The most poignant protest song from the 1980s was written by Elvis Costello – about the Falklands War – or the War of Thatcher’s Face as I like to call it.

Shipbuilding was a minor hit for former Soft Machine member Robert Wyatt – wheelchair and all. Wyatt had been paralysed after a fall from a window. When he had a 1970s hit with I’m A Believer (more famously a hit for The Monkees) the producer of Top of the Pops is supposed to have said the wheelchair was, “not suitable for family viewing.” Wyatt “lost his rag but not the wheelchair.”

Like Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart’s Last Train to Clarksville – also recorded by The Monkees – the lyric of Shipbuilding is subtle, not overtly stating its theme.

Robert Wyatt: Shipbuilding

I was of course familiar with the cover of this that was a hit for The Hollies in 1964 (see this video of them playing/miming in what looks like the first Top of the Pops studio.)

I hadn’t heard the co-composer Doris Troy’s original version until recently. Something struck me about it immediately. Isn’t this reggae before reggae was invented?

Doris Troy: Just One Look

I see BBC Director General George Entwistle has been “grilled” by MPs over the Jimmy Savile allegations.

While Savile’s activities ought to be investigated and the truth brought to light I suspect that similar failings of oversight to those the BBC is being charged with would have been present in any large organisation during the times concerned. The mechanisms were not in place then and neither was the awareness.

Granted, the presence of teenage girls at the average Top of the Pops recording was likely to be higher than at other places. These girls (possibly some boys too) were moreover likely to be starry-eyed, but the same would also have been true backstage at any rock gig; and probably still is.

So why the focus on the BBC? It was not only there that Savile is alleged to have acted predatorily or carried out abuse.

I look forward to MPs smilarly “grilling” the bosses at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Leeds General, Broadmoor and at the various children’s homes he was given privileged access to – all of whom arguably had a greater duty of care to those on or in their premises than had the BBC – and for that questioning to be given similar prominence in news reports.

It is sickening to realise that Savile’s volunteering to “help” at these hospitals and homes and also his charity work may have been undertaken – most likely was – precisely as a means of gaining access to vulnerable people.

This affair should not be a stick with which to beat the BBC but a way to ensure that victims of predatory sexual behaviour and of abuse can be encouraged to come forward – and be listened to when they do and for those in charge of vulnerable individuals to be much more careful about to whom they grant access to their in their care.

You may have noticed on the clip from 1975 of The Sweet’s Action I posted a week or so back that at no 27 on the charts that week was a duo called Windsor Davies and Don Estelle.

The song concerned was Whispering Grass and since the act featured someone dressed up as a sergeant-major and a diminutive soldier in a solar topee it would seem to be one of the unlikelier hits of that – or any – year. The song, though, reached number one and stemmed of course from a TV show; the sitcom, It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum. Unlike Dad’s Army, with whom it shared the writing team of Jimmy Perry and David Croft, It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum does not benefit from constant repeats but mention it to anyone who watched British television in the 1970s and they’ll be able to reel off the characters’ names instantly (or the major ones anyway.)

The show featured:-
Bearer Rangi Ram
Gunner (later Bombardier) Beaumont, aka Gloria.
Sergeant-major Williams, “Shuuuuut Uuuuup!”
Gunner Parkin, aka Parky. (“You’ve a fine pair of shoulders there, boy. Show ’em off. Show ’em off.”)
Mr Lah-di-dah Gunner Graham, aka Paderewski.
Gunner Sugden, aka Lofty.
Colonel Reynolds.
Captain Ashwood.
Char Wallah Mohammed.
Punkah Wallah Rumzan.
Gunner Mackintosh, aka Atlas.
Gunner Clark, aka Nobby.
Gunner Evans, aka Nosher.
And from the first few series, Bombardier Solomons, aka Solly.

It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum was an ensemble comedy on the usual Perry and Croft lines (not only Dad’s Army but also Hi-de-Hi and You Rang M’Lord; Croft also co-wrote ‘Allo ‘Allo) and featured the (mis)adventures of a Royal Artillery Concert Party in the Far East during the Second World War.

The casting of Michael Bates as Rangi was criticised even at the time as people felt an Indian actor would have been more appropriate. Yet Michael Bates was born in India – and spoke Hindi before he learned English – and was well versed in Indian culture. The paucity of Indian actors in Britain at the time is shown by the few who regularly turn up in bit parts: some actors playing several different characters over the show’s eight series.

That the show has not been repeated ad nauseam in the way that Dad’s Army has is perhaps due to the fact that it is now held to be racist, or at least non-pc. Indeed even as late as April of this year BBC bosses have decided that the show will never be re-run for that reason. Yet given its setting (Deolali, India, 1945, and later up the jungle in Burma) racist language or attitudes are hardly to be wondered at.

The 1940s were not pc. The Raj was not pc. Quite how this supposedly excessive racism can be squared with the fact that the British are uniformly ineffectual – the officers are idiots, the concert performers woeful except for the singing of Gunner Sugden, the sergeant-major is a bit thick and continually frustrated in his efforts to make his charges soldierly – while the Indians, especially Rangi and the Punkah Wallah, who has perhaps the best lines in the show (most contributed by Dino Shafeek who played the Char Wallah) are obviously more intelligent and frequently get the better of their colonial masters, is difficult to fathom.

An irony here is that one of the original performers of Whispering Grass was the group The Inkspots whose name is itself arguably racist from today’s perspective.

Another factor in the long, and now seemingly permanent, absence of the series from the small screen may be that sergeant-major Williams frequently refers to the concert party under his charge as “nancy boys” or “poofs,” mouthing this last in the closing sequence and, from series 3 on, even in the opening titles. Again, a sergeant-major in 1945 would undoubtedly have done this. To represent it is only being true to the historical record.

Confession time. The good lady and I ordered the full series set of DVDs of It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum as a Christmas present to ourselves and are steadily working our way through it. We’ve reached series 6. I have to say it’s still funny.

If you want to check them out various excerpts from the show are available on You Tube.

Anyway, here are the said Windsor Davies and Don Estelle from the Christmas Top of the Pops of 1975.

Sing, Lofty!

Windsor Davies and Don Estelle: Whispering Grass