THE SCOTTISH CULTURAL CRINGE PRESENTS...

(This contains 'sexual swearwords', to quote the British Board of Film Classification, and some rude, bawdy, raucous humour. "Language, Timothy!" Deal with it, or bugger off. Yer warned. Not for minors. Or majors.)

You know, for a country that has produced some absolutely stunning music down the centuries...Scotland hasn't half produced some terrible, intolerable shite as well. Some of it is funny, some of it is terrifying, some deranged, and all of it unbearable and unbelievable. I just thought that I would post a few examples here of the "hills and haggis and heather and Highlands" shite Scottish people had to grow up with over the years. 

These songs stuck in our throats like a fish bone in that of the old alkie parasite queen mother when she was around (showing your age if you get that reference), and we couldn't get rid of them, no matter how hard we tried. "Every night I go back", as the Nam-flashback-assailed Frankie put it in the film Combat Shock. So I present some retro Scottish uneasy listening for your sonic displeasure. You're welcome/sorry. Delete as appropriate.

In no particular (dis)order:

NOBODY'S CHILD: THE ALEXANDER BROTHERS (1966)

Back in the 80s, the Alexander Brothers were always waiting, patiently, to steal any moment of hard-earned rest and respite you got from your daily existential grind and trauma. Their mournful, plaintive Calvinistic, kilt-clad warbling was already ready to reproach you for any moments of joy you may have had in your Scottish life, and replace it with this anti-classic Hell screech.

Now. Nobody's Child is not an Alexander Brothers original. It was originally written in 1949 by some yank music-mangler called Cy Cobb (no idea), and recorded by some Canadian called Hank Snow (The Singing Ranger)(shaking my head sadly here). It's been covered over the decades since by Karen Young (your guess is as good as mine), The Beatles (me neither), Hank Williams JR, (shrug) The Traveling Wilburys (ack!), and...The Alexander Brothers.

When I was growing up, these two mothball-smelling bekilted cunts represented everything wrong with Scotland, as nailed to our image forever by vaudeville-kitsch-spilling knobbly-kneed knob Harry Lauder. Jack and Tom, the for-folk-sake duo here, gave up more promising careers as painters and decorators to assail us with their antediluvian unearthly wailings and diabetes-coma-inducing sickly-sweet 'songs' like Nobody's Child. This was a heart-rending ballad much beloved of melancholic past-midnight yowling drunks in buses all over Scotland.

The tune itself is a hilariously kitsch, cheesy piece of melodrama about some wanderer traipsing past an orphanage. There he gets talking some tragic blind child, who's fated to stay there forever because nobody wants to adopt him because of his lack of vision. "I'm nobody's child/I'm like a flower just growing wild," he opines. Brings tears (of laughter) to the gloating, full-vision listener, eh? Never mind blind, you'll wish you were deaf on hearing this bleary-brained pish!

Fear not, however. Wee Eternal Orphan Andy (just made that up - no idea what the wee prick's name is) can see (every pun intended) a far brighter future...after his death. Cheery wee cunt! "I'll walk the streets of Heaven/where all the blind can see/and just like all the other kids/it'll be a home for me." Poor wee bastirt! Nothing happens after death except crying relatives, burial (or cremation)(or resomation)(or being chopped up and fed to vultures like Nepalese monks), so he's been fucked in death as well as life. Life just isn't fair to fictional earless saccharine parent-free laddies. It's the hard knock life for him. Nae luck, wee man! You deserve it for allowing yourself to be written into such a shitey song!

Hear the head-haunting horror for yourselves, if you don't believe me. I apologise in advance. Bonus points for moody sea-staring moments, and exciting scenes of broody chuckie-chucking:

MA! (HE'S MAKING EYES AT ME): LENA ZAVARONI (1974)

"Don't put your daughter on the stage Mrs Worthington" - Noel Coward.

I recall my parents having this record round about the time it came out. I don't know why. I will not answer for this (pro)lapse from their usually-impeccable musical taste back in the mid-70s. Not my fault or problem.

This one appears to be some sort of child violinist's wet dream, as a 10-year-old girl shrilly sings of some pervo-devo full-grown man creeping ever-closer to her, making eyes at her, kissing her and wanting to marry her! Mental! Jimmy Savile's fave tune, I heard. Wee Lena was the youngest ever person to have an album in the top 10 UK Albums Chart, with the same-titled album this wretched filth comes from getting to number 8.

She sang with Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball in the USA. They probably didn't understand her Scottish accent. but it would sound nice to them. Unlike this song. She then went on to make numerous telly and media appearances, and have a rather grim and miserable life unfit for comedic mocking, another child star gone sadly, badly, horribly awry. She died aged 35 in 1999. RIP Lena. No thanks for this memory.

ALLY'S TARTAN ARMY: ANDY CAMERON (1978)

Another unforgivable crime against music and humanity from Andy Cameron MBE (an award which instantly marks any Scottish person out as a total cunt, as does his Rangers fandom), telly and radio presenter and ostensible 'comedian'. Named after the Scotland football team's 'Tartan Army', this tragic sonic abortion was released to act as a theme tune to Scotland's World Cup aspirations in Argentina. People got so hyped up on this tune, booze, Airfix glue, and misplaced winning dreams they actually seemed briefly to believe we could take home football's most prized trophy. 

It didn't end up coming home with us, which is hardly surprising, as any Scottish person who follows football knows. Personally, I despise the pathetic so-called 'Beautiful Game', think it's a joke and an embarrassment, which makes me one of about three male non-fitty-loving heretics in this country. GOOD. 23 grown men (if you count the ref) kicking a leather bag filled with air for 90 (odd) minutes before showering with each other - it's the essence of homosexuality! I don't know if Andy Cee here was into men, but he sure as fuck wasn't into music anyway, the sarcy, snarcy, inspiration-inducing cunt:

I WANT TO BE A PUNK ROCKER: ANDY CAMERON (1978)

Speaking of national disgrace Bandy Scameron, this was the B-side of the musical hotel fire above. Punk was already passe by 1978, but that didn't stop Andrew proving his lack of talent in the novelty ditty stakes by vomiting up this dribble of supposed comedic drivel. For fucksake. And people wonder why the Scots have low self-esteem. Maybe if they let us hang this now-84-year-old MBE-flashing bluenoser wank upside down like an octogenarian pinata and beat him with cricket bats until he rained down sweeties and shite on us (like his musical agenda with Ally's Tartan Army) we might regain some of our proud righteous rioting wrath and happiness. 

Worth a try.

Anybody know where the auld cunt lives? Where's my Kneecap balaclava...I'm ready to go!

BONNIE WEE JEANNIE McCOLL: STUART ANDERSON (1989)

Ah god, where to even start? This precocious, nauseating wee wank (not to be confused with English suicidal alcoholic Jesus freak Tory MP Stuart Anderson, though it's an easy mistake to make) won British Entertainer Of The Year in 1989. He was a mere six years old, singing Bonnie Wee Jeannie McColl, a traditional song about courting a young woman by throwing jewellery and clothing at her, ending up in marriage and fatherhood. Why the fuck a laddie of six needed to concern himself with that sort of grown-up rubbish is anybody's guess, but it never stopped Lena Zavaroni, eh? 

Wee Stu's mother was a dancer and his father an accordionist. Yet another example of why gormless parents should not try to live out their failed fame (I'm gonna live forever...vicariously!) dreams through their hapless, helpless, tuneless children. In the 19th century this chirpy snot factory would have been a cheeky, cheery Dickensian street urchin cleaning chimneys to make a decent, sparse living for his rickets-ridden family. Maybe it's time to bring back fossil fuel burning, and make child labour laws more lax, to prevent this sort of worrying thing in the future.

TINY BUBBLES: SYDNEY DEVINE (1974)

Here's another signature tune done by another MBE-licking prick nicking somebody else's song and becoming horribly intertwined by it, to their detriment. This song was originally done by fuck-knows Hawaiian warbler Don Ho (Heigh's brother), which explains the reference to a "Ginger Lei", a flower (which has a drink named after it) of the US state of volcanic islands. They're not much heard of in Bellside, where Devine is from, I would imagine. Though you never know how cosmo-fucking-politan some North Lanarkshire jakeys get, I suppose. After all, Sydney did spell his name like the Australian city. The song is about how much more the narrator loves a woman the drunker he gets. Poignant. And true, upon occasion, let's face it. Works for both sexes.

