Emma Soames But alarmingly I noticed that large numbers of the tracks of my life now have karaoke versions. We all like to think that, like making love and driving, we are very good at choosing music, so finding karaoke versions of It’s a Heartache, The Ballad of Lucy Jordan and all those heavenly anthems by Barry White and the Pet Shop Boys really knocked me back, writes Emma Soames
When I first discovered them, these songs were just released: it was OK to jump up and down in misery over a broken love affair singing I Will Survive. But now, since every karaoke machine in every pub in the entire world features it, I would rather have died than try to explain to my fellow guests, the distinguished record producer Trevor Horn and Guardian journalist Jonathan Friedland, that Gloria Gaynor Meant Something. So it was on to the magnificent, evergreen Leonard Cohen. There are hundreds of his tracks I could have chosen but I opted for First We Take Manhattan, his Cold War anthem.
Mr Cohen, I’m Your Girl
The 73-year-old Leonard Cohen is the latest star to embark on a pension tour which sold out within minutes of it being announced. This is a now-proven way for rock stars to top up their pension funds – particularly when they have a very strong back catalogue.
The most recent pension tour I caught was Neil Young’s earlier this year. The evening was an absolute blast and Young and his band were on top form – particularly when belting out tracks from Harvest and After the Gold Rush, both released in the Seventies. Of course many bands, like the Stones, never stop playing – and no doubt their pension funds are in superb shape. But Leonard Cohen, bless him, really had retired to a hilltop in Southern California where he was studying Zen Buddhism. But while he was living in the moment up on the mountain, a former lover and manager, Kelley Lynch helped herself to $5 million of his cash leaving his pension pot nearly empty. The case went to court and the judge found for Cohen, but it was evidently unlikely that he was going to get the money back without going on the road to earn it.
My ambition was always to be one of his backing singers since I suspect they were all romantically involved with him and they were always very well dressed (Azzedine Alaïa no less). I haven’t given up hope either, for don’t you agree that The Man should choose ladies of a certain age as backing singers?
Could it not look rather inappropriate for Roberto Cavalli-clad 22 year olds to be providing the shooby dooby doo for a 73-year-old crooner, psalmist and poet?
Louts v funsters: the truth
The expression Saga Lout, as first coined by Alan Bennett some 20 years ago has unquestionably now entered the language. To the Foreign Office, who recently published a travel advice document bearing the patronising legend “the Overseas and Plastered Phenomenon”, it means old people behaving badly on holiday and travelling without insurance. To the tabloid newspapers it has become shorthand for the old behaving horribly. But it is only those outside our age group who seem to use the term in this derogatory way.
At Easter I came across a very jolly 80-year-old widower who was wearing a badge saying Saga Lout with great pride and refused to take it off all weekend. Our Saga Zone networking site has a self-selected group who, having met online calling themselves the Saga Louts, go out and have merry times together at events that must involve both alcohol and noise – without, I am sure, causing any trouble to the Government or offence to anyone.
Now I know that there are louts of Saga age who are louts as in lager. But for the record they are for greatest part older people who – like Cyndi Lauper, 55 this summer – just wanna have fun.
Trolley wars
As the not-very-proud owner of a bad back, I have recently caved in to pressure from sensible friends and got myself a shopping trolley. I mentioned this on the blog that I now write for The Telegraph and was surprised by the comment it provoked. It seems in New York everyone uses trolleys and in France they are positively chic. Here the poor old trolley is still the ultimate badge of old age but it is actually on the edge of a big reinvention – and goodness does it need one.
But the only version I have so far found that is ergonomically sound and not about to do my back any more harm is hideous. Why don’t designers like Tom Dixon, that cool new designer at Mulberry or the style mavens at Samsonite not provide us with trolleys as smart and well designed as airline hand luggage?
Meanwhile, please can someone tell me what the etiquette is about using your own trolley in supermarkets? It is impossible to push a trolley and pull one at the same time. But I don’t particularly want to feel the hand of store security on my collar – I may get Saga Lout painted on my Ugly Betty trolley but I don’t want to have to explain myself in court.