Virgin Radio in Italy has an occasional feature called rock in translation. They select a ‘classic’ track from yesteryear and render the lyrics into Italian. The words are not sung but spoken so become a narrative prose which may render the gist more intelligible for non-English speakers but, in the process, saps the energy out of the tunes and neutralises tricky innuendos. For some reason it put me in mind of a sketch by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore on ‘Not Only But Also’ which I was pleased to find had been posted on You Tube: