Second Autobiography Will Reveal Parenting Agonies, Says Agassi

"Mummy, I want to snort coke when I grow up."

"Zat's ok, dahlink, but remember to line up ze book deal first."

Agassi Admits Addiction

"Andre, are you also addicted to self-promotion?"

"Dude, I deal with that on page 237 of my autobiography, Open: My Autobiography, by Andre Agassi."

The Trumpet Shall Sound and Ye Shall Not Be Short Changed

Fresh from her triumph under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy at the City Hall last month, Rachel Cheung Wai Ching will be taking centre stage at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts this Sunday, 1 November, at 8pm. Joining the young piano prodigy on the bill are the Academy's Brass Ensemble, who delighted a packed house two years ago with their outstanding sound.

And just how appropriate is it that the chorus which would be guaranteed first prize in the World's Youngest Welsh Male Voice Choir category at any Eisteddfod should be appearing on All Saints' Day, such is their legendary capacity for trying the patience of wives, conductors and audiences alike?

Having brought off what their Chairman is describing as their best performance at Beijing's Dulwich College last weekend, the men in scarlet will be champing at the bit to prove that what he meant was "ever" rather than "since I took up the post in the summer".

The highlight of the evening in the swanky school theatre was undoubtedly a stirring rendition of Dana-Dana, a Hungarian dance-song in B flat Magyar, which is marked to be sung "In fiery dancetime", i.e. faster than a New Territories "indigenous" villager asking for a handout. Though sung in English, some in the audience remained unaware of this and congratulated us on adding another string to our already formidable linguistic bow.

Back to the music, and Cheung will be performing works by Chopin, including the Etude in C sharp minor and the Waltz in A flat major – a splendid way to warm up before heading to Amelia in Umbria where she will be appearing as part of the hill-top town's annual music festival. With inimitable flair, the Italian organisers are calling her recital "Genio, impeto e sensibilità", which rolls off the tongue so much more smoothly than "Genius, impulsiveness and sensitivity", but not, one hopes, more smoothly than the leek-eaters' rendition of Puccini's classic aria Nessun Dorma.

Writing on the Wall

If anyone requires proof of the pernicious effects of American English on Chinese sign-writers, they should look no further than this sign at the Great Wall.

I mean, everyone knows it should be "enrolment"!

Not meaning to spoil the fun, the correct translation is:

Passengers should disembark here

Admission by ticket

Oi! No Professionals!

I am indebted to two fellow members of the extended global blogging family for today's post, which was scheduled to be my last before heading off to Beigeing, as otherwise educated people will insist on calling it, for the Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir's very first visit to the People's Republic of China proper, but which turned out to be my first on arriving back in the renegade ex colony, owing to Blogspot being down on Friday afternoon.

First, there was Cess, whose kind comments about my blog and my driving skills took me back to the day – many moons ago now – when I took my advanced driving test with the Institute of Advanced Motorists. After I had completed the 90-minute drive through town and countryside, on B-road and motorway, the examiner, one Hamilton, ex Flying Squad and doing his very last test, turned to me, complimented me on my stickwork and told me I should take further courses at Brand's Hatch.

Being but a callow youth, I didn't take his advice and so the chance to become the Jenson Button of the 80s passed me by. Instead of the dashing figure of Ulaca slipping out of the cockpit as lithely as a used condom to be embraced by Marlboro girls in tight mechanics' uniforms, the British people were subjected to 15 years of Nigel Mansell's limp moustaches (one on his lip, two above his eyes), hub-cap personality and monotone Worcestershire accent.

Then, there was Jim the Painter, whose pop-art audio-visual tribute to Enter the Dragon, complete with Bruce Lee doing his Charlie Chan voice, finally helped me nail this gem from series two of The Office.

This post is dedicated to all computer guys, everywhere.

Who's she Kiddin'?

If anyone's in this room – or watching on telly – because they're only interested in me as an incredibly attractive woman who's turned 40 and can't get sexpot roles any more, I would with respect ask them to buy my latest book and then leave.

When That Multitasking Toolset Comes Without Wheels

This video compilation comes courtesy of ecosceptic Micky and is dedicated to our motoring correspondents:

Back End of a Spoon?

The Queen's really fantastic – she asked her lady-in-waiting to put this bow on the back of my medal so I wouldn't be able to look at it

BBC satirical show Mock The Week has been slapped on the wrist by the nannies at the BBC Trust after Franky Boyle said Olympic goal medallist Rebecca Adlington resembled "someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon".

