In 1975, the one accusation an adult could level at a child, secure in the knowledge that it would be considered the funniest thing ever, was ‘silly sausage’.

BBC Radio 4 - Broken Greek, by Pete Paphides

And the people who bought those records knew what they were getting, they were allowing themselves to be moved in that way. The rest of them had been photographed face on, usually smiling obligingly for the Panini photographer. If you’re the sort of person who uses “millennial” as a pejorative term, you were never going to be won over by Eliza Doolittle’s 2010 hit.

She always wore trousers which went high up over her waist and her flares covered her shoes entirely. A secure home is the first step in addressing the cruel cycle of poverty to ensure people can fulfil their potential. Their final album – featuring compositions by big hitters such as Jimmy Webb and Cook and Greenaway – didn’t even get a release here, although its exquisitely-arranged title track provided them with one final UK hit. It's exactly the nightmare that every parent dreads when group holidays and big groups of children go away. At its base is the childhood memoir of a sensitive, savvy English kid whose first language is Greek.

How to say broken in Greek - WordHippo How to say broken in Greek - WordHippo

Cliff Richard’s strange late 1970s/early 1980s “dance” was “that of a man carefully emerging through a foggy clearing at night in a glade where a puma has been reportedly sighted. Because, as well as producing writing that conjures some visually stunning images (a mass of school pupils is a “murmuration of green blazers”), Paphides is funny: “I didn’t know who Lulu was, but I knew she was important, because like Sting, Odysseus and Kojak, she only had one name. As Paphides deftly records, the closest Chris can get to telling his wife he loves her is to admit that he needs her.With most of their success in the previous decade, The Fortunes were already relying on the cabaret circuit for a means of income. Context shapes perception and, on the back of Michael’s run of disco hits, the yearning juvenilia of One Day In Your Life felt like an unwelcome disruption to the narrative. I don’t believe this is entirely true of literature, but this is a memoir that carries you along with all the breeziness and addictive properties of, appropriately, a Dexys Midnight Runners track. I had attended enough shows at the Kings to know that there’d most likely be some sort of signing afterwards. Each play of an album by the Wombles “added to the distance between Cyprus and England”; he hears in its grooves “wet parks in October, empty playgrounds through rain-flecked classroom windows”.

Broken Greek: WINNER OF THE RSL CHRISTOPHER BLAND PRIZE 2021

Wimpy had seen me through some key moments in my life, but even Mr Wimpy had to admit that his staid Beefeater get­up was no match for the thrilling red-­and-­yellow branding of his American usurpers.

And, of course, the great thing about music is that you can play a record now and it will take you straight back there. Once availed of these facts, listen to it and it’s like you’re listening to the saddest Wombles song of all time. As, of course, is the young Pete’s immersion in pop music, back when BBC1’s weekly chart countdown Top Of The Pops was the fulcrum of many families’ viewing week and who you liked took on truly tribal significance. Not just Ansells bitter and Embassy cigarettes but scotch and Hamlet cigars, with Babycham or Britvic for the ladies. But, given that many of us will be familiar with Paphides as a rock critic, we might guess that his greatest escape will consist of middle eights, bridges and sing-along choruses.