The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #159701   Message #3784817
Posted By: GUEST
12-Apr-16 - 03:15 AM
Thread Name: The Ballad of Helen Titchener
Subject: RE: The Ballad of Helen Titchener
Is "The Sexual life of a Camel" sung to the Eton Boating Song?

I say this because about 45 years ago (December 1970/January 1971) I went on a (so-called) educational cruise to the West Indies along with other schoolchildren (for reasons which I have never discovered, we were the only school there from Northern Ireland, the rest being kids from England, Scotland, etc, as well as so-called "First Class Passengers who were paying 4 or 5 times what we were) and remember some English schoolboys (they may have been from Holland Park Comprehensive, which actually I think was rather posh although the only reason I had heard of it was because there had been a riot there not long before) singing a bawdy song to this tune. At the time I probably didn't know the Eton Boating Song), one verse of which began "The Sexual Life of the Camel" (too rude to print here, kids might be reading this!).

Anyway, the tune fits the words above reasonably enough.

In imitation of the "Free Deirdre Rachid" campaign some years ago (taken up by the then Prime Minister Tony Blair) can we expect a "Free Helen Titchener" campaign?

I rarely listen to the Archers so wasn't aware of the liaison between Helen and the gamekeeper - this has echoes of Lady Chatterley's Lover. I tried to read this some years ago but it wasn't what I expected - there was practically nothing about pheasant rearing in the book. Similarily I tried reading a biography of Gandhi but found it full of gratuitous non-violence.