Driving home from a teaching gig yesterday I had been listening to an old tape of Cilla doing it (from her album with Artie). Plaintive and melancholy, with an undercurrent of anger-- at herself as well ("I married a man for his money/and he's worse than the devil himself"). Drinking in that way is surely self-punishment as much as punishing the man.

I had decided on listening to it again (after some years) to put it in the new version of my personal songbook; not because I sing it much in public but because it's a good reminder of what not to do. Then here was the thread.

I too had heard Sheila sing it, not humorously but with pathos. In fact I've never heard it sung any other way. I would think that to sing it humorously would require being very out of touch with one's feelings...