurina, but, do you know, I think that I hate it just as much.
TOTPWatch: Bombalurina thrice preformed ‘Itsy Bitsy’ on Top Of The Pops. More about the Christmas show anon;
9 August 1990. Also in the studio that week were; Craig McLachan & Check 1-2 and The Hothouse Flowers. Gary Davies was the host. What an awful week.
23 August 1990. Also in the studio that week were; The Human League and Lindy Layton & Janet Kay. Nicky Campbell was the host.
Light Entertainment Watch: Away from his own programmes Timmy Mallett has rarely been a welcome guest on UK TV. I’m guessing that he appeared on all four of these shows to be mocked;
HARRY HILL’S TV BURP: with Tony Blackburn, Sarah Darlington, Peter Dean, Timmy Mallett, Andi Peters, Michelle Tate (2006)
THE JUSTIN LEE COLLINS SHOW: with Ben Miller, Katherine Kelly, Kirsty Gallacher, Timmy Mallett, Dennis Seaton, Here Come The Boys (2009)
NOEL’S HOUSE PARTY: with Gotcha (Timmy Mallett) (1992)
THE WORD: with Kathy Lloyd, Timmy Mallett, Dog Eat Dog, Lisa Moorish, The Charlatans (1994)
o you suppose that anyone got that, the Gazza & Friends album and the second Jive Bunny LP that Christmas?
^^^This is screaming for a “satirical” answer! As in “Yes: Brandon Flowers!! ahaha” or w/evs
As a littlie, I had several records — 45s and LPs — on which sanctioned “children’s folkies” sang amiable silly nonsense songs for tinies, Wally Whyton and the like (the “campfire” genre invented by the late Mitch Miller, i believe, and dominated in the UK over many decades by Rolf Harris*)
*Rolf who is plainly a more interesting, important and talented figure than Mallett in EVERY FIELD viz can also SWIM and PAINT and plus look stricken when yr puppy didn’t make it
Apparently one of the dancers in the video is now Mrs. Gary Barlow, fact fans.
They’d stopped bothering with imperial by the time I got to school EXCEPT when it came to weighing/measuring yourself, presumably because “X foot Y” is easier to remember than “Hundred and something centimetres” (same with stones vs kg). All the metric kids in the maths textbooks sounded like giants.
I have a friend who owns a “Mallett’s Mallet”. He mistakenly believed it had even greater kudos than a Blue Peter Badge (which I once owned). Both of these fail to reach the dizzy heights of a Crackerjack Pencil (which I once coveted, because you had to be a winner on the show to get one). Both “Itsy Witsy…” and “Seven Little Girls…” were parodied on Crackerjack and both of those parodies had more wit and charm than anything that Timmy Mallett could muster throughout the whole of his career. Absolute cack.
#18 beware of confusing Wacaday with Wideawake, the latter of which was Michaela S’s main outlet and had lots of different dudes presenting. Wacaday was on during the holidays, not just Saturday mornings, and was pretty much All Mallett All The Time.
Speaking as a Manchester lad…
Exports from Piccadilly Radio to the world: Mark Radcliffe, Andy Peebles, James Stannage, Mike Sweeney, “Ooh” Gary Davies, Steve Penk, Chris Evans, Timmy Mallett. In the last case at least, sorry world.
Bikini clad lovelies not bad at all. Best watched with the sound off, then. Preferably listening to Test Match Special, oddly enough.
On another forum we used the word “Penk” – derived from Steve – as an acceptable alternative for another four letter word beginning with C. I got so used to this that when I saw Erithian write “Steve Penk” just now my first thought was “that’s a bit edgy”.
Re 28: Ah. Thanks Kat, I had a feeling it couldn’t have been Mallett’s work. Tommy someone? (excuse for forgetfulness – I was 25)
I really can’t bring myself to listen to this. Will watch video with sound down while listening to Deacon Bl… no, of course not. Who was no.3?
Re 31: Two rather better singles. A week of New Kids On The Block’s best moment ‘Tonight’ and then a week of a 24 carat 1990 classic, Betty Boo’s ‘Where Are You Baby?’ – that’s the genuine sound of fun!
This is the first No 1 I remember from the actual time (though it was still before I really clocked how pop music and the charts worked, it was just hearing it on the radio). I hated it with a passion – “for the thick kids” about sums it up as per #10. I found it insulting and offensive that it seemed to be aimed at my age group. I believe the first violent thoughts I ever had in my life were about Timmy Mallett. Still want to punch him tbh.
