2 November 1972
I turn again to the words of my guru, Hugo Drax: “Not being English, I sometimes find your sense of humour rather difficult to follow”. Feigning interest in ‘Mouldy Old Dough’ for a moment, I discern a mixum-gatherum of traditional English cultural expression: music hall; sea shanty; medieval folk; Dickensian grotesquery; end-of-the-pier innuendo; attempted public wit. A glam stomp chances a veneer of early-’70s currency, but this is a novelty record, so its horror is timeless.
It’s one thing for the Brits to produce and consume ‘Mouldy Old Dough’ themselves, since music hall never died and later generations of English record-buyers will have their own gimmickry and eejitry at number one in their hearts, e.g. Mr Blobby and Robbie Williams, who for the purposes of this discussion are treated as separate people. But what’s it doing at number one in Ireland in 1972, the year we also had a chart-topping single shortly after Bloody Sunday by a British Army regiment posted in Northern Ireland, I ask myself disingenuously, knowing full well that the answer is in the question.
Lieutenant Pigeon at least provide us with a decent chart factoid. We’ve seen hit father-daughter duets down the years: Frank and Nancy Sinatra; Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne; Serge and Charlotte Gainsbourg in France with a song whose title I can’t quite recall. However, Hilda and Rob Woodward as members of Lieutenant Pigeon means ‘Mouldy Old Dough’ is the only number one single in the UK or in Ireland to be performed by a mother and son. This explains why it’s rumoured by me to have been the suggestive first-dance record that kicked everything off at the Beckham-Peltz wedding reception. It was that or the Gainsbourgs’ song.