Meanwhile, back on planet earth, the rest of us were saying with Oscar Wilde, "I wish I'd said that".

Enoch's Creation Loses Nothing in Translation

What the Hong Kong Sinfonietta wouldn't give for the woodwind section of the Orchester der KlangVerwaltung München, who gave a stirring performance of Haydn's Creation (or Die Schöpfung, since the oratorio was performed in German) at the Cultural Centre last night, in tandem with Chorgemeinschaft Neubeuern, a choir with a big sound from a small town in Upper Bavaria.

Apparently, the orchestra's name, which translates as the Sound Management Orchestra of Munich, is bizarre even in the original German: an attempt, as the programme notes tell us, "to illustrate the discretionary administration of music in a responsible way". It's difficult to tell if something's been lost in translation here, or if responsibility for translating the programme was subcontracted out to Sir Donald Tsang's speechwriters.

On the other hand, it could be that the venerable founder of both musical groups, Georg Enoch Robert Prosper Philipp Franz Karl Theodor Maria Heinrich Johannes Luitpold Hartmann Gundeloh Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg – Enoch zu Guttenberg, for short – is possessed not only of one of the world's longest names, but also of the type of self-deprecating Bavarian wit exemplified by Lion Feuchtwanger in his 1930 novel Success (Erfolg). In this much vaunted work, the author of Jud Süß mocks and memorialises Adolf Hitler's 1923 beer-hall putsch through the character of the inestimably vulgar Rudolf Kutzner in between directing jibes at his own people, portrayed – in a manner that would not be altogether surprising to 21st century Eurosceptics – as obtuse drunken sausage-eating yokels. "Brains were a rare commodity in Bavaria" gives just a flavour of the delicious caricature.

Besides sentences that are as hard to digest as pumpernickel, the literature produced by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department shows that budding proofreaders and editors can still consider Hong Kong one of the world's leading destinations. Mezzo-soprano Elisabetta Lombardi, who plays Eve in the third – and, frankly, pretty boring – part of this magnificent work, is described as having studied in "Turino", while the brochure for an upcoming concert, which has been given the disturbingly puerile title "Piano Pals Singing Happy Birthday", has a picture of the conductor Alan Cumberland alongside the caption "composer".

In one sense, the naff nature of much of the bumph is in tune with Haydn's crowning glory, since, as Wikipedia succinctly puts it, "the text of The Creation has a long history", and the English version which is most commonly used and which was reproduced in the programme is distinctly quaint in places, on account of its having been retranslated into English from German after the original English text, written by a man whose identity has long been enshrouded in the mists of time, was reworked for the first performances in Vienna.

Unsurprisingly, it's Part III that suffers the most, as the translator struggles to keep his mind on the job as he faces the unenviable task of transferring Milton's Paradise Lost to the concert hall without being able to call on the star of the poem, Lucifer. So we end up with this description of Adam's forehead, "The large and arched front sublime of wisdom deep declares the seat", which would definitely get you a job with the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, but leaves a bit to be desired lyrically.

Having said that, nothing can beat the English version of the Toreador's Song from Carmen, which I sang at school and which will remain with me till, like one of those bulls, I snort my last:

"Here come the matadors in all their glory
When they use the tips of their lances
Soon the angry bulls will be gory".

After this Germanic treat, composed ... oops! ... conducted by Enoch zu Guttenberg with a style that conjures up not so much the Bavarian castle which bears the family name as the bouncy variety that forms the centrepiece of weddings in Essex, it is with hope as much as expectation that I await the multinational production of Mozart's Magic Flute in just over a fortnight's time.

Semi-litterate

During my time in the heart of England, I was able to escape from the Black Country for a few days to revisit the dreaming spires of Oxford, the highlight of which was dinner at the Warden and College of the Souls of all Faithful People deceased in the University of Oxford, normally abbreviated, not without reason, you may think, to All Souls.

The best story I heard was the one about the Oxford English Dictionary. Apparently they managed to give a definition for illitterate in one edition. A member of staff was asked if this wasn't an occasion for tremendous gloating from their counterparts at Cambridge.

"Not really," he said. "They managed to include an entry for mispelt."

And I finally returned my edition of Aristophanes' Women at the Thesmophoria to Merton College Library a mere 31 years late. They said they would be sending me the overdue charges, but would be taking into account the fact that the book still appears to be in pristine condition.

