by David Rose
15 They Call Me Naughty Lola, a collection of personal adverts from the London Review of Books. Published in 2006 by Profile in the UK and Scribner in the US. The third chapter was called ‘Last time I had this much fun, I was on forty tablets a day’.
16 The advert references the opening sequence of NBC TV series The A-Team, which ran for five seasons between 1983 and 1987.
17 ‘Sweet Caroline’—written and performed by Neil Diamond and taken from the album Sweet Caroline (1969, UNI/MCA). It reached number four in the Billboard charts. ‘Silver Lady’—written by Tony Macaulay and Geoff Stephens and performed by David Soul on his album Playing to an Audience of One (1977, Private Stock Records). The song reached number one in the UK singles chart. ‘Lucky Stars’—written by Dean Friedman and performed by Friedman and Denise Marsa. Taken from the album “Well, Well”, Said The Rocking Chair (1978, Lifesong). Reached number three in the UK charts.
18 Anton von Webern (1883–1945)—Austrian composer and conductor and a member of the Second Viennese School. He was accidentally shot and killed by a US soldier on 15 September 1945.
19 Research figure published by Celera Genomics in 2001. The figure was disputed in 2004 by a team from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and by Stephen W. Scherer, et al, in results of a study published in the magazine Nature Genetics, putting similarities at between 99.7 percent and 99.8 percent. President Bill Clinton used the statistic in a speech in 2000, stating ‘All human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9 percent the same’.
20 Electronic ticketing system used on London-based transport networks.
21 The Man From U.N.C.L.E.—NBC television series broadcast between 1964 and 1968 and centred upon a two-man troubleshooting team working for the covert organisation United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air— NBC television series running from 1990 to 1996. The programme was a comedy based around the cultural tensions of a street-wise teenager from West Philadelphia sent to live with his wealthy relatives in their Bel Air mansion. The main character, Will, was played by Will Smith. Smith recorded a version of ‘Wild Wild West’ for the soundtrack of the 1999 Barry Sonnenfeld feature film of the same name (1999, Overbrook/Interscope/Columbia). The song featured a performance by rap artist Kool Moe Dee, who sings the chorus from his 1988 song of the same name, taken from Dee’s album How Ya Like Me Now (1987, Jive). The chorus features the lyric ‘Wicky wicky wild, wild west’. The song reached number one in the Billboard Hot 100.
22 Belisha beacons—the flashing orange globes on the top of black and white poles at British and Irish pedestrian traffic-crossing systems, or zebra crossings. They are named after Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Minister of Transport between 1934 and 1937, who introduced them.
23 mo’ fo’—abbreviation of the gang expletive ‘motherfucker’.
24 Taken from Book I, Canto ix, stanza 35 of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (see p. 15, n. 1).
25 ‘Can’t pay, won’t pay’ was the slogan used by protesters during the Poll-Tax (also known as ‘Community Charge’) protests of 1989 and 1990. The tax was widely unpopular, seemingly shifting the tax burden from rich to poor, and is cited as one of the contributing factors in the downfall of the Thatcher government.
26 Hat-trick is the term used to describe a set of three goals by a single player in an association football match. Players who score a hat-trick are entitled to keep the ball used during the game.
27 Truro—administrative centre of the county of Cornwall in the UK. It is twinned with Boppard, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, and Morlaix, Brittany, France, after which Morlaix Avenue in Truro is named.
28 Fame—US television series running from 1982 to 1987. The show was based on the 1980 motion picture of the same name (dir. Alan Parker) that tells the stories of the students and faculty at the New York City High School for the Performing Arts. The character, Leroy Johnson, was a street-wise performer who possessed no formal training but had an abundance of raw dancing talent. He was played in both the series and film by Gene Anthony Ray (1962–2003).
29 The body contains between 3.5 and 4.5 grams of iron, two-thirds of which is present in haemoglobin. The remainder is stored in the liver, spleen and bone-marrow. A small amount is present as myoglobin, which acts as an oxygen store in muscle tissue. Four grams of iron would be sufficient to make a small-gauge nail measuring approximately 1.91 centimetres (3/4 inch) in length.