Was Timmy Mallett the original inspiration for Wayne’s World? Famous, or infamous, in 1990 as a children’s morning TV host, with his vomited-upon multicoloured short-sleeved shirts, his “comedy” spectacles and his general air of pointless franticity, he employed the young Mike Myers as sidekick in his Wide Awake Club of the early-mid eighties; but whereas Wayne’s World exhibits an inane but essentially benign air of enthusiastic idiocy, Mallett, with his pink, squidgy “Mallett’s Mallet,” was apt to bear the air of someone who should have been kept at least a thousand miles away from any children. As a DJ at Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio he mentored the young Chris Evans. Several circles could be completed, or broken, with that particular triangle.
What is most striking about the entirely uncalled for revival of Brian Hyland’s jolly thirty-year-old allegorical account of loss of virginity (“So in the water she wanted to stay”) is the complete lack of personality Mallett displays throughout the record as a “singer”; he finds it difficult enough to keep in tune or time with himself on resolutely clumsy double-tracking, never mind with the song. With its ghastily grinning effusion of Jive Bunny, Tight Fit and Black Lace and abrupt, money-run-out-in-the-machine ending, listening to “Itsy Bitsy” is a painful experience, as though presented with an out-of-date karaoke machine programmed to please and doing everything but. It was the summer smash of 1990 that “Kinky Afro” or Bocca Juniors’ “Raise” or Flowered Up’s “It’s On” should have been.
But what makes the record, literally, less than nothing is its options. The TS Eliot reference in the Bombularina name provides a clue, and perhaps the terrible sub-House assemblage of the most cliched samples one could hope to find in 1990 (most prominently, Michael Jackson’s “Go on girl!”) might betray another, but the record was conceived and produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Worse, Mallett himself has for the best part of thirty years been an independent Chaucerian scholar, his father was one of my former English Literature tutors, and as a resident of Cookham and accomplished artist, with entries in the Tate Britain catalogue, he has also become practically Cookham’s Official Recorder, his local subjects including John Spencer, Stanley’s grandson. In other words, while the likes of Jive Bunny were get-rich-quick pyramid schemes of pop, Bombalurina is the product of people who know infinitely better – and for that reason, even more than for its wilful dragging back of pop into 1989, “Itsy Bitsy” disgusts me more than any number one reviewed to date.
Bloody hell, I think I remember this and I’m not even two yet. How?
All the other #1s of 1990 I didn’t discover until years later (with the possible exception of The Power, which has always been familiar), but certainly this I’ve always known. Similarly I’ve always seemed to have heard of Timmy Mallet, yet when Wacaday finished I was only four. Was this song played much after 1990, or is my memory a lot better than I had presumed? I don’t really start remembering number 1s until 1993, but there’s the occasional one like this beforehand.
I can understand why people hated it at the time, it sounds like Stock/Aitken/Waterman are about to make a triumphant return. A very odd number 1 in a year full of greats.
Weirdly, it’s even on Spotify.
Tom at #16: obviously you can’t tell us yet, but I’m now racking my brains wondering what your least favourite #1 might be, given that it isn’t ‘…Grandma’ ‘Lady in Red’ ‘Every Loser Wins’ or anything by Jive Bunny.
I can’t actually remember this particular one, but am I alone in taking a perverse enjoyment in seeing truly terrible records get a deserved critical kicking on FT?
‘Horribly British professional funsters’: nicely put! Numerous representatives of the genre were still ruling the roost at Radio 1 at this time, and probably contributed to the success of this record.
I love seeing deserved kickings handed out on Popular! Especially because Tom keeps saying he’s not good at hating on shit records: this proves otherwise and I demand MORE HATE. I’m already eagerly anticipating whatever the least favourite turns out to be…
Tommy Boyd can’t stand Mallett by all accounts.
I actually enjoyed listening to it just now, though some of that may be that I haven’t heard the samples since roughly 1990, and they are now old and welcome friends. Also I don’t find Mallett as overbearing here as in frantic ‘life’ – he probably clocks up less time than some of the samples.
Is it true, as I have just made up, that the “Woo! Yeah!” is James Brown’s only appearance at the top of the UK hit parade?
It’s interesting to note that a lot of responses to this one are school-based. It wouldn’t have been too long after this that a girl in my class actually appeared on WACaday and emerged triumphant in Mallets Mallet. Don’t remember anyone being that impressed. Same goes for the track. Even at that formative stage I think a lot of us knew this strange man in the specs was a troublemaker.
Absolute dross. Tom’s point about it killing off the overuse of certain samples is very astute indeed.
(The comment I would like to make in regard to this record and its performers I cannot make in the public domain on the grounds that it would be unfair, possible untrue – perhaps at least as yet, and certainly defamatory, speculative and libellious. Damn. Maybe I will say it aloud if I ever meet any of you in person, and maybe open a book on a related matter)
When people these days glance at the charts and despair of modern music, they should look back to 89-90 and compare the crap at Number One to the stuff that actually got remembered.
I’m not an indie snob or a rock snob – I love a good pure-pop song, but this is awful. Jive Bunny is awful. Most of SAWpop is awful (apart from “What Do I Have To Do?”, which is mysteriously far better than it ought to be).
Ah yeah.
#42 Heather makes a good point – whatever else has happened to the chart the possibility of this particular kind of dreadfulness doing well seems to have been closed off.
If 1990 was going to have a novelty summer holiday hit, why couldn’t it have been Digital Underground’s Humpty Dance?
Tricky Disco also used the “yeah! WHOO!” sample this summer, but filtered it to sound as it was coming out of the mouth of a baby Cadbury’s Smash Martian.
Other alternative no.1 summer smashes of 1990:
Ragga Twins – Hooligan ’69
The KLF – What Time Is Love
Moodswings – Spiritual High
My Bloody Valentine – Soon (original or Andrew Weatherall mix)
Tribe Called Quest – Bonita Applebum
Meat Beat Manifesto – Radio Babylon
Primal Scream – Higher Than The Sun
1 World – Down On Love
History feat. Q Tee – Afrika
Sheer Taft – Cascades
Young MC – I Come Off (Southern Comfort mix)
The Grid – Flotation
A glorious summer… and, oh yes, not forgetting one single which was sorta kinda robbed, but Tom’ll get there soon enough.
You’re a year early with ‘Higher Than The Sun’! ‘Come Together’ knocked out my 17 year-old self, though. Other great 1990 fantasy summer smashes;
Looking For Atlantis – Prefab Sprout
Dream Beam – Hypnotone
Summer In Siam – The Pogues
Hardcore Uproar – Together
Iceblink Luck – Cocteau Twins
@44, @45 yes yes yes
add
Everything – Kicking Back with Taxman
En Vogue – Lies (surprisingly big on the pirate stations in east london at the time)
loads of stuff on WARP and Shut Up and Dance (as well as the Ragga Twins already mentioned, Waking Up by Nicolette, I’m Not In Love/Fuck The Legal Stations by Rum and Black warrant a mention I think). And whatever the name of the record label that Jesus Loves You and the E-Zee Possee was on too.
and – above all
The Grid – Floatation (which I am alarmed to learn from Spotify was evidently remixed and rereleased last year). “A Beat Called Love” was fun too, but not quite in the same league.
I’m almost inclined to look back at that summer as the peak of the 12″ single – this was still a time when major labels were chancing their arm. Plus they hadn’t swallowed up and sucked the life out of every indie label – many were still going strong (on an entirely different note I think that the best singles/EP act of the year were Ride – 3 cracking 4-track EPs, and the 1st one of 91 even better. Then it all went wrong). Every high street, almost, still had a record store, and a lot of interesting stuff was out there for the taking.
I am a sheltered American and have absolutely no way to contextualize this. This is a terrifying thing.
It really does find new depths, doesn’t it? It makes me introspective, and I find two things. Firstly, I would prefer people felt I had no love for music and no sense of humour than anyone might feel that I felt this was either enjoyable musically or funny. Secondly, I dislike myself for my snootiness, but at the age of 41 I have only just come to terms with what no.10 implies about the target audience. What was previously mystifying has been replaced by something less palatable; no. 10 has shown me the truth and I do not like it (though I am grateful for being shown). Maybe I was just kidding myself all along. In denial.
No.34. In addition, ALW put this out on the Carpet label. Because his Ltd company is called Really Useful Group or RUG. Carpet, Rug. See.
A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
What was I laughing at again?
#23: I believe I introduced that Dog Eat Dog performance!
#16: Tom, I would lay good money on the unfinishable track containing an inexplicable reference to a French marine photographer.
#45: Seconded on Summer In Siam, one of my favourite “same verse” songs.
I’m not at all comfortable with the idea that Mallett could be Cookham’s 2nd most famous artist after Stanley Spencer. I’d be happy if Rolf Harris was a Cookham resident, I have a lot of time for him, but I think Rolf lives a bit further down-river. Rolf, if by any chance, you might be lurking here, please sell up and move to Cookham!
