Northerners

As featured in Lucky Bag: The Victoria Wood Song Book, 2nd edition published 1992 by Methuen, ISBN 0-7493-0819-2

There are a few professional Northerners about and I'm trying not to be one of them. That's why I wrote the song. We did it on Wood and Walters, with the actor Robert Longden giving an enthusiastic performance on the washboard. In fact all the ends of his fingers came off.

As a singer life was hell.
I never did too well.
I was never asked to play the same place twice.
I was paid my final wage,
Then an agent came backstage
And gave me some brilliant advice.

Pretend to be Northern.

Just smile and act dense.
Just sing something Northern.
It doesn't have to make sense.
Make a list of Northern clichés,
And you can't go wrong.
Put in any order,
You've got a Northern song.

You just go:
Tripe, clogs,
Going to the dogs,

Wigan and Blackpool tram,
Brass bands,
Butties in your hands,
Whippets and next door's mam.
Cloth cap,
Hankie full of snap,
Shawls and scabby knees,
Hot-pot,
Seven to a cot,
Headscarves and mushy peas.

I threw away my skin-tight suits
And I brought some heavy boots

And I wore a woolly shawl all nice and flowery.
I spent neet after neet
Watching Coronation Street
And studying the works of L. S. Lowry.

Now I'm fully Northern,

And it works a treat.
Spent half the year in Preston
And the other in Crete.
Buying a bungalow in Weybridge
Before too long,
Once I've made enough brass
From my Northern song.

I just go:
Rag man,
Eating out the pan,

Tanners and threepenny bits,
Prawn wheels,
Good old Gracie Fields,
Braces bugs and nits.
Fish, chips,
Cycle clips,
Gaslight and games in t' street,
Nutty slack,
Privy out the back,
Gradely aye and reet.

Fog, smog,
Sitting on the bog,

Cobbles in the morning mist,
Park Drive,
Dead at forty-five
From a back street abortionist
(It's terrible).

© Victoria Wood, 1981