I’ve always been a bit immature. My first school report, written in the days when teachers were allowed to say what they really thought, highlighted the fact that I needed to ‘grow up’ - I was 5! Then in year 4 (the 2nd year juniors for those of you of a certain age) it was my ‘idiocy’ during hymn practice that was noted, in particular a ‘fondness for changing the lyrics to songs in a most inappropriate way.’
The first public dressing-down I received was for a sophisticated change of lyric of the hymn ‘To Be A Pilgrim’ (or ‘Pillock’ as we’d re-christened it), in which the line ‘…his strength the more is…’ was, with razor sharp wit, changed to ‘…his strength the moron…’ I was duly hauled out to the front of the assembly hall by a fuming Mrs Chapman, who ridiculed my hard work and asked me what I supposed God thought of my ‘silly billy tomfoolery’! My punishment was, of course, to sing the whole song properly, as a solo.
As the years passed I honed my skills, managing to change the words to most of the hymns we sang, so as to make reference to every conceivable bodily function in place of glorifying God’s name. At secondary school, however, it did come back to bite me, at the hands of my friend Neil Copp, my co-author of many an unmentionable re-working of well known lyrics. We’d always had an adolescent snigger at ‘...Offspring of the virgin’s womb...’ from ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’, but during the school carol service of 1982, that line was to become the source of much personal embarrassment. In a piercing, still-unbroken voice, audible to the entire congregation, he sang ‘…Oxspring of the virgin’s womb..!’ From that year on, until I left school, there wasn’t a single ‘mate’ who, as the seasonal occasion arose, passed up the opportunity to bellow this out to my utter humiliation.
But time is a great healer, and I now look back with affection at this, and at all the instances when we creatively embellished the rhymes of proper songwriters. I suppose it was the first tentative step to becoming a writer myself. So maybe instead of frowning upon children’s giggly attempts to make their friends laugh by finding inappropriate humour in the lyrics of others, we should encourage it. Who knows, maybe there’s a budding Tim Rice or Oscar Hammerstein currently cutting their teeth on today’s popular assembly songs in a similar manner. Teachers, keep an ear out during singing practice, and should you discover such protégés, stick them on your ‘gifted and talented’ register.
PS. On completing my new jubilee song (available to download from the Edgy website on May 8th) I’ve wimped out, and removed the phrase ‘Elizabeth Regina’ from the lyric. I fear the temptation would be too great for the silly-billies, and I don’t want to get anyone into trouble!!!
