TWITTERING ON
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50 PLUS MAGAZINE
TWITTERING ON BY ANGELA KELLY
It is, though, wonderful to see the honed talents competing, whether in exciting Luge and ice-hockey, soaring ski-jumping or elegant ice-dance. It all seems like another world, really, and it is. Only the Scots, who have the weather and the resilience, seem to be able to make their mark on any of the Winter Olympics. Thank goodness they’re an important part of Team GB! Just love Roy Orbison’s hit Only Baloney! IT’S something we’ve all done at one time or another – singing the wrong words to a popular song with all the quiet confidence of someone who believes they’ve got it absolutely right. Winter Olympic fun warms up British audiences UNTIL just a month or two ago I don’t think many of us knew a wick from a wobbler or a bone from a butter. But after the Winter Olympics from Beijing, we’ve learned a lot about curling and snowboarding, which respectively boast these moves. Of course, one of the things we’ve definitely learned is that there are a large number of other countries which are much better at everything from bobsleigh to biathlon than we are.
Watching the Kathryn Heigel film 27 Dresses on TV the other day brought home to me the delights of singing completely the wrong lyrics with real gusto. She totally mangled the Elton John song Benny and the Jets during a drunken evening in a bar but the results proved so entertaining.
Well, they’ve probably got both the snow and the resources to plough into such natural sports for them.
Checking on this general phenomenon, I discovered a book by Martin Toseland called The Ants Are My Friends: Misheard Lyrics, Malapropisms, Eggcorns and other Linguistic Gaffes.
They can’t take the curling from the UK, though. Our girls, lead by Eve Muirhead, took gold in the final against Japan – going one better than our men’s team which took a valiant silver.
This is just a delight. For example, he discovered that some Adam and the Ants’ fans were happily singing “Stab in the liver, your mummy or your wife” in Stand and Deliver instead of “Stand and deliver, your money or your life.”
The odd thing is that, for just a matter of a very few short weeks early in the year, we all become quite knowledgeable about Winter sports most of us will probably never think about for at least another 12 months.
Elvis’s Suspicious Minds apparently had the line “We’re courting a trout, I can’t walk out” instead of “We’re caught in a trap, I can’t walk out.”
After all, we don’t go out each Saturday afternoon with our mates to watch our favourite team in the biathlon or speed skating, do we?
Roberta Flack’s magnificent song Tonight, I Celebrate My Love To You translated to “Tonight, I sellotape my glove to you” by some poor souls with hearing problems.
Apart from those keen skiers and snowboarders who go to resorts to enjoy their sport, many of us never ski or skate.
And Dusty Springfield’s ever-popular Son of a Preacher Man never boasted “The only boy who could ever reach me was the son of a pizza man.”
The last time I went skating, my youngest daughter (now 38) fell and ended up in A & E with a suspected fractured elbow. It was a birthday treat and she and her pals (giddy eight year-olds) thought the best bit was sitting having their McDonalds’ happy meals as increasingly grisly injuries trooped past. I digress.
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This may be in the shower or, if we’re particularly brave, in the pub or another public place, probably joining in with others who may possibly be equally deluded.
Even soulful hits like Crystal Gale’s Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue are not exempt from lyric problems. I really don’t think she meant “Doughnuts make my brown eyes blue”, although you never know.
