Do you remember the one with the Dambusters?

For some inexplicable reason, possibly relating to the deluge of old school photographs that are currently finding their wicked little ways onto Facebook, today I started to reminisce about really bad old music.

It may also have been due to the discussion in the office as to how London is possibly going to outdo Beijing in the Olympic Opening Ceremony and ideas as to what the London ceremony might consist of.

The Hairless suggested:

"I am thinking of Charlie riding in all dolled up in his medals and feathered hat upon his faithful steed Camilla mumbling "I'm here Mummy...where is the fireplace that needs lighting?" sounds like the best option."

Sanchez preferred a cockney theme:

"I can see Chaz and Dave getting a good cockney knees up going and the pearly king and queens performing a dance.

"Then we will bring on an army of chavs to drink 5 pints of stella and have a fight.

"I think the finale will involve the Queen waving her hand as usual.

"Quality...."

I liked the cockney theme but went for something a bit grander:

"I think there'll be a million morris dancers prancing around the stadium with their handkerchiefs and sticks, jangling their bells, followed by a massive 500 metre may pole with lots of coloured ribbons and more prancing around.

"Then about half a million cockneys, accompanied by pearly kings and queens and the odd beefeater, will march in and do the lambeth walk. Then we'll bring in a huge replica of the spanish armada, light torches all around the stadium to signify the warning of the armada's approach, then set the ships of the armada on fire (and they'll be full of fireworks so there'll be a massive firework display... in fact... we might even have a few of them sail up the Thames just to be a bit beyond-the-stadium, like in Beijing) and use that to light the torch before flying off to bomb a German factory."

Before I go on, can I please point out that I do not advocate the bombing of anything German and that reference was meant to be purely tongue in cheek. However, Sanchez picked it up and suggested a Spitfire flyover and some tribute to the Dambusters, to which I recommended getting all of the athletes to dambust around the stadium on their march, to the Dambusters music, arms outstretched pretending to be aeroplanes, or fingers round their eyes as goggles.

This, of course, is what triggered the old memory of the song that used to always get played at parties where everyone did the actions and sang along to the Dambusters theme. I got confused and distracted at first by the Superman song (remember that one? Comb your hair, spray, Superman!!) but eventually I identified the Dambuster one as being The Music Man. Both were recorded by Black Lace to annoy people at parties for the duration of the eighties and most of the nineties. And so, for your delight and delectation, here are some awful YouTube versions of both. Reminisce to your heart's desire.

Randoms doing the Superman song at work:



Black Lace sing Music Man on Top of the Pops or something. Bad copy but it's the best I could do. Dambusters are about 2 minutes 50 seconds in for those that can't bear to watch the whole thing.



And just for a laugh, and to show I'm not proud, here's one of the old photos a school friend put onto Facebook, depicting me and my good friend Bev, her with classic poodle perm and me with scary Michael Jackson-style white-face make-up: