yerse.co.uk

April 15, 2009

Only Fools and… Manx Cats??

Following on from our EXCLUSIVE World At War radio clip, our mole at the BBC has managed to dig up yet another fantastic piece of unused Beebrobilia - namely the never-before-heard theme to the axed 1994 Only Fools and Horses Easter special.

The special, entitled A MANX ODYSSEY, was to see the gruesome threesome (revise? - Ed.)  descend upon the peaceful Isle of Man and wreak their usual brand of adorably slapstick havoc upon the island and its inhabitants.  Locations lined up included the living museum village Cregneash, the Calf of Man (wherein Uncle Albert would accidentally steal a seal cub and invoke the wrath of hundreds of furious seals) and Tynwald Hill, where Rodney was to become the next Chief Minister via a hilarious sequence of events involving him walking down Gravity Hill backwards.

Unfortunately for the BBC, the Manx Tourism department nixed the script entirely, alleging that it portrayed the island as “a grim shithole”, and its inhabitants as “backwards, straw-chewing country bumpkins who like to do the naughty with their brothers and sisters and eat kippers for every meal”.  It was put to bed at the very last minute, just hours before it was to be announced to the press, and was quietly filed on a shelf in a giant DO NOT TOUCH warehouse somewhere near Wood Green.

And so onto our scoop - the very special re-written version of the closing theme which had been hastily knocked together by John Sullivan to illustrate the humorous and slightly mocking nature of the episode.   Listener warning - your ears may not thank you afterwards.

Lyrics:

We’ve got some tall hills, bike skills, Castletown and quid bills
Independent parliament,  hundred thousand kippers killed
Cregneash, crap beach, hotels to which punters rush
Lifeboats down the promenade, pervy bloke behind a bush
Bush bush bush bush bush bush bush

No tails on cats, no monarchy
No sunny days, that’s guaranteed
Fairy Bridge, say hello
Dodge your taxes, here we goooooooo….

Long live the Isle of Man
Viva the Isle of Man
God bless the Isle of Man
Ta graih aym ort, the Isle of Man
I love you, the Isle of Man
Or Ellan Vannin
Whatever it’s called…

(Disclaimer - none of this is actually real and all of the above comments are fictional and have no bearing on my opinion nor of that of any member of BBC staff or anything like that so don’t kick off, it’s a joooooke)