Where Do You Go To My Lovely revisited: Peter Sarstedt meets an Essex Girl

How fascinating it was to watch a recent Top of the Pops nostalgia journey back to the 60s and 70s. No, not to find out how the Beeb would manage to airbrush Jimmy Savile out of history, but to see some of our best known musical performers in their innocent (?) youthful days, before indulgences took their toll and the cosmetic surgeons stepped in. Not forgetting some memorable performances of long forgotten songs.

One notable example, Peter Sarstedt. What a haircut. Bouffant does not do it justice. More like a crash helmet, or a bearskin from Royal Guardsmen's Surplus. Not that this should be taken in any way as a denigration of his performance of Where Do You Go to My Lovely, that immortal tale of a sophisticated continental jet setter who rose to the heights from humble origins.

Now just suppose that our performer had been transported forty years into the future, and found himself contemplating an entirely different subject for his lyrical tribute - an Essex Girl, one of the UK's finest. The song might have turned out something like this.

You talk like Denise Van Outen
And you dance nothing like Fred Astaire
Your clothes are all made by Primark
And there’s bling and fake pearls in your hair, yes there are

You live in a run down apartment
On a Brentwood council estate
Where you keep your R&B records
And you play them full blast when it’s late, yes you do

But where do you go to my chavling
When you've thrown up in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I won’t find much inside your head, no I won’t

I see you’ve no qualifications
From the bog standard school down the street
And the picture you knocked off from Poundland
Your lack of taste stands out a treat, yes it does

When you go on your summer vacation
You go to Club Med for the booze
With your carefully designed string bikini
You show off your frightful tattoos, on your back and on your legs.

And when the snow falls you'll party in Essex
With the others of the chav set
And you neck down your Bacardi Breezers
You spill them and get your tits wet, yes you do

But where do you go to my chavling
When you've thrown up in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I won’t find much inside your head, no I won’t

Your name is heard in low places
You know a baron from Tilbury Dock
He gave you a vajazzle for Christmas
And you keep it just for a shock, for a laugh, ha-ha-ha

They say that when you get married
It'll be on reality TV
And they’ll certainly know where you came from
So OK! will fund it for free, yes they will

But where do you go to my chavling
When you've thrown up in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I won’t find much inside your head, no I won’t

I remember the back streets of Harlow
Two teenagers dressed in fake tat
Both touched with a burning ambition
To get pregnant and a new council flat, yes they were

So look into my face, Chardonnay
And remember just who you are
Then go live your mad life forever
But I know you still bear the scars, deep inside, from your tattoos

I know where you go to my chavling
When you’ve thrown up in your bed
I know the thoughts that surround you
`Cause I can’t find much inside your head.