BACHELOR BEN
 Written and composed by R.P. Weston & Bert Lee - 1926
Performed by Bromley Carter

I'm sixty seven and thin on the thatch,
I'm a bachelor still and I always shall batch.
My married friends laugh and declare I'm a chump
But when I see their wives, I think, "Umph! I'm no gump."
I can sit here in piece and there's no-one to shriek,
"I shall want some more house-keeping money this week."
And there's no Jumper patterns strewn all round my den,
Ee!... there's not many flies on old Bachelor Ben.
I don't want you to think I hate women becos
When I was eighteen, I was 'Hot Stuff'... I was.
In those days I ran after every young lass,
By Gad, I've been over a good bit of grass!
Why, when I was six, at a local bazaar
I proposed to a girl, aye... and asked her papa.
I saw her last week, she'd a family of ten...
A fine mess she'd have made of old Bachelor Ben.

We'd no picture shows then to spoon in the dark
But I've made rare good use of a seat in the park.
But I must say the girls were a trifle too slick,
They were what you'd call snatchers and grabbed at you quick.
It was fatal to go home to supper with one,
I know I once did and I thought I was done.
I'd no sooner got in than they shouted, "Say when!"
And out through the doorway went Bachelor Ben.

There was one girl, named Rose, she came of good stock;
Well, her mother said she was the flower of the flock;
But Rose went and married the gardener, Jim;
Now there's six little rosebuds all climbing round him.
And then there was Eileen, her other name's Green,
She looked like a fairy when she was nineteen,
But nowadays Eileen weighs fourteen stone ten,
Thank the Lord she's not leaning on Bachelor Ben.

And every old bachelor must have his joke,
But there's one face I see when I sit here and smoke.
She would have been mine... but alas she has gone
And her mem'ry is all that I have to live on.
There aren't any weddings were she is, they say,
But down in my heart I feel certain, some day
When I'm called and I leave my old bachelor den,
She'll be waiting above... for old Bachelor Ben.