I have had many e-mails from people trying to find out where I have been over the last couple of months. Well it is a strange tale, and stranger than even the one of the Topographic Oceans that Yes punted out to their fans in the seventies to see if drug addled loons really would buy anything. The answer they found was – well, the clue is in their name.
It all started three months ago, as i was supping a gin and tonic in The Reform Club. I had become a member a few months before when it became clear that this fuddy duddy institution was most notable for having a complete and absolute no music policy. As such I thought it an ideal place to invite my editor Mr Tom Ewing, Lord of Tooting (or Lord Tooty as I like to call him). I knew this silence would annoy him, and certainly after two drinks his whiskers were bristling with the quiet.
“Tanya,” he said to me, in a somewhat overfamiliar manner. “Do you not think that I Hate Music has gone stale?”
“Stale,” I replied. “Why there is more relevance in a single sentence of my writing than any homily about Tellytubbies STHLM you could summon up. I beleive you have started your own column about number ones. What is it called.”
“Popular.” He said. I laughed at its very name. “And that Teddybears STHLM joke is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. Why any grandmother could make a joke of such limited wit and perception.
“Do you not realise that for thousands of devoted followers around the world I am a beacon of sanity in this otherwise benighted music mad world?” I said.
“Are you going to use that to make yet another pop at Gary Jules? Or Tears For Fears?”
“Tears For Their Bleeding, salt rubbed wounds when I finish with them.”
He shook his head in a slightly paternalistic and patronising manner that comes to all men of his class, breeding and background.
“Dear Tanya. You were once an entertaining novelty, but the act grows stale.”
“Act!” I exploded upon him making some of the older members of the Reform Club spill their brandies (and enquire after my moniker). “This is a serious campaign for me. How dare you belittle my lifes work. Why I’ll show you, I will travel the world gathering my followers together to prove this point.”
“Travel the world. Pshaw! You know as well as I do that in eighty days time the Bombay Sapphire 20 Botantical Ten Year Special Reserve is being unleashed, and frankly I cannot imagine you hot footing through the jungles of Borneo whilst the finest gin known the man goes a wasting.”
“Eighty days you say. I think i could easily circumnavigate the globe via the medium of lousy song in such a time.”
“Cannot be done,” he parrotted. “Cannot be done. There aren’t that many geography and transport based songs which are that bad.”
“What do you bet me, Lord Tooty.”
“Why, I bet you editorship of Freakytrigger, the most important cultural hub of blogs on the Interweb.”
“Well in eighty days, I will be back here at the tick of,” I checked the giant clock in the Reform. “The stroke of Seven O’Clock to receive the keys to Freakytrigger.”
At which point I ordered another swift double Gin, downed it and hot footed it back to my abode, to make haste on my record breaking journey around the world. I shall keep you, dear reader, up to date with excerpts from my diary as this trip, around the world, in eighty lousy tunes progresses.