'Fishmonger's Wife' and 'Disco Tastic'

Here are two songs that were written, performed and recorded in 1999 by Performing Arts students at Swansea College (and, yes, I was one of them):

The first is 'Fishmonger's Wife' which was written very much with our tongues in our cheeks, hence the innuendo laden lyrics.

The Second is 'Disco Tastic' which is my favourite. This song was originally intended to be a love ballad but my best friend and I really loved the idea of a word being repeated throughout an entire song and the word we came up with was 'Discotastic'. Thus the ballad become an homage to the 70s disco movement. 'Discotastic' was also relegated to the refrain so the constant repeating of the word was limited.

This was also the time when vocal distortions (a la 'Believe') were being used in pop music and we thought we'd have some of that.

We had fun coming up with the lyrics although some of the original ones we came up with were a bit risque so were substituted ('I'm not what I appear' is an example. My friend Les came up with the original as a joke but we all loved it. However it was decided that it should be replaced. Care to guess what the original was?).

Hope you enjoy listening to them as much as we did making them.



'The Iron Lady', 7/1/12, Odeon Cinema, Ayr

I'm not going do an in depth review on this film. Suffice it to say that it's an interesting film that showcases the outstanding acting skills of Meryl Streep who you very nearly forget is playing the Enemy/Hero of the people in a film that quite smartly essays the love and hate relationships the British people had with Thatcher.

While not really a political biography it does punctuate the highlights of Thatcher's career and is also an intriguing look into the loneliness that follows when one has reached the pinnacle and loses that position. Indeed this is the most controversial aspect of the film for most political figures today.

The supporting cast is a fine one with Jim Broadbent leading the troops with a performance that balances the film against Streep's overwhelming performance which is amongst the best ever seen.

The film is well constructed and is done so around Streep, much to the film's credit, which allows the focus to be, rightly, centred on her whilst also creating an idea of the magnetism thatcher must have generated.