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<\/a><\/p>\nBowler Hat & Leather Boots<\/strong> (El Records ACMEM 261CD)<\/em><\/p>\n Lovers of the strange, the offbeat and the plain daft will have a laff riot this CD compilation from El Records.<\/p>\n Opening with polymath George Melly enthusiastically rolling his \u2018r\u2019s around the surrealist poem, \u2019Sounds that saved my life\u2019, it perhaps goes some way to preparing the listener for the high pitched, infant shrieking of Hayley Mills \u2018Let\u2019s Get Together\u2019, her stab at pop stardom from 1961, although the jaunty 30\u2019s pastiche of \u2018Johnny Jingo\u2019 is more tolerable.<\/p>\n Leslie Phillips\u2019 ever-suggestive voice considerably helps the otherwise tepid comedy song \u2018The Navy Lark\u2019. Those with a taste for the non-PC possibilities of sultry belles with foreign accents will chuckle at Elke Sommer\u2019s \u2018Be Not Notty\u2019, a precursor to more funny foreigners later on in this CD.<\/p>\n Those of us who thought that Oliver Reed\u2019s singing career was confined to his foghorn vocal in Ken Russell\u2019s \u2018Tommy\u2019 were surprised to hear Olly delivering some early Brit Rock and Roll in \u2018The Wild One\u2019, teen schlock in \u2018Lonely For a Girl\u2019 and even some overheated romance in \u2018Ecstasy\u2019. The music world\u2019s loss was obviously the acting world\u2019s gain.<\/p>\n Which neatly brings us to the contributions of everyone\u2019s favourite camp Uncle, Dirk Bogarde. Those sons of fun at Decca Records came up with what was thought to be a sure fire winner; today\u2019s hot thesp reading out the lyrics of high quality popular songs; you know, proper music, Cole Porter, Richard Rogers, none of that awful Rock and Roll stuff, supported by suitably syrupy strings. So recline in your Eames chair, put your feet up on the matching ottoman, a dry martini in your hand, and listen to these softly spoken renditions of \u2018You Go To My Head\u2019 , \u2018Just one Of Those Things\u2019 and others. Sleeve notes are particularly enlightening here; if Dirk were still alive, he\u2019d undoubtedly block the reissue by any means necessary.<\/p>\n Lovers of traditional cockney music hall will get a kick out of Norman Wisdom\u2019s lament on London\u2019s changing skyline and social habits, \u2018Yer gotta get aht\u2019, closely followed by Anthony Newley\u2019s \u2018That Noise\u2019, a cheery nonsense song with a hint of vulgarity that some readers might remember, slipped under the rabbit proof fence on its many wireless airings. Newley\u2019s ground breaking TV show, \u2018Gurney Slade\u2019 is here represented by the show\u2019s instrumental theme, with its metronomic beat and meandering flute melody, a much welcomed bargain in this very musical Pound Shop.<\/p>\n The many wandering, strangulated voices of Kenneth Williams considerably add to \u2018Lost Art\u2019 and \u2018Peace\u2019, however briefly, followed by the truly baffling decision to let Robert Mitchum loose on the creditable calypso, \u2018What is this generation coming to?\u2019, in the middle of an otherwise impeccable film career. (Where\u2019s Lance Percival when you need him?)<\/p>\n If, like me, you had to suffer the endless sentimental doggerel of Sir John Betjeman, all for a largely worthless English Lit O\u2019 Level, may have their mind changed by Betj reading his \u2018The arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel\u2019, together with an anecdote about one of the major characters in this melodrama.<\/p>\n Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren\u2019s \u2018Bangers & Mash\u2019 and \u2018Bing Bang Bong\u2019 mark a return to the \u2018foreign accents for laughs\u2019 section, but I defy you not to enjoy them for their wit and verve. In case you\u2019re missing the silver strings and the velvet voice, Ian Carmichael is on hand to whip up a \u2018Lemon Twist\u2019, complete with bar-side sound effects.<\/p>\n Think of those great duets of the past; Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes; they all pale into insignificance next to the immortal pairing of Frankie Howerd and Margaret Rutherford performing \u2018All\u2019s Going Well\u2019, an hilarious vignette of disaster at the ancestral pile, as reported to the lady dowager by her old, wrinkled retainer.<\/p>\n The satirists are represented here by the cast of \u2018Beyond the Fringe\u2019 performing a couple of high camp routines whose vocal mannerisms alone would have raised hackles only a few years ago, in some uptight circles, following a pleasant enough tune, \u2018Strictly for the birds\u2019 by the Dudley Moore Trio. Peter Cook reprises his Harold MacMillan impression in \u2018TVPM\u2019, so very acutely observed, you can even hear him tearing up the letter from a pleading pensioner to the late, unlamented Prime Minister.<\/p>\n The pure music hall of \u2018Mrs Brown You\u2019ve Got A lovely Daughter\u2019 is here performed not by the dreaded Manchester based combo, but by much sought-after thesp Tom Courtenay , his cockney accent pure RADA, his delivery mercifully free of the lecherous lead-out of the original.<\/p>\n With so many artistes stepping outside of their comfort zone on this compilation, it\u2019s a refreshing change to find one doing what he\u2019s best at. Step forward one of England\u2019s stateliest homo\u2019s, Quentin Crisp, reading a heartfelt monologue \u2018Stop the music for a moment\u2019, about the evil effects of those new-fangled coffee bars and jukeboxes, which join the long list of causes of what\u2019s killing the art of conversation.\u00a0Malcolm Arnold\u2019s \u2018St Trinians\u2019 Theme\u2019 will be instantly recognisable to 99.9% of listeners, even without the verse trailing in half-way, but can you remember the lyrics to this ramshackle battle hymn?<\/p>\n Top notch ac-tor time again, with David Niven reading a letter purportedly written by King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, and if you\u2019re prepared to believe that, you\u2019ll believe that a fat, syphilitic 16th Century King could sound as suave as David Niven, and that the actor could keep a straight face as he read it. The dulcet tones of George Sanders are put to good use in the steady croon of \u2018Try A Little Tenderness\u2019. The unmistakeable vulpine sneer of Vincent Price brings \u2018Ozymandias\u2019 back to life, with \u2018Music, when soft voices die\u2019 expertly stroked Students of the macabre haven\u2019t been forgotten, with Anthony Perkins\u2019 \u2018Moonlight Swim\u2019, which surely should have been on the soundtrack of \u2018Twin Peaks\u2019, and Orson Welles\u2019 pathetic\/comedic treatment of standard \u2018You made me love you\u2019. The compilation ends as it began, with surrealism, as Salvador Dali is described painting a picture, the assembled journalists and camera crews slowly being covered in paint by the unique Catalan giant of 20th Century art.<\/p>\n
\nand petted.<\/p>\n