Taoiseach’s music megamix topped by canine classic
After being given a stage to present himself as highbrow and cultured, Bertie declared one of his all-time favourite songs to be: How Much Is That Doggy In The Window.
The Taoiseach was solo guest on RTÉ radio’s discerning arts programme, Rattlebag, where presenter Myles Dungan, more accustomed to hosting acclaimed authors and award-winning composers, found himself instead playing a kiddy classic.
He was also forced to spin a disc of Westlife’s recent release, You Raise Me Up, which Bertie, father-in-law of Westlife member Nicky Byrne, dutifully described as “encouraging and uplifting.”
The Taoiseach also threw into the mix Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline which he said was “a good sing-along song.” But he redeemed himself when he admitted to a youthful Saturday evening addiction to The Monkees TV show.
Bertie, who has in the past claimed the green of republicanism and the red of socialism, also revealed his true colours when he picked as another of his top tunes, A Whiter Shade of Pale.
In doing so he may have explained what influenced his own baffling brand of Bertiespeak as the puzzling song by strange sixties band, Procol Harum, contains mystifying lyrics such as: “If music be the food of love then laughter is its queen and likewise if behind is in front then dirt in truth is clean.”
The Taoiseach recalled getting hooked on the song when was a wild child leaving cert student in 1969 “when I was forcing myself to study or being forced to study by my parents”.
The Taoiseach declared his favourite books of recent times to be a three-volume history of the GAA in Dublin, a biography of Sean Lemass and last year’s release, Tangled Up In Blue, by Dublin Gaelic star and all-Ireland winner Dessie Farrell.
He ended by choosing a 70-year-old recording of Silent Night by Bing Crosby. But if the Taoiseach’s choices were more eclectic than electric, he at least provided a good excuse.
He said How Much Is That Doggy was the first song he ever remembered hearing and his late mother used to sing it to him when he was the ripe old age of three and she was coaxing him to eat his dinner.
In picking it, he echoes the choices of another well-known political leader who also voted it her all-time favourite. She went by the name of Margaret Thatcher.
