The mind is just another music player stuck on Shuffle Mode. When I wake up, there’s usually some song playing in my head, entirely unbidden.
Today it was ‘Einstein-A-Go-Go’ by Landscape.
Yesterday it was the theme from ‘Champion The Wonder Horse’.
***
I’ve had my eyebrows raised by a Telegraph review of a John Barrowman concert. The journalist Michael Deacon wonders just why it is hordes of women squeal lustily at a man who’s openly gay and even works in jokes about his sexuality into the act. Mr Deacon ends the review by employing the old stand-up comedy trope, i.e. offering an observation, then positing a reverse comparison that seems unlikely, and thus funny (eg Eddie Izzard: ‘If bees make honey, do wasps make chutney?):
‘Still the women squeal their lust [at John Barrowman]. Do men wolf-whistle at kd lang gigs?’
I think it’s rather cheap to drag in Ms Lang for the sake of his ‘what’s all that about, eh?’ line of thinking. Mr Barrowman may be a gentleman’s gentleman, but he’s also known for flirting with female contestants on TV, rather like his anything-goes Captain Jack character. If anything, the knowledge he’s uninterested in any serious reciprocation makes such outpourings of affection all the more fun.
Now, despite her known membership of the Friends Of Jodie, Ms Lang’s fanbase is hardly male-excluding. For one, I recall Stuart Maconie including her ‘Ingenue’ album in his Radio 2 series on compiling the perfect record collection. And if she has plenty of male fans, I presume there must also be the requisite cheers and whistling at her shows – the very affection from men that the Telegraph critic finds so hilariously unlikely.
In fact, according to the website AskMen.com, Ms Lang is included alongside all the more feminine and heterosexual ladies of screen and stage, because she’s talented, her singing style is a seductive and sexy croon, and she’s confident inside her own skin. On top of which, her fetching ‘Female Elvis’ style of butch flirtatiousness, all dapper suits and waistcoats, is attractive across the board.
One thinks of more conventionally feminine performers – such as the actress Saffron Burrows – who have no trouble attracting swooning male fans despite their publicly-known gay relationships. So I wonder if Mr Deacon singled out Ms Lang because of her butch appearance as much as her Sapphic association.
In which case, it’s rather apt that this week also sees the passing of Joan Jackson, the inspiration for John Betjeman’s famous poem, ‘A Subaltern’s Love Song’. It’s the one where he sighs wistfully about her playing tennis with ‘the speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy.’ A wolf-whistle at a butch lady, if you like.
I’m also reminded of a few gentle male friends of mine who have a thing for ladies with a certain butchness of reputation:
‘You must meet my new girlfriend! She’s just been in prison for assault. Isn’t that fabulous?’
Though I concede that girlish boys into butch girls are less disposed to channel their affection into wolf-whistling per se. Instead, they’re far more likely to say something like, ‘Oh you fascinating creature, you! I drink from your every word!’
