What a strange week this has been.  If it wasn’t enough to be told by all and sundry that apparently most of the socio-economic history of the 1980s (including pretty much all the bits I remember growing up, mostly spent in abject terror of impending nuclear war while the TV was full of images of shocking deprivation and adverts offering shares in utilities that we used to own anyway) was entirely wrong and probably made up by alternative comedians and Militant Labour because it was all wonderful and we should be bloody grateful etc, it all ends with bickering about a song.  A song that now seemingly won’t be played except for a five-second snippet because it’s offensive.  A song from a children’s film.  A song that has the middle-englander press up in arms about how it should be banned, which makes a nice change from them bleating about there not being enough freedom of speech any more (in their case, usually being castigated when they print bikini pictures of very young female celebrities above a caption about how well they’re growing up, or, without a trace of irony, libelling the dead).

So it’s nice to herald the return of someone who generally doesn’t give a stuff about any of that, preferring instead to continue down his own furrow of upsetting the establishment whilst being slightly silly about it all.  Ah, for the good old days when people could actually have fun with music…

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