A while back I ran a poll. Footie songs
Cos In-ger-land is out, innit, I've closed the poll and hereby give you the results...
Twenty-three votes were cast. Not one person voted for England's dire offerings of 1970 "Back Home" and 1982 "This Time (We'll Get It Right)", which is a great relief. I was shocked that only I voted for Scotland's epoch-making We Have A Dream. Where are all the Scots?* Not even one pointed out my (deliberate) mistake in saying Anglo-centric. It's a bloody good song. I have it on vinyl. Thankfully, no one voted for Chicken Song, although you were also too polite to say it's not actually a football song.
I'm surprised Nessun Dorma got so many votes. From footie fans or opera fans, or both? I hate it. I hate it with a vengeance. Nothing will induce me to go to Turandot because of this horrible horrible aria.
But I'm not surprised that Three Lions won the vote. Anthemic, the apogee of Britpop, everyone can sing along, dance along. And it encapsulates a mood. We will always hark back to 66. Forty years of hurt. But I would have put my money on Vindaloo winning. Yanks Megan and Phil asked, puzzled, in 1998 "Why's the England World Cup song called Vindaloo?" and quick as a flash someone, almost certainly John, responded "Because they couldn't think of anything that rhymes with Chicken Tikka Masala." I suppose it lost votes because it was sung by some very annoying people. But then, Three Lions has Frank Skinner on it.
So, to end this post, I have only one thing to say:
Hold a chicken in the air, stick a deck-chair up your nose
Buy a Jumbo-Jet, and then bury all your clothes
Paint your left knee green, then extract your wisdom teeth
Form a string quartet, and pretend your name is Keith.Skin yourself alive, learn to speak arapaho
Climb inside a dog, and behead an Eskimo
Eat a Renault 4, wear salami in your ears
Casserole your gran, disembowel yourself with spears
* Sulking? Never mind, dears. You tried. There's always Euro 2008 to look forward to. Never know, you might qualify...
