While My Catarrh Gently Seeps was one of Fab Four’s big nicotine hits
I was brought up in a house where my mum smoked like a lum
FORGET the 24th of June, 1314, when we defeated the English at Bannockburn and I can’t even consider the 24th of November, 1942, when the funniest man to walk this planet – Billy Connolly – was born.
Nah, I reckon the greatest ever day in Scotland’s history was the 26th of March, 2006, when we introduced the public smoking ban.
In fact, when the law was introduced, I almost celebrated the news by lighting up a big, fat cigar. And I HATE smoking. I grew up in a house where my mum smoked like a lum.
Included in the personal bits ’n’ bobs we placed in her coffin at the funeral last December was a 20-pack of Lambert & Butler.
Sure, I did get a lump in my throat at the wake when my wee lassie said: “I hope heaven’s got a smoking section for Granny Isa…” But I STILL hate smoking.
My legendary Kirkcaldy correspondent Wee Jimmy has puffed away for 60 years and refuses to give any health warnings the time of day.
“Listen,” he once told me, “I’ve smoked since I was 12 and there’s nothin’ wrang wi’ ma lung…” It was also the wee man who insisted it’s dead easy to give up the fags. “I’ve done it hunners of times…”
Anyway, ladies and gents, the only reason I mention this subject is that I was tickled pink by the rather ‘woke’ warning at the start of the brilliant three-part Beatles documentary Get Back on the Disney Plus channel.
Viewers are advised the programmes contain explicit language, mature themes and… SMOKING!
A wee bit OTT, surely, considering John, Paul, George and Ringo were all self-confessed drug users? Wonder how many lifelong fans of The Fab Four would have been shocked and offended to tune in and see one of the boys having a fly drag on an Embassy Regal?
Of course, a few of The Beatles’ greatest hits were all about smoking.
Who can forget Twist and Snout, Get Baccy and While My Catarrh Gently Seeps?
And if you think this is just an excuse to bombard readers with other smoking-related songs, well, you’re dead right.
Recorded by George Benson & Hedges, Puff Daddy, Ciggy Pop, Sonny & Cheroot and Patsy Kensitas, take a deep breath and inhale this little lot…
The First Silk Cut Is The Deepest, That’s Why I’m Wheezy, Wheezy Like Sunday Morning, I Can’t Get No FullStrength Capstan, I’m Getting Scented Menthol Over You, I Left My Lungs In San Francisco, How Much Is That Dog-End In The Window, I Heard It Through The Woodbine, Take My Breath Away, In The Year 20 Fags 20 Fags, Smells Like Nicotine Spirit, The Blue Ridge Mountains Of Golden Virginia, The Marlboro Lights Of Aberdeen, His Latest Phlegm and – not forgetting – Rick Ashtray with Never Gonna Give You Up.
Och, stop groaning at the back. It’s nearly Christmas. There’s nothing wrong with a good pun (although
they’re even better, of course, if they’re rotten) and my old pal Sanjeev Kohli – aka Navid from Still Game - is a fine exponent of the art.
On Twitter this week, he treated us to three crackers. – I wouldn’t say I was angry about my Peruvian ancestry. Incandescent is the word I’d use. – Need your motor to disappear? Simply sprinkle it with caraway seeds. – At my nativity play, none of the kids were allowed to be animals. We all had to be trees or hills. Apparently, children were meant to be scene and not herd…
Okay, you’re allowed to groan at that one. Tell you who else enjoys a good/ bad pun - my colleagues at our sister paper the Sunday Mail. I mean, what about last week’s front page splash – the Elvis impersonator who took a £5000 Covid grant, despite having a full-time job as a police officer.
Own up, guys, that story was just an excuse to stink the place out with appropriate puns about The King!
The headline was “Cop In A Trap”. The sub-heading was “A Little Less Compensation”.
But my favourite was in the editorial – the guilty party was urged to “return the cheque to sender”… food, this is S&M Christmas food. 3. Rare picture of a TV remote control from the 1970s/80s. 4. Hands up if you think Boris Johnson could tell the difference between these two wines? 5. When you can’t let the cat go out in case he invades Poland.