28 November 1990 (with more highly unfunny remarks here)
— Timmy Mallett
"I didn't know Eddie the Eagle had a TV show!"
This was my initial reaction to Timmy Mallett. Surely one bespectacled irritant with no discernible talent is enough for the British. But for all the many things I love about pop culture in the UK, they never quite mastered the art of finding tolerable people to host TV programs. At best, I was indifferent to Bruno Brookes and Simon Mayo hosting Top of the Pops and had nothing against Philip Schofield and Andy Crane because none of them made me cringe. The rest all seemed to do so — but none quite like Timmy Mallett. (Mercifully, I have no memory of the vile Jimmy Savile despite the fact that a run of Jim'll Fix It episodes were shown on Saturday evenings on BBC1 in the first part of 1989; I suppose we were too busy taking weekend trips during that period to bother tuning in to a predatory sex offender granting wishes to children) I was eleven-years-old back then and I still had a fondness for childish things but even I knew that this guy was intolerable. I made sure to avoid his show Wacaday from that point forward.
That first encounter with Mallett on the telly was probably in September of 1988, right about the same time that I first saw old re-runs of Thunderbirds. The expressionless puppets flying around in planes brought back fond memories for my dad who suggested we watch it for a bit. It was good fun but kitschy and I quickly guessed that if you've seen one episode you've seen them all. Thunderbirds are cool but I didn't need to see them again: I wouldn't turn them off if they came on the telly (it wasn't bloody Wacaday with Timmy bloody Mallett for god's sake) but I didn't seek it out either.
We would return to Canada after a year and I didn't give Timmy Mallett or Thunderbirds a second thought — until I discovered that they had both improbably become pop stars. Both jumped on the bandwagon of the era's sixties' revivalism. Mallett teamed up with Andrew Lloyd Weber under the name Bombalurina for a cover of the 1960 Brian Hyland smash "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" while a faceless unit under the name of F.A.B. put together a techno mix of theme song "Thunderbirds Are Go" with additional samples of dialog from the show. It's still difficult to figure which of the two climbing the charts was more unlikely though I will say that Aloysius Parker, Lady Penelope and Jeff Tracy all possessed oodles more charisma than Timmy Mallett — and their record wasn't nearly as terrible.
Nevertheless, that "Thunderbirds Are Go" isn't great. A lot of TV shows from the sixties had iconic themes but Thunderbirds wasn't one of them. What it did have was catchphrases, something that DJ's had already been exploiting in remixes and their own records. Bomb the Bass' breakthrough house hit "Beat Dis" is littered with Thunderbird references. Those blokes behind F.A.B. were astute enough to realise that they had the source, though it is possible that younger listeners might have assumed that they had been ripping off from house music rather than the other way around.
Probably because I never considered Thunderbirds to be anything more than all right, I never knew that the show spawned an empire of animated puppet programming, all of it from the brain of creator Gerry Anderson. Stingray might now be regarded as an underwater Thunderbirds but it actually predated its much more famous cousin by about a year. Watching it now on YouTube, I don't find there's a lot of difference between the two but you've got to think that British kids in the sixties found jets and space crafts far more enthralling than a submarine. But while one series left an imprint and the other disappeared, there's no question which of the two had the better theme tune.
It's no surprise then that "Stingray Megamix" is fun single, even for someone like myself who never watched the show. It could easily be the the theme to a sad reboot of the original and it would doubtless have been the highlight of it. The F.A.B. organization decked out previous singles "Thunderbirds Are Go" and "The Prisoner" (they even did theme songs with actual people in them!) with far too many DJ effects but they are kept to a minimum this time round. Rather than being a dated remnant of the nineties it was a good time period piece tribute to a sixties throwback. Timmy Mallett was certainly a prat but he didn't pick such a bad Single of the Fortnight.
Thunderbirds have been revived over the years, often to a distinct lack of success. By contrast, interest in Stingray has been minimal ever since its sixties' heyday. Thus, a single consisting of its theme song with added dialog would not have been in demand and its very modest chart performance reflected that. But at least "Stingray Megamix" wasn't harmed by modern trends: Captain Troy Tempest and Aqua Marina aren't given embarrassing updates like poor old Aloysius "MC" Parker in a hip hop track suit and baseball cap turned to the side. Thunderbirds became a victim of its success but Stingray remained unsullied in its obscurity.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Aztec Camera: "The Crying Scene"
Shameless right wingers like Timmy Mallett really like to tell everyone what pop music should be like. (Perhaps Roddy Frame had his own vision of it as well but who was asking him back then?) Apparently, it's "out of date to be political in your songs" and that "pop music should be entertaining, that's the prime thing". Leaving his nibs' own enjoyment of this single aside ("If I was still a DJ I'd be playing this"), the politics in "The Crying Scene" are clearly subtle enough that one could dig the tune without giving a toss about Frame's opinions on the state of the world. (I mean, we're not exactly talking about Rage Against the Machine here, are we?) Oddly, Mallett expresses admiration for Aztec Camera's previous hit "Good Morning Britain" which wasn't without a political bent of its own. Sadly, it failed to make the Top 40. As Frame sings in this very song, "you only get one hit": he deserved far more.
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