Not actually Rolf, but nearly as important for pop…
I was aware that this was going to get a kicking, and I relish the kicking it gets, but (apart from lasting for too long and the overuse of a couple of the samples) I can’t really see what’s so objectionable about this. It doesn’t seem that far from – not necessarily good but at least harmless. I certainly hear no Aslanesque (nice tie-in to Narnia Week by the way) sneer in Mallett; blankness really (which I guess isn’t good but I never said this was good).
“Tom’s Diner” is still better. I’m not being that contra. And then “Naked in the Rain” is better than that, except for the chorus which is disappointingly a bit rubbish (much worse than the prechorus in any case).
“I’m Free” by Soup Dragons & Junior Reid is either significantly better than both of those or significantly worse. I’ve not decided yet.
Sorry, I’m still working 1990 out. As you were.
Let’s face it, if Soon, Tom’s Diner, Let the Rhythm Hit’em, and Fool’s Gold had all made #1 on top of the run from Nothing Compares to World in Motion then 1990 would have immanentized the Eschaton, or ended (pop) history, or something. As it is we’re regressing towards the nasty late ’80s mean fast.
I remember coming home from holiday, finding this at number one and just being confused. What was it? Why is Timmy Mallet a beach perv now? Is this for adults? Why were people buying it?
Twenty years later and I have pretty much exactly the same questions. What’s the audience for a seedy, unfunny, creepy kids’ song? How does it get to number one for three weeks?
Exposure to Bombalurina has had the odd side-effect of making me reconsider all of the dire number ones of the eighties. I still don’t want to listen to any of them, but each have a popular cultural narrative that I can view with sympathy;
St Winifred’s School Choir were at least a group of ordinary schoolchildren, and the exposure must have been an enjoyable and memorable experience for them.
Nick Berry needed an original mawkish ballad to sing for a soap opera storyline. Within the context of Eastenders, it was inoffensive viewing.
Jive Bunny were a pair of mobile disco DJ chancers, whose workmanlike megamixes happened to touch a chord with the public.
I don’t believe that any of the people behind those singles set out to make shoddy work. While, as Punctum says, there’s something deliberately insulting about Itsy Bitsy that I don’t think we’ve come across before.
Oh, and re: wichita lineman at #18 –
I met this 20-year-old French guy in Berlin a few years back, he apparently cut the hair of various celebs including peaches. Absolute spitting image of TM, take a look – http://s138.photobucket.com/albums/q276/james-errington/Berlin%20-%20Aug%202007/mallett.jpg
#34 Interesting biographical detail there Mr P. At this time I was working with a guy who remembered him from Hyde Grammar School as a namby-pamby mummy’s boy who wore his blazer and tie everywhere, about as far removed from his TV persona as you could get. They called him Reverend Tim because his dad was a vicar. Was he still in orders when you knew him ?
I recall a BBC2 doc a few years back about 80s TV prsenters and his one time agent said he wanted to break Tim out of kids TV and put him in a suit and tie on a discussion show. When he put it to him Mallett said “blah blah ridiculous ridiculous ” and walked out on him. He also said Mallett was not the sort of guy you could talk about football with. So that’s why you don’t see him on other shows, Billy !
Punctum #34 – dunno about inspiring Wayne’s World (although it was eyebrow-raising news to me to learn he’d worked with Mike Myers) but Mallett surely inspired the creation of Colin Hunt, the annoying and borderline-tragic office joker in The Fast Show.
As for Mallett’s local community activities, does anyone remember a very funny documentary by the writer and former Guardian columnist John O’Farrell about standing as the Labour candidate in Maidenhead for the 2001 election? Of course it’s a place where they weigh the Tory vote rather than count it, and after a scene in which he took a cruiser boat past Thames-side mansions to canvass their residents by megaphone (voiceover: “I love the smell of Pimms in the morning”), O’Farrell was then seen knocking on another well-appointed door to be confronted by Mallett and his mallet. You felt for him.
Mike #57 – he went to Hyde Grammar School? Well, that explains it all! – rivals if not quite mortal enemies to us Audenshaw Grammar lads, who would have our own representative at number one five years later.
I think there’s one particular #1 in a similar vein to this from 1993 that might be worse, but it’s a close call.
Slightly Discombobulating Coincidence Corner:
Reading this thread while idly flicking TV channels, just at the moment where I see “Hardcore Uproar” mentioned, the video for it appears on my telly. I haven’t heard it in at least a decade. And then I reach the bottom of the thread and there’s talk of Hyde Grammar, which my dad attended.
Carry on.
Blimey what channel was that on?
re#55 what about Joe Dolce?
# 58 Yeah, there were people at work (Tameside MBC 87-94) who knew that tosser too !
Re#61. Again, absolutely, I can see ‘Shaduppa Your Face’ working in the context of a fifty minute Edinburgh fringe one man show about Joe Dolce’s childhood. I’d rather listen to it ten times in a row than Bombalurina once.
Clubland TV – 383 on Sky.
IIRC Together were a duo who both died in a car crash a few months after ‘Hardcore Uproar’. A great shame.
Brilliant. I was waiting for this one to come up actually because it is the worst number one I can think of. Absolutely no merit whatsoever.
#65 It was actually just one of the members and his girlfriend (who apparently contributed vocals on one mix of the track) that died. Suddi Raval who can be heard on the airplayed mix is still with us.
Odd situ: Back in the day, TimMal was due at the local Shopping centre to do some sort of daft kids ‘fun’ day. I had a mental image of bumping into 80 kids surrounding him, and himself with the face of a man with a developing migrane.
Oddly, come the day I had sort of forgot this was happening, and went up some stairs and bumped into 80kids surrounding TimmyMallet, and himself with the face of a man having a total and genuine whale of a time.
Gotta respect that.
Oh yeah, the record. It’s something when something like this doesn’t even get played during the ‘kiddies disco’ at Haven holidays, whereas the Rolfie “king caractacus” and even the jive Bunny *still* do.
Interesting. I had barely registered Mallett before this, despite spending the past decade in the UK, and didn’t recognise him in the video when I watched it last week, so effectively came to it completely cold. It struck me as a 1988-89 throwback and clearly not something I would ever want to return to, but no more offensive than some of SAW’s later hits. Lloyd Webber’s involvement does scream “cash-in”, but given Somewhere Over the Rainbow that was no surprise.
So I’m a bit torn on the score. For me, it could do with a bit of a nudge to keep it clear of the truly egregious Jive Bunny hits, “Star Trekkin’”, and one or two others. If forced to choose, I would listen to this again rather than Nick Berry. I don’t even know who would have bought it, and I’m glad that this is one UK export that never reached my homeland, but still…
On the other hand, I have to respect the near-universal loathing it inspires among you, and looking at the rest of the 1990s there won’t be many more opportunities to give a score of 1, so 1 it is.
Lamentable.
This marks the point at which my obsession with the charts began. I was seven and a half years old when this was #1, and even then I didn’t care for it; I much preferred Betty Boo’s ‘Where Are You Baby’ which has already been mentioned by Billy. Looking back on it now, even as someone who usually looks more favourably on novelty records than most this really is bottom-of-the-barrel stuff – no argument here with the score given to it by Tom.
MikeMCSG #62 – blimey, links to Hyde Grammar and Tameside on here as well? The thread concerning “that tosser” is going to be interesting!!
@34 yes, bocca juniors’ ‘raise’ is a fantastic record – a great blend of loose 1990 beats, stern 1980 vocals and slightly dodgy rapping.
i came rounds to timmy a bit after his double act with moustache twirling villain david van day in the celebrity jungle, but this is still a really, really bad record – it’s certainly no “biff baff boff”.
I don’t think I want to hear this, frankly, after reading the pained testimonies of those who have, but it has to be the worst #1 since “Young Girl” and that’s really saying something. At least with Deacon Blue I get to talk about Bacharach & David!
I will be clicking ’1′ at least twice more in 1990 personally.
Erm…whilst it’s undoubtedly a piece of throwaway rubbish I don’t quite get why this record has provoked such intense hatred. It’s hardly a work of evil (like the Jive Bunny singles), more just another holiday hit in the tradition of Y Viva Espana, Agadoo etc, a fleetingly amusing novelty that everyone looks back on with a certain embarrassment come October.
Anyway, the first couple of times I heard it use ‘ah-YEAH’ it made me smile. Wasn’t everybody completed bored of hearing that sample by summer ’90?
I object to [1] being the lowest possible mark >:(
Yes they were. But I still don’t see what makes Jive Bunny worse than the aforementioned naff holiday hits myself.
On the subject of the “oh YEAH” sample, I remember Mallett being interview on TV-AM by Lorraine Kelly around the time this was at number 1, and he seemed to claim credit for the YEAHing. Kelly left this uncorrected/unchallenged.
I can assure those of you who contemplated treating Mr Mallet to a sustained period of physical harm that you certainly had an ally in The Swede. I can recall an ancient discussion, surprisingly over a drink, in which myself and a couple of vassals discussed the most brutal way of sending Timmy to his ancestors. Tying him to a chair and forcing him to view the entire back catalogue of “Terry and June” won the vote. Wicked sods, were we not?
