The story of songs

RABBIT BY CHAS N DAVE Chatterers, natterers, those people who just refuse to be quiet – they’re the same the world over. Or so thought London duo Chas n Dave who decided to anglicise the sentiment behind American song, You Talk Too Much. Dave’s original suggestion was to sing about a “jaw-me-dead”, a bit of slang that even appeared in the 1785 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (definition: ‘a talkative fellow’). Deeming that too obscure, they instead reached into the repertoire of cockney rhyming slang. Rabbit comes from ‘rabbit and pork’, meaning to ‘talk’. But that’s not the end of the London lexicon

– the line “You’ve got more rabbit than Sainsbury’s” relates to a saying about meat shortages in the Second World War (today, it’s very easy to have more rabbit than Sainsbury’s – they no longer stock it). The result proved a winner, still cheering up everyone from kids (“I always get a thrill if a kid picks up on a song like I did… because kids are honest,” said Chas) to very posh people (Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall, admitted to hopping around to it at parties). Critiqued by some, for a possibly misogynistic desire for only a silent girlfriend, let’s leave the last word on that to Dave: “I know loads of blokes that can’t shut up. They drive me barmy.”