Escape plans
HOLIDAY DEALS
DRIVING a double decker bus around Europe with your mates for the summer was the starting point of British movie Summer Holiday. It saw Sir Cliff Richard behind the wheel with The Shadows, Una Stubbs and Melvyn Hayes all aboard for the sunshine romp. The film was one of the movie blockbusters of 1963 and also led to the title track reaching number one in the UK, Australia, Canada and across Europe.
Cliff got everyone in the holiday mood, singing “We’re going where the sun shines brightly. We’re going where the sea is blue. We’ve seen it on the movies. Now let’s see if it’s true.”
Written by Bruce Welch and Brian Bennett of The Shadows, Summer Holiday was one of 16 songs written for the film that was advertised as “the craziest riot on wheels!”.
Cliff even sang the song when he famously entertained the Wimbledon crowd with an impromptu singalong when rain stopped play back in 1996. Children’s TV presenter Timmy Mallett was at number one in 1990 with a cover version of novelty song Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.
It was first a hit for Brian Hyland in 1960 and Timmy Mallett’s recording was produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber and released under the name Bombalurina – one of the felines characters from the musical Cats. The single went to number one in the UK, New Zealand and across Europe.
T S Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats also inspired the name of British band Mungo Jerry who took their name from the poem Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer.
The band’s singer and guitarist Ray Dorset wrote the group’s biggest hit, In The Summertime, in 1970 and saw it go on to become one of the world’s biggest selling singles with Shaggy also recording a version in 1995.
Dorset wrote the summer favourite in just 10 minutes on a secondhand guitar.
Novelty song Agadoo took British group Black Lace to number two in the summer of 1984 – it was kept off the top spot by George Michael’s Careless Whisper – and spent 30 weeks in the singles charts. The song sold more than a million copies worldwide even though it was banned by BBC Radio 1 for not being “credible”.
The song came complete with dance moves with the lyrics urging “Come and dance every night with a hula melody.”
The right moves also inspired the surprise success of Macarena by Spanish duo Los Del Rio (Antonio Romero Monge and Rafael Ruiz Perdigones) in August, 1995. It also spent record 60 weeks in the American chart, 14 of them at no.1, while newspapers offered tips on how to get the dance routine right. The Damned’s Captain Sensible found himself with a summer hit on his hands in 1982 with his version of Happy Talk, from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. The punk band’s drummer memorably appeared on Top Of The Pops with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder while backing vocals came from the band Dolly Mixture.