In #35 Billy said: “Weirdly, it’s even on Spotify.”
Let’s look at the context in which it appears. It appears twice, on compilations; I suppose the titles of these compilations indicate its current role, if any…
A) A 2003 album entitled “Party”. Verbatim from Spotify, it was sequenced as follows:
15 It’s Not Unusual – 2nd Studio Version / Tom Jones
16 Mamma Mia – Radio Version / A*Teens
17 Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini / Bombalurina
18 Dizzy / Vic Reeves, The Wonder Stuff
19 Oops Upside Your Head – Album Edit / The Gap Band
B) A 2006 3-CD compilation entitled “True Party”. Verbatim etc:
2-17 Fine Time / Cast
2-18 Shout / Lulu And The Luvvers
2-19 Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini – 7″ Version / Bombalurina
2-20 The Grease Mega-Mix / John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John
2-21 Dizzy / Vic Reeves, The Wonder Stuff
Track 2-10 on B) is Brian Hyland’s original “Sealed With a Kiss”, incidentally.
Cast! That can’t be anyone’s idea of True Party music, surely? Especially so long after the event as 2006.
*Slightly* weak I agree, but probably well-enough known for people to be happy to wait for the singalong moment: i DO believe nernernerner / i DO believe nernernerner.
Duh, I should really read the preceding comments before I post!
OK, I agree that Cast is a bizarre choice for a party album.
Re. Cast (I’m the same person as #84 btw) my curiousity was piqued enough to find out what the sequence of tracks was:
Nik Kershaw – Wouldn’t It Be Good
A* Teens – Mamma Mia
Cast – Fine Time
Lulu – Shout
I thought Cast might have been preceded by Supergrass or Blur’s Country House or something along those lines but no – no logic to that sequence at all.
Re#40- The woo-yeah sample isnt JB-its Lynn Collins albeit produced by Mr Brown. However Pump Up the Volume contains a sample from Superbad-there MUST be others though surely?
I dont have time to relisten to Bikini sadly as i will be dying in the next half-century or so…
No chances to discuss Cast on any of the Popular syndicate I don’t think – shall just note that I detested All Change the first time I heard it and loved it the second. I fear a third listen would compromise my neutrality.
@81 I would attend neither of those parties. If by some misfortune I found myself at either I would leave immediately, without any goodbyes, and contemplate terminating the freindship. Horrifying.
I think perhaps the title TRUE Party is meant to imply that previous definitions of Party have been lacking – in their reliance on concepts such as enjoyment and good music – but that this compilation is now offering revelations previously known only to initiates.
#28 – Wide Awake Club! Hence Wacaday, derived from the initials.
I have a strong and distinct memory of Giles Brandreth being one of the presenters of Wide Awake Club, but Wikipedia tells me this never actually happened. This has unsettled me somewhat.
Also: I liked Timmy Mallet at the time and thus was a thick kid (it’s strange, actually; there was a lot of kids TV that I couldn’t stand for being patronising, including things that I now recognise to be far superior, but I definitely enjoyed Wacaday. Although it did hurt me somewhat when I spent ages making a collage bird, sent it in for a competition they had, and it never got shown on TV even though a load of clearly far crappier ones did. From this experience I learned never to put any effort or hard work into anything ever again, and that’s a lesson that has stood me in good stead. I digress…), but I didn’t like this. It was a bit disquieting, actually. I put that down to being an 8 year old and having trouble processing the vague perviness of it.
I can’t work up any particularly strong feelings about it now, but I never really have any hate in me for the silly end of novelty songs even if I don’t like them.
Also also: I’d remembered this as being being credited to Timmy Mallet, artist-name-wise. If you’d said the word “Bombalurina” to me I wouldn’t have had even the foggiest idea what it might be.
So, what I’ve learned today is that most of my scant few memories of childhood are completely false. Fancy.
Yesterday, Giles Brandreth interviewed Larence (Felt/Denim/Go Kart Mozart) for the One Show. Today, he’s on Desert Island Discs. And now a mention on Popular? Cosmic, in a bad way.