30 The advertiser quotes a lyric from ‘Life is a Rollercoaster’, written by Gregg Alexander and Rick Nowels. Performed by Ronan Keating on his album Ronan (2000, Polydor). The single reached number one in the UK singles chart.
31 ‘Justify My Love’—written by Ingrid Chavez, Lenny Kravitz and Madonna. Taken from the Madonna album The Immaculate Collection (1990, Sire, Warner Bros). It reached number one in the Billboard Hot 100 and became the highest-selling video single of all time.
32 Camming device invented by Soviet mountaineer and inventor Vitaly Mikhaylovich Abalakov in the 1930s. Abalakov was arrested by the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in 1938 along with other members of his team. They remained under investigation until 1940, being accused of ‘open public propaganda’ of Western mountaineering techniques and ‘diminishing’ domestic alpinist’s achievements, and also of being German spies. Many of the alpinists arrested with Abalakov were executed but he survived the investigation and went on to be awarded the Order of Lenin (1957), Order of the Badge of Honor (1972) and titles Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR (1943) and Honoured Trainer of the USSR (1961). He died in 1986.
33 After they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, the Beatles’ George Harrison said that there were only two ‘fifth Beatles’, Neil Aspinall and Derek Taylor, but there have been many (often dubious) claimants to the title. These include, at various stages, Muhammad Ali, Pete Best, Wilfrid Brambell, William Stuart Campbell, Eric Clapton, Rod Davis, Brian Epstein, Mal Evans, Astrid Kirchherr, Len Garry, Eric Griffiths, Colin Hanton, Nicky Hopkins, Tatsuya Ishida, Larry Kane, Jackie Lomax, Jeff Lynne, George Martin, Linda McCartney, Tommy Moore, Murray the K, Chas Newby, Jimmy Nicol, Yoko Ono, Billy Preston (sometimes cited as ‘the Black Beatle’), Little Richard, Ed Rudy, Tony Sheridan, Pete Shotton, Phil Spector, Stuart Sutcliffe, James Taylor, Klaus Voormann, Andy White, and Roby Yonge.
34 National Film Board of Canada—public film distribution and production organisation operating as an agency of the government of Canada. It is better known for documentaries and animated short films, many of which have gained cult status. Two such examples are cited in the advert—The Owl Who Married a Goose (1974, dir. Caroline Leaf), an Inuit legend animated with Inuktitut voices, and Cosmic Zoom (1968, dir. Eva Szasz), a short animated feature exploring the magnitude of space and the minuteness of matter.
35 Frau Emmy was the pseudonym given to Sigmund Freud’s patient Fanny Moser, who was presented to Freud exhibiting sequences of facial tics and stammers that today would be diagnosed as a form of Tourette Syndrome. Nachträglichkeit is a psychoanalytic conception of time indicating ‘deferred action’ and used to refer to the relationship between an event and its later meaning in an individual’s life. Freud used the term nachträglichkeit in many of his published works, but the word is absent in the index of his Gesammelte Werke, possibly indicating that he didn’t feel the subject had sufficient conceptual substance to warrant a paper on it. Colchester has a population of 104,390.
36 Taken from ‘The Best Thing Wi’ Gear Is the Haining O’t’, a traditional Scottish folksong about thriftiness written by Archibald McKay and published in his book Ingle-Side Lilts (1855).
37 Corrie McChord—leader of Stirling Council in Scotland. Squirrels are omnivorous.
38 Solitaire-based card game included on Windows computer packages. The original version consisted of 32,000 possible combinations of play, of which only game #11,982 was unbeaten. Later editions carried approximately 1,000,000 combinations, where games #11,982, #146,69
2, #186,216, #455,889, #495,505, #512,118, #517,776 and #781,948 are thought to be unsolvable.
39 Feng Shui—ancient Chinese system of aesthetics used to harmonise the flow of life-energy (or qi) in a living or working environment.
