You do though, because it crops up when you least expect it. There you are, happily sotted in your cups, engaged in a session of tunes & fine old songs in your favourite grotty old pub and the next thing someone pipes up In the east end of Derby there lives a working man and that's it, there's no escape. And no one sings it lightly either, they sing it as if it means everything to them, and want it to mean everything to you as well. I've always felt the same sense of nausea under the weight of its suffocating sentiment, though I rather quite like Reg Cartwright's telling of the tale and the story of the King of Rome itself is very moving; like I say I even went to see the bloody thing, but the song is just too much. I know I'm alone in feeling this way, that some even might regard it as unmutual heresy to say such things, but I'm fed up with suffering in silence. My love of old folk songs is largely because they're sentiment free; no messages, no subtexts, the occasional bit of circumlocution and metaphor to account for passages of filth, but generally free of any extraneous point as such, of which The King of Rome is especially heavy on; too heavy for a decent take off anyway...