NOW! watch: Mallett was sandwiched between Felly and Boo, Disc 2 running like this:
Pet Shop Boys : “So Hard”
Bass-O-Matic : “Fascinating Rhythm”
Soul II Soul feat. Kym Mazelle : “Missing You”
DNA feat. Suzanne Vega : “Tom’s Diner”
Sting : “Englishman in New York”
The Cure : “Close to Me”
Neneh Cherry : “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”
Blue Pearl : “Little Brother”
Kylie Minogue : “Step Back in Time”
Kim Appleby : “Don’t Worry”
Technotronic : “Megamix”
Bombalurina : “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”
Betty Boo : “Where Are You Baby?”
The Adventures Of Stevie V : “Dirty Cash (Money Talks)”
MC Hammer : “Have You Seen Her?”
Jimmy Somerville : “To Love Somebody”
wait a minute, lawrence from felt was on the one show? Being interview by giles brandreth? is there an explanation for this seemingly unlikely turn of events? next week, richard stilgoe grills miki berenyi.
That now a pretty interesting mix of the amazing and the absolutely dire and not much in between. I note that remarkably three people voted for this one in the relevant poptimists now poll, making it officially better than Tina Turner
#92 – Don’t be puzzled by it, I’ve found that you just need to wait twenty years and it’ll turn out to never have happened in the first place.
He’s a tricksy one, that Brandreth.
It was NOW! 18 btw
Lawrence/Brandreth face-off hasn’t run yet
86 – It is from a Lyn Collins record (It Takes Two, indeed), but I was have always (IE since learning it last year) heard that it’s actually JB’s voice being looped in that sample.
Ah well, one more horrifying ‘fact’ dies quickly – I can’t begrudge Pump Up The Volume for this, or indeed anything.
@35 – I have a feeling it’s a track which, while being only released a couple of years after this, didn’t top the charts until fairly recently.
*hides from bunny*
Suffice to say, I’ll be arguing against his stance on that one.
#97 No no don’t worry! I don’t especially like that track but forced exposure to it made me realise I didn’t hate it any more either. You’ll still find plenty to argue with, I’m sure.
The track I am thinking of is never likely to be re-released.
Re 19: Having finally watched the video again, I reckon that although notionally the girls have matching haircuts, it’s working on one of them – the one who looks like Emily Lloyd – whereas the other one’s hair is horribly over-bleached, over-permed and slightly too long. Can’t figure out which is Mrs Barlow, though.
#91 – sandwiched between Felly and Betty Boo? – there are worse things that could happen.
And fancy this thread hitting a century!
AHA~! I’m not under the illusion that anyone will care about this, but I’m so overcome with feelings of triumph that I feel the need to comment anyway.
The Brandreth-not-being-on-WAC was niggling away at me (if you think that’s sad then try living with it, as a wise man once said) and so I dug out the two spin-off paperbacks I’ve owned since being a young’in – “WAC snacks” and “WAC jokes”. Lord help me if “WAC Jokes” doesn’t have an alarmingly young Brandreth on the cover (alongside Tommy Boyd and two people I don’t remember named Arabella Warner and James Baker). He wields two feather dusters, and wears a hat with two plastic yellow flowers sticking out of the top. He smiles the smile of a “Deliverance” hillbilly, and the contrast between that and the panic-filled grins on the faces of the other three gives me some idea of what was really going on.
No picture, but still: http://www.shelfari.com/search/books?Keywords=0-552-54279-2
I feel like I’ve… I don’t know, maybe I’ve won. Have at you, Wikipedia.
If I’m right regarding the track I think Tom’s talking about, it’s a novelty song that’s coming up fairly soon, one that I actually quite like but I’ve gathered the impression is highly unpopular among this crowd…
ETA: Just to narrow that down a bit, the song I’m thinking of was only number one for 1 week.
#86: To be more specific the Lynn Collins record is called “Think”.
#91: MC Hammer : “Have You Seen Her?”
No, surely not that “Have You Seen Her?” Say it ain’t so.
wichita lineman at#44: another summer 1990 non-hit that should have been, was Daydreaming by Massive Attack.
@abaffledrepublic. daydreaming – wow, good one, but it was released at the end of the year so not on for the summer as such.
In part as a result of popular’s recent 1990 focus I’ve been on a My Bloody Valentine bender, tracking down all the EPs I never got around to hearing, etc.. Pretty damned good aren’t they? Questions for MBV mavens: 1. Did they ever play ‘Drive it all over me’ live back in the day? I’m guessing that they did and that MBV just don’t play it at all these days because in their maturity, as it were, they think it’s too much of a poppy/derivative outlier in their catalogue. But does anyone know if there’s an actual official story about this? (and, at any rate, what a song to never come back to! Some people almost have too much talent.)