40 Physical fitness regime that focuses on the core postural muscles. It was developed by Joseph Pilates during the First World War to help rehabilitate returning veterans.
41 Match.com—online dating service begun in 1994.
42 The advertiser is possibly referring to some of the less commercially successful albums of Crosby, Stills & Nash, namely After the Storm (1994), which reached number 98 in the US album charts, and Live It Up (1990), which reached number 57.
43 See p. 25, n. 15.
44 Judith Chalmers (b. 1936)—English television presenter. Judith Pinnow (b. 1973)—German actress and author.
45 William the Bastard—latterly King William I of England, also known as William the Conqueror. With the assistance of King Henry I of France, William secured control of Normandy by defeating rebel Norman barons at Caen in the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes in 1047, obtaining the Truce of God, which was backed by the Roman Catholic Church. The battle is depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. At the time of the battle, William was Duke of Normandy having succeeded to the title as the illegitimate son of the previous Duke, Robert I, in 1035.
46 ‘Disco Duck’—written and performed by Rick Dees and performed by Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots (1976, Fretone, later RSO). Rigdon Osmond ‘Rick’ Dees III was a radio DJ at WMPS-AM in Memphis, Tennessee. The song reached number one in the Billboard charts in the US in October that year and can be heard in a brief scene in the film Saturday Night Fever in which a small group of older people are learning to ‘move their feet to the disco beat’.
47 Primark—budget clothing retailer trading in the UK and Ireland (where it is known as Penney’s).
48 Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (1725–98). Casanova became a librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein in the Castle of Dux, Bohemia, in 1785 after many aborted careers, including those of scribe, military officer, violinist and professional gambler.
49 Marcel Mauss (1872–1950)—French sociologist not known for his skills in magic. Cup-a-Soup—instant soup product not known for its microwaveability.
50 Alan Bennett (b. 1934)—British author, actor and playwright.
51 Amyl nitrite—a potent vasodilator often used as a recreational sex drug; known sometimes as poppers. Inhaled, it expands the blood vessels and lowers blood pressure, resulting in the relaxation of involuntary muscles, particularly in the anal sphincter. Ben Wa balls—small metal or plastic balls, usually hollow and containing a small weight that rolls around. Used for sexual stimulation by insertion into the vagina or anus. Percy Thrower (1913–88)—British gardener and broadcaster. He was the resident gardener on BBC Television’s children’s programme Blue Peter between 1974 and 1987.
52 Grand National—a handicap chase run over a distance of four miles four furlongs at Aintree race course in Liverpool every year. It is the most valuable National Hunt horse race in the world. Bobbyjo (ridden by Paul Carberry and trained by Tommy Carberry) was the winner in 1999 at race-time odds of 15–1. William Hill PLC is one of the largest chains of bookmakers in the UK.
53 Rudolph Valentino’s ten attributes of the perfect woman, cited in Vanity Fair:Selections from America’s Most Memorable Magazine: A Cavalcade of the 1920s and 1930s, ed. Cleveland Amory and Frederic Bradlee (Viking Press, 1960).
54 Double down—term used in the game blackjack, where the wager is increased to a maximum of double the original bet and the player increasing the wager takes just one more card. Fifth Street—the final single community card played in Texas hold ’em poker games, also called the ‘river’. Split aces—in blackjack a player may split their hand if they have been dealt two cards of the same value, giving the opportunity to play two hands. Experts usually recommend splitting aces and eights. Quads—four cards of the same value (in poker). Steal the brag—call someone’s bluff. Napoleon—Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821), French military and political leader. Freeze out—a game where players start with specific amounts of chips and can buy no more. Fourth—Fourth Street, first board card after the flop in hold ’em, also known as the ‘turn’. Connect Four—two-player game in which the players take turns in dropping alternating coloured discs (commonly red and yellow) into a seven-column, six-row vertically-suspended grid. The object of the game is to be the first player to connect four singly-coloured discs in a row. The game was published under the Connect Four trademark by Milton Bradley in 1974; the original version is known as ‘The Captain’s Mistress’.
