RIP Peter Sarstedt - and a Richard Littlejohn tribute

Farewell to Peter Sarstedt, the artist behind one of the most unlikely one hit wonders of the Sixties, combining acoustic guitar, accordion and the tale of a jet setter who rose from humble origins. There is no doubt that Where Do You Go To My Lovely will be a memorable legacy.

One jet setter who rose from less humble origins is of course our former Prime Minister Tony Blair. His claim to the contrary sits somewhat uneasily with the fact that his supposed football hero Jackie Milburn had retired long before Blair could have cheered him from the terraces at St James' Park. Likewise the public school education. But at least this has inspired Richard Littlejohn to portray Blair as the central character in a rewrite of the song, no doubt by way of tribute to Peter Sarstedt: -

You walk like George Dubya Bush does

In jeans ball-crushingly tight

You dance like Gordon Brown’s sidekick

On Strictly on Saturday nights.

(Yes, you do.)

You bought an overpriced mansion

In fashionable Connaught Square

Where you keep your Rolling Stones records

Even though you never go there.

(No, you don’t)

So where do you go to my lovely,

When you’re not in your Bayswater bed

Do you ever feel the slightest bit guilty

Over some of the things that you’ve said?

(Do you care?)…

Great. Make sure to read all the way to the end in the link if you want to find out where RL knows the lovely Blair goes to. But I still think that my Essex Girl version of the song from September 2013 is better by far: -

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.

Craven Conflict: a pre-Christmas bargain

For the run up to Christmas, Craven Conflict is going to be half price on the Kindle Countdown deal.

If you're searching for a good legal suspense drama, and you've already read every one of John Grisham's novels, or if you'd rather read something set in the UK, look no further.

Here's the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Craven-Conflict-David-Cooper-ebook/dp/B015GGRUBE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1482277204&sr=1-1&keywords=craven+conflict

Yellowstone National Park: a near near death experience

No, that’s not a clerical error. All will be revealed shortly. But let’s set the scene first.

Yellowstone National Park is dangerous. An unwary visitor could be eaten by a bear. Or fatally gored by a bison. There are plenty of opportunities to plunge to inadvertent doom from high places, such as the lava terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs or the cliff edges at the Park’s own Grand Canyon. And of course there is the option for a scorcher of a demise via the endless supply of boiling water and steam from the geysers, not forgetting the volcanic hot spots lurking beneath the surface.

But it would be a travesty to think of Yellowstone as Beelzebub’s Backyard in all but name. For the thousands of sensible visitors who take the trouble to make the journey to the far north west corner of Wyoming, it’s a sightseeing spectacular. Few would need to be told that it is inadvisable to step too close to a wild animal or a steep drop. And for anyone not quite tuned into the risks involved in straying off limits on a geyser basin, where the danger is sometimes more latent than visible, the boardwalks and their signs ought to bring the point home beyond all reasonable doubt.

Or so we thought…

It did not take long to realise, on our first full day in the park, that the “selfie” craze had arrived on an industrial scale. I will simply observe that the vast majority of its perpetrators were tourists for whom English would not have been their first language, and leave it at that. What made it so bizarre in a place like Yellowstone, as they poured off the coaches and homed in on the viewpoints with their weapons of mass observation primed for attack, is the plentiful supply of scenery that surely cries out for silent admiration and the occasional well judged photo to preserve the memory. Ideally, with as little human presence in the frame as possible. How much true enjoyment of an adventurous holiday destination can seriously be preserved in hundreds of grinning face smartphone shots is one of those impossible conundrums. “This is one of me, my other half, and a few more of my friends at Yellowstone National Park – no idea what that steamy thing is behind me…”

So there we were in the Upper Geyser Basin, heading off on a late afternoon walk that began on the boardwalks reaching out from the Old Faithful Inn, hoping to reach Morning Glory Pool and return before the daylight ran out. On the far side of the Firehole River, looking back towards the Inn and the eponymous geyser, the photo opportunities are plentiful. A point that had clearly not been lost on the group of overseas visitors whom we walked past, as they continued their quest to crowd as much human flesh as possible into their smartphone screens without completely losing all of the grey mist and the rocky thermal crust. What was that feature in their immediate foreground, with the Inn and the most famous of the geysers distantly visible? Oh yes, Dragon Spring, how very…

But what on earth? Is that really one of them marching out over the crust, smartphone in hand, towards a crater that has the unmistakable look of a geyser outlet or a thermal pool? Is he seriously glancing back to make sure his companions are framing him in a good shot? And are they making moves to step off the boardwalk too? Yes, yes and yes…

What happened next is something of a blur. I can just about recall that after the first few seconds of utter disbelief, we combined frenzied gestures and forceful exhortations to stop them in their tracks and persuade them to get back on the boardwalk with a degree of considerable alacrity. Whatever damage their feet may have inflicted on thousand year old fragile thermal crust in the process, they made it. In a later Facebook post, I noted that “DANGEROUS!” ought now to have become part of the main culprit’s limited knowledge of the English language. My wife had the last word: “Dangerous wasn’t the only thing you shouted.”

Following a few nods and mutterings that we took to be thanks, we left it at that and decided to put as much distance between us and them as possible. Had there been a convenient “Report A Blissfully Ignorant Suicidal Moron” hotline to the Park Rangers within easy reach, we would have made full use. But with a citizens’ arrest not being a sensible option (is this available on US soil for one foreign visitor to carry out on another?), we had little choice other than to draw a line under our near near death experience – now you’ll get it – and move on. It was at least well worth then making the trek out to Morning Glory Pool before the blizzards set to work on the way back to the Inn.

To conclude on a sober note and dispel any suggestion of exaggeration, here’s a link to a June 2016 fatality at the Norris Geyser Basin, another thermal wonderland not far from Old Faithful. Key sentence: “Efforts to recover the body…..were suspended…..after rangers determined there were no remains left in the hot spring.”

Craven Conflict: free download today

That's right - an end of summer promotion, for one day ahead of the Bank Holiday. Use the links on the right for Amazon, or read the prologue first via the page links above.

Craven Conflict: free promotion on Saturday 27 August

Would you like a free download of Craven Conflict? For one day only, on Saturday 27 August, you have the chance to obtain one. Head over to Amazon - the links are on the right.

Nashville Cast, Black Sabbath, and online touts

Tuesday night’s Nashville Cast performance at Birmingham Symphony Hall was a great show. All credit to cast members Scarlett, Will, Deacon and Gunnar – otherwise Clare Bowen, Chris Carmack, Charles Esten and Sam Palladio – for taking the risk of arranging a UK tour based on a US TV series, all the more so when the two female leads Rayna and Juliette were not involved. The Birmingham show was a sell out.


But we almost didn’t go. Having only found out about the tour late in the day, when it was sold out, the only tickets available were from secondary sources (OK, let’s not beat about the bush, from online touts) at double and in one case treble their face value. No chance. Only the late availability of two unbelievably good tickets, at face value from the box office, meant we’d see the show after all.


Here’s another example of online touting in practice. In today’s Birmingham Mail, it is reported that even before tickets for the final Black Sabbath tour went on general release, they were already in the hands of online touts at inflated prices. No fault of the band, but their reputation will suffer as a result.


A few thoughts. The touts’ purchase of these tickets does not involve any adding of value to them. Not a penny of the mark-up finds its way back to the artists. And the subject matter of the tickets – an audio visual experience from a live concert on a specific date – is of no interest to the touts, but of great interest to genuine fans, who would not find comparable pleasure in a Justin Bieber concert, a Birmingham City home match or a Shakespeare play if they were unwilling to pay the touts’ prices.


Legislation may be the answer. Here’s a link to a petition from Royal Blood’s site with their own comments. But is it really beyond the ingenuity of the artists, their promoters and the venue owners to put a stop to online touting of their own initiative? Surely there is scope to print the purchaser’s name on show tickets and carry out random ID checks at the venue? And in the event that a purchaser was genuinely unable to go to the show, surely the artists would be happy to reimburse the venue for any unsold returns, if it meant that they were not tarred with the same brush as the online touts?


Come on, artists, get thinking. If it’s quick and easy in the digital age for independent authors to cut out the middlemen that stand between them and book publication, can’t you find a way to make online touts history?

EU Referendum: a hymn for Brexit

“Mighty EU, flexing muscles, trampling on democracy
Lording o’er us all from Brussels, bastion of bureaucracy
Yours are clouds of sinful madness, driving precious hope away
Giving such unending badness - regulate and make us pay!”

Well, that’s the first verse of a possible Brexit anthem. Three more to follow. And you might already have worked out the musical inspiration. Scroll down to the end for the rest now if you wish. But all good things come to those who wait. Let’s have a quick history lesson first.

The European Union’s official anthem is Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy”, adopted as such in 1972. But only the music. Why no lyrics? Because, as is confirmed on the EU’s official website, “In the universal language of music, this anthem expresses the European ideals of freedom, peace and solidarity.” Oh, what a relief. Just imagine having to write an appropriate set of lyrics that could in turn be rendered into meaningful and thematic rhyming couplets just as easily in Finnish as in Portuguese.

As far as the German and English speaking worlds are concerned, there are already lyrics available. If we go all the way back to 1785, we will find the work of Friedrich Schiller titled “An die Freude”, which begins ‘Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium‘. Moving onwards to 1907, the American author and clergyman Henry van Dyke was evidently so moved by a visit to the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts that he wrote what came to be described as one of the most joyous expressions of hymn lyrics in the English language. His first verse (the link gives the other three): -

“Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flow'rs before Thee, opening to the Sun above,
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness, drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!”

So how, we may ask, could those cheeky Eurocrats have had the brass neck to hijack such an uplifting composition, both in Beethoven’s music and van Dyke’s lyrics, and pass it off as the theme tune for their corrupt and ramshackle institution?

Let’s not get mad, though, let’s get even. We need to mark the occasion when those of us under the age of 60 finally heard that we would be given a chance to vote on UK membership of what was then the European Economic Community and what has now become the European Union. The Brexit campaign may be in need of an anthem, all the more so if it might now help unite the Leave factions against the common enemy. So why not take Ode to Joy and treat it to a good humoured and light hearted adaptation, as closely to van Dyke’s original as possible, for this very purpose?

“Mighty EU, flexing muscles, trampling on democracy
Lording o’er us all from Brussels, bastion of bureaucracy
Yours are clouds of sinful madness, driving precious hope away
Giving such unending badness - regulate and make us pay!

Lobbyists with joy surround thee, auditors reject thy books
Cash rich fonctionnaires around thee, brushing off our helpless looks
London, Dublin, Copenhagen, Athens desperate to be free
Let’s bring on this referendum, cast this deadweight corpse of thee!

Thou art taking and forsaking, ever cursing, ever cursed
Wellspring of fake global warming, open borders, it gets worse
Thou our Emperor, Jean Claude Juncker – not much choice, it might be Blair –
You just make us loathe each other, leaving us in dark despair!

Voters, join the rising chorus, smash that cursed ring of stars
Stop the EU reigning o’er us, bureaucrats and commissars
Ever singing, let’s march onward, free ourselves from Brussels strife
Time to lead the UK sunward – Brexit now for joyful life!”