2. That *is* Bilinda on the cover of the You made me realise EP, right? I’m pretty sure it is but I’ve never seen it confirmed. Does anyone know whether that shot apes any specific film image? I saw Chabrol’s (excellent) Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) for the first time last year and some of its imagery reminded me of the YMMR cover (and I’ve put the two things together in this vid if anyone’s interested). Anyone know whether MBV ever expressed any especial fondness for Chabrol or for the nouvelle vague more generally?
Billy Smart @ 55
Although I know of at least one of them who won’t entertain a mention of it on pain of disembowelment and defenestration.
Has anybody mentioned the fact that Bombalurina is the second nunber one act (after Mungo Jerry) to derive its name from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats? That’s the only interesting thing I have to say about this record
And possibly the only one not mentioned in ALW’s “Cats” musical.
(I think)
#106 and 107: Perhaps no other number ones, but T.S. Eliot gets his name into Dylan’s Desolation Row, Grinderman’s No Pussy Blues, Van Morrison’s Summertime in England, and no doubt quite a few others.
This seems to go with Butlins in Minehead as I worked there that summer only I was 20 something and it even sounded good at the time, didn’t realise it was Timmy Mallet until I saw TOTP on August 23 that year, it hasn’t stood the test of time.
#21 – If you thought the Bacharach and David EP was bad, you should see the blurb from their label’s record exec on the back cover – It’s vomit-inducing kiss-arsery of the highest order, so bad it has to be seen to be believed. Still it’s better than Bombalurina though, no matter how po-faced and up it’s own arse it is.
#91 – Highlights: “Fascinating Rhythm” and the almost completely overlooked “Little Brother”
Lowlights: “Itsy Bitsy” of course, “Missing You” I didn’t care how cool Soul II Soul were at the time, I found this record dull and tedious, and “Have You Seen Her?” which is almost as bad as Itsy Bitsy
Re the follow up: I know American cars are big, but this was before the days of stretch limos… How little were those seven little girls sitting on the back seat?
When I heard this mentioned on the chart rundown, having never heard of either the group or the disc, I thought the group name was ‘Bum Ballerina’ – and wrote it down that way in the notebook that I then recorded the Top 20 in every week.
Every time I saw Mr Mallett perform this ‘live’ on TV or heard him do it ‘live’ on the Radio 1 Roadshow, it was patently obvious that he was miming to the record. (I soon had to stop criticising him for doing that on the Roadshow when my heroines Voice of the Beehive did exactly the same later that week.)
I began to believe that maybe someone else was the real vocalist and Timmy just a frontman! In a year I came round to the more charitable theory that Timmy’s singing voice was rectified in the studio.
Still a uno from me though…
Now here’s a thing. I’ve just finished Nico: Songs They Never Play On The Radio, James Young’s memoir of his time on the road with Nico in the eighties. Despite occasional purple prose and a suspiciously meticulous memory for dialogue (particularly that of “Dr Demetrius”), t’s a brisk read and should put anybody with a brain off going into the music business for life. The overwhelming feeling, apart from waste, is one of the sheer tedium of being a drug addict; nothing happens, and then nothing happens again. And how it destroys relationships, trust and, ultimately, lives.
Early on in the book, though, she is due to play a local gig in Manchester and has to go on Piccadilly Radio to promote it. Apart from the incredulity of the spectacle of “Femme Fatale” being played at 8:45 in the morning – this would NOT happen now – the feeling is one of pity as the uncomprehending, eternally cheery DJ attempts to interview a woman who does not want to be asked about Berlin and the Velvet Underground for the millionth time. The spot ends uneasily, but Young describes the DJ as “young, about 25, fair hair, pastel-coloured spectacles.”
Would this DJ by any chance have been Mr Mallett?
Mallett born 1955, on Piccadilly until c.1983; Chris Evans born 1966, on Piccadilly c.1984-90. The latter seems slightly more likely although I wasn’t listening to the station then so don’t know when either of them would have had the breakfast show at the time (though judging by Mallett’s Wiki entry he only had an evening show there and got his TV break in the early 80s.)
This was early ’82 so no way could it have been Chris Evans unless he started very young.
Chris was TMallet’s assistant around then, so it could have been. But TMallet’s the more likely, yes.
Chris was also Frank Sidebottom’s driver for a while, I have a pic from around that time, and his glasses were black..
In 1990, Timmy Mallett got married, and hit Margaret Thatcher on the head with a sponge.
Only one of these events comes as a surprise.
Was it mentioned above that TV brainhunk Brian Cox also played a part in the Piccadilly Radio show? Jingle maker apparently. Well, Wiki says so.