55 A Flock of Seagulls—1980s New Wave band from Liverpool.
56 Ray Romano (b. 1957)—American actor and stand-up comedian best known for his role as the lead character in the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. QVC—home-shopping channel founded by Joseph Segel in 1986 and broadcast in the US, the UK, Germany and Japan to a combined audience of 141 million. QVC is an acronym for ‘Quality, Value, Choice’.
57 Council Tax—system of local taxation used in England, Scotland and Wales. It came into effect in 1992, replacing the Community Charge (see p. 33, n. 25). The advertiser is quoting from a Council Tax late payment notice.
58 ‘Come Fly with Me’—composed by Jimmy Van Heusen with lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Performed by Frank Sinatra on his album Come Fly with Me (1958, Capitol).
59 Giro day—in the UK, recipients of unemployment benefit (Jobseeker’s Allowance, colloquially known as ‘dole’) were paid their fortnightly benefit by giro cheque. Thus the day when a claimant’s state benefit is received is sometimes known as ‘giro day’. This is still often the case even though electronic transfers have, by and large, replaced much of the giro payment system to benefit claimants.
60 Written over a period of 30 to 50 years during the Warring States Period (ca. 479 BC to ca. 221 bc), the Analects is the representative work of Confucianism. The Chinese title literally means ‘discussion over Confucius’ words’.
61 Market Rasen is a town and civil parish within the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. It lies on the River Rase 13.8 miles (22 km) northeast of Lincoln, 18 miles (29 km) east of Gainsborough and 16.3 miles (26 km) southwest of Grimsby. Its population is 3,200.
62 Possibly a reference to one of the world’s largest talent and literary agencies, International Creative Management. ICM is sometimes referred to by its clients as ‘I’ll Call Monday’.
63 Scrapie—a fatal, degenerative disease that affects the nervous systems of sheep and goats. Pinkeye—a highly contagious infection of sheep and goats and humans that affects the eye and surrounding structures. Caseous lymphadenitis (CLA)—a disease caused by the bacteria Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis. It commonly leads to the formation of abscesses within the lymph nodes and lungs and sometimes other organs of sheep and goats.
64 Reference to the 1997 horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer (dir. Jim Gillespie).
65 The muscles of the pelvic floor, sometimes known as ‘Kegel muscles’ after Dr. Arnold Kegel, who devised a system of exercises to strengthen weakened pubococcygeus muscles of the pelvic floor.
66 ‘I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good)’—jazz standard by Duke Ellington and Paul Francis Webster. Written for Herb Jeffries’s Jump for Joy revue, which opened on July 10, 1941. The song was originally sung by Ivie Anderson but many notable versions have been recorded since, including that of Nina Simone, which was included on the soundtrack to the Coen brothers’ film The Big Lebowski (1998).
67 Estraderm—oestradiol-based sex-hormone medication used as hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in menopausal women. Truprint—mail order and online photograph processing service in the UK.
68 In the UK the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) recommends no more than 4 grams of salt per day (1.6 grams sodium). The Food Safety Authority of Ireland endorses the UK recommendations. Australia defines a recommended dietary int
ake (RDI) of 0.92–2.3 grams sodium per day (between 2.3 and 5.8 grams salt). In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration does not make a recommendation but refers readers to Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005. These suggest that US citizens should consume less than 2.3 grams of sodium (or 5.8 grams salt) per day.
69 ‘What do you get when you fall in love?’—a line taken from the song ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’, written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the musical Promises, Promises (1968), based on the Billy Wilder film The Apartment. It has been covered by many notable artists, including Bobbie Gentry, who recorded it for her album Touch ’Em with Love (1969, EMI). It reached number one in the UK charts. Trench foot—also known as immersion foot. Caused by prolonged exposure of the feet to damp, unsanitary and cold conditions above freezing point. If left untreated trench foot usually results in gangrene, which can require amputation. It was a particular problem for soldiers in trench warfare during the winters of World Wars I and II and in the Vietnam War.