I will always remember the time in my teens in the 80s when my mother and two aunts went to see 'The Pig' (as the corset-wearing Devine was known for some bizarre reason, maybe because of his looks - flattering nickname!) in Glasgow. They had an appreciation for his atonal donkey-fart ululating, for some reason. My auntie June ran down excitedly to the front of the concert to get closer when Sydney hit the stage - and promptly ran back, howling: "Ugh, he's ugly!" Laughing here. Maybe if she'd had a few more Ginger Leis she might have been able to handle the sight of his pockmarked troubled troubadour visage. Who knows. Too late now...

DONALD WHERE'S YER TROOSERS: ANDY STEWART (1960)

And I confess, writing this, that the teriffic, terrible weight of all these tune tollies is beginning to take its toll on me. But on I will toddle. Only one more song after this one to go.

YET ANOTHER CUNT WITH AN MBE! What was it with Scottish comedy and song slingers that they needed a meaningless English bauble to validate their worthless lives? Surely even that proud, proud boast couldn't have made creepy weegie singer and English governmental bootlicker Andy Stewart feel better about himself after this piece of excruciatingly cringe-worthy kitsch pish.

Despite what you may think, this song is not about the orange knuckledragger chimp currently bespoiling the USA waking up after a drunken night of Russian hooker pussy-grabbing and pissing and Epstein islanding, wondering where his trousers have gone. It is instead about a shy young lad from the Highlands, the titular Donald, who is culturally and sartorially shamed by cruel Central Belt women because he chooses to express his Northern tradition in the shape of a kilt. 

Many unfunny comedy situations where he could have the birds keeking at his inadvertently-exposed cock ensue. Joy. There is a smart bit at the end where, after mocking RP-speaking London women, wee ever-ruder Donnie sneer-chants the song in the style of then-contemporary Elvis. Genuinely funny, and quite innovative for a piece of worthless novelty shite from that era. Ah haw haw, MBE boy, fuck ya very much!

FAN-DABI-DOZI: THE KRANKIES (1981)

Now, this one I really should apologise for/warn you about in advance. Just thought I would leave it on a real low note, which is difficult after some of the abortive sonic tomfoolery I have subjected you to above.

The Krankies, Janette and Ian, were a real-life husband-and-wife weird sick perv duo of televisual 'entertainers' of a kind, I suppose. Least they weren't MBE graspers. Janette played a schoolboy(!) called Wee Jimmy, wearing a school uniform, whilst a scream-laughing blackfaced Ian whipped her with a cane naked and sprayed liquid...eh wait a minute...that's not their act, that's a screaming-waking nightmare I had about them one time decades ago I can still recall in stark, searing, vivid detail. Who the fuck knows what they were about? A cabaret act with a husband dressing up his wife as a schoolboy for many unfunny, utterly depressing, braindead, hilariously appalling racist (look up 'Chinese Sketch Krankies' on Youtube to see what I mean) high-jinx.

Now. I already hated Janette Krankie when this couple of wackjobs were kicking about in the 80s. I grew to hate her more when every halfwit unionist clown in the UK thought they were 'hilariously original' by calling Nicola Sturgeon (whom I cannot stand anyway) 'Jimmy Krankie'. The gruesome twosome released an album in 1984 entitled The Krankies Go To Hollywood (obviously to cash in on Frankie Goes to Hollywood), with songs like Granny Krankie Meets The Man From Mars, and The Krankies Go To Hollywood (Krankies Rap). 

The stunned, backing-off mind fucking boggles. 

But this song sealed the deal. "Fan-dabi-dozi!" was Jimmy Krankie's Mary Poppins-castoff catch phrase, and this song was the troubling cherry on the pop-cultural turd. Enjoy. And I am sorry to leave on such a down note. At least you're not one of the Krankies. Think about that and consider yourself lucky. There but for the disgrace of god...

THE END

(ABNORMAL SERVICE WILL BE RESUMED SHORTLY)