Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)
Jasper Carrott – Funky Moped b/w Magic Roundabout (Epic, 1975)
Confession time.
I could pretend that my singles box is full of undisputed classics but , as I am committed to being honest in this blog, I have to come clean and admit that I paid good money for this awful record.
It is one of the most embarrassing vinyl items in my collection.
Not that I have anything against Jasper Carrott particularly – I actually think he’s a decent and moderately funny human being but there is no denying that the A side has zero musical merit and the B side is a pretty lame sketch that passed for risqué humour in the mid 1970s.
On his official website, Carrott describes himself immodestly as “Britain’s best-loved comedian” which may have been true three decades ago but doesn’t hold much water these days. He was/is a comic in the Frank Skinner tradition and it’s no coincidence that both come from the English Midlands. Carrott is from Birmingham and is a ‘Brummie‘ through and through. His humour is strictly culture bound to the point that American audiences would likely as not be bemused by his limey jokes. His jokes revolve around domestic observations – at home, out shopping, at the soccer match etc.
The B side of this single is the reason it reached the charts. This comprises a sketch recorded live which ridicules the cult kids TV stop-motion animation which, at the peak of its popularity, was shown at the fag-end of the children’s daily programmes at 5.45pm immediately before the early evening news. This slot meant that a higher proportion of adults would watch it too.
Carrott takes the piss out of the repetitive and simplistic dialogue and invents a more mature storyline in which the characters (Dougal the dog, Dylan the hippy rabbit and Zebedee the annoying bouncing thing) speculate on the “horizontal pleasures” of the show’s female protagonist /feminist icon “I wonder if Florence is a virgin” said Dougall , “Drops’em for certain” said Dylan.
All of this was far too explicit for the paternalistic BBC who banned it from being broadcast, thus ensuring a word of mouth success. This was probably a pre-planned strategy on the part of Carrott and producer Jeff Lynne (of Electric Light Orchestra fame).
This would be the only excuse for the seriously irritating novelty ‘A-side’ – Funky Moped, written bizarrely by an American , Chris Rhomann. This was catchy and innocuous enough to get airplay and to ensure Carrott could perform it on Top of the Pops. The song tells the tale of a small town loser who resolves to challenge the local motorcycle ‘creep’ who steals his girl as soon as the front mudguard of his moped is fixed.
They don’t make ’em like this anymore – thank God!
