Further to the mystery (Diary, yesterday) of why “The Irish Times” is mentioned in a 2015 song by the London band Real Lies, amid lyrics that are otherwise about that city’s edgy nightlife, my colleague Brian Boyd has offered possible enlightenment.
“I believe [the writer is] talking about a pub in London called The Irish Times, which is now closed,” he suggests.
Aha. That would make more sense – and I should have guessed. Because whatever about being name-checked in songs, something in which (as also noted yesterday) it lags well behind the New York Times and other titles, this newspaper must be unique in the world for the number of pubs it has named after it.
They span the globe, from the Americas, via mainland Europe, to East Asia.
Setting the Bar High – Frank McNally on pubs called The Irish Times (and more songs about newspapers)
The Times they are a-name-checking – Frank McNally on songs about newspapers
Lexicographer at Large – Frank McNally on Dinneen’s Dictionary and the Dáil row about unparliamentary Irish
For Whom the Bells Toll – Frank McNally on the ups and downs of “sound baths”
It is an empire on which the sun never sets.
Most respectable newspapers have a network of overseas bureaus. This one is no exception. But a journalist could honestly claim on a CV to have spent periods at The Irish Times in Antwerp, Bologna, Prague, Tokyo, Melbourne, San Francisco, etc, and nobody need know he was only drinking beer.
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Getting back to the subject of newspapers being mentioned in song, another colleague reminds me of The Man from the Daily Mail.
Middle England’s favourite tabloid has been the target for many a lyricist, including Billy Bragg and Morrissey. But the father of this tradition may have been Sean O’Casey, who in the above-named ballad of 1918, imagined a Mail reporter at large here, spying sedition everywhere:
“Oh Ireland is a very funny place sir/It’s a strange and troubled land/And the Irish are a very funny race sir/Every woman’s in Cumann na mBan/Every doggie’s got a tri-coloured ribbon/Tied firmly to its tail/And it wouldn’t be surprising if there’d be another Rising/Said the man from the Daily Mail.”
The Sun has inspired more than a few songs too. My favourite is from the Mancunian punk poet John Cooper Clarke, who in Suspended Sentence, summarised the publication’s obsessions, circa 1978:
“Read the paper – humdrum/Henley Regatta – page one/Eat, die – ho hum/Page three – big bum/Giving a lunatic a loaded gun/He walks – others run/Thirty dead – no fun . . . Sit right down, write a letter to the Sun/Say ‘Bring back hanging, for everyone.”
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It doesn’t mention any specific media title but T.S.M.N.W.A. by Loudon Wainright III, is one of the funnier songs about journalism.
The letters stand for “They Spelled My Name Wrong Again”, and the lyrics are a cry from the heart of a man who suffers this a lot, apparently:
“They spelled my name wring again/With an E between the D and the N/Some dope didn’t know, it should be an O/They spelled my name wrong again/Why in God’s name can’t they check?/It’s a pain in the ass and the neck/Not a capital crime, but it’s the umpteenth time/Why in God’s name can’t they check?”
As with lampooning the Daily Mail in general, complaining about newspapers misspelling names is a long tradition too.
Wainwright is following in the footsteps of James Joyce, no less, who in Ulysses has Leopold Bloom attend the funeral of Paddy Dignam and then read the evening paper with disgust to find himself listed among the mourners as “L. Boom”.
As least the songwriter’s misspellers have some excuse. On which note, Wainwright’s ballad also includes the verse: “My parents should shoulder some blame/For calling their kid a strange name/Spell it with me friends, L-O-U-D-O-N/My parents should shoulder some blame.”
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On foot of a recent column about the Anglo-German composer Carl Hardebeck, who went native in this country as the “Bard of Belfast”, Mícheál McMullin writes with inherited memories from a childhood in that city, when Hardebeck still loomed large.
These include the composer’s alleged habit, when judging at the Feis Bhéal Feirste, to cut performers off after a few notes if he didn’t like them. Harsh as it sounds, this proved quite a draw in Belfast, where his adjudications became a big crowd puller.
Once, says Mícheál, “a competitor was stopped after the [opening] words Sé Fath Mo Bhuartha (I don’t think he got to the last syllable of bhuartha) with Hardebeck calling out in dreadful Irish – ‘Is go Leor!’ (‘Enough!’) The audience loved it.”
Micheál also recalls that Hardebeck was credited in Belfast as the originator of the theory that the Irish had given bagpipes to the Scots as a present but the Scots hadn’t got the joke yet. I suspect, somehow, there are other claimants to that one.
While I’m on the subject, and as mentioned in the original column, it was a relative of Hardebeck, Zef Klinkenbergh, who prompted me to write about him. But in writing, like the reporter at Paddy Dignam’s funeral, I somehow dropped the “l” in Zef’s surname.
Zef didn’t complain, as it happens. Even so, I hereby apologise for misspelling him. Having said which, I also think the parents should shoulder some blame.