Great Hong Kong Rambles: Ma On Shan

On the day when our Chief Executive gives his optimistically named policy speech to the Legislative Council, it is only fitting that I honour Sir Donald Tsang the best I know how. Seeing that the Scots name all their mountains over 3,000 feet "Munros", then I am going to call Hong Kong hills that come in at over 600 metres (roughly 2,000 feet) "Tsangros", after the man who makes them all look like Mt Everest, even after mounting the mini podium put out for him by his aides.

Coming in at 702 metres, Ma On Shan, GSP Heywood's favourite hill, is Hong Kong's fourth highest peak after Tai Mo Shan, Lantau Peak and Sunset Peak. Since Heywood waxes so lyrically on this fine saddle shaped hill, it's worth quoting him at some length:

"Its steep wooded slopes falling straight to the sea, and the graceful curve of the skyline between the two peaks, make it the most beautiful of our mountains. It is a fine climb by any route, and on a clear day the view from the summit is unsurpassed; to the west Tai Mo Shan shows its full height; to the north-east, seeming almost beneath one's feet so steep is the slope, lies Tolo Channel, and beyond it are blue hills and blue water along miles of coast to Bias Bay in the distance."

Although some things have changed – Bias Bay, the pirate haunt where 30,000 Japanese landed on their way to take Canton (now Guangzhou) in October 1938, has been renamed Daya Bay and is now home to four nuclear power stations, and reclamation to form the new town named after the mountain has narrowed Tolo Harbour somewhat – the views are still unsurpassed, especially on a clear summer day after heavy rain.

The 26th of July 2009 was just such a day and the visibility was so good that I could make out the Dangan Islands more than 50 kilometres away to the south. Enshrouded in its pall of pollution, it was appropriate that the magic should not be broken by views of the monstrous metropolis of Shenzhen half that distance to the north-west.

My route took me up the Hunchback ridge, access to which has been greatly improved since Heywood's day by a splendid woodland path that takes you from your starting point, just off Ma On Shan Tsuen Road, to the foot of the Hunchbacks above Ma On Shan Tsuen (or Ma On Shan Village), where the ascent of Ma On Shan proper might be said to begin. (Needless to say, the route to the summit favoured by Heywood, the "north-east face" from Nai Chung, is so overgrown now as to be impassible. Is there any brave person out there who has taken this route and lived to tell the tale?)

If you're coming by taxi, you should follow signs to Ma On Shan Town Centre. When you come to the first roundabout, turn right for Ma On Shan Village. After about 600 metres you come to a junction, with the road to the village meandering off to the right. You can get off here and walk up the other road, to the left. The start of the walk proper is just 100 metres up on the right.

Alternatively, if you're taking the bus, those terminating at Yiu On Estate (43X and 81C) or Heng On Estate (85K and 89C) are your best bet. (The 85K will pick you up from Sha Tin Railway Station.) You just need to walk a short distance up Hang Hong Street to the roundabout already mentioned, signed Ma On Shan Village, and pick up the trail from there.

The actual path, starting to the right of what is currently an enormous fence across the road, is traversed by old people who take it for their morning exercise to reach the pagoda that you will come to after a few minutes. It is at this point that the walk proper begins. Depending on the weather and your level of fitness, it will take anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour and a half to reach the path that heads off to the left at the base of the Hunchbacks. The first part of the initial ramble is quite steep and in summer the vegetation encroaches on the narrow, compacted path. The second part, a virtual switchback where you are heading back on yourself in a west-south-west direction, is almost flat: very pleasant walking in the shade of mature trees, with streams at which you can cool yourself down crossing the path at intervals.

You will know when you've reached the Hunchback path because the very first part is steep enough to warrant ropes being supplied by some kind person. (If I remember right, there's also a Government sign telling you to proceed further only if fully equipped with snow goggles and crampons – always the sign of a decent walk to come.) In fact, much of the early part of the ascent of the three Hunchbacks is be-roped, so you can save quite a bit of energy by hauling yourself up. Once you've reached the third bump, you're left with one large roller-coaster like swing down and back up before you're at the top.

After you've savoured the moment, there are a variety of ways down. The easiest is to join the Maclehose Trail a few hundred metres below the summit and head off left. You can either stick on the Trail and pick up a 299 bus on the Sai Sha Road (left to Sha Tin, right to Sai Kung), or you can turn right two thirds of the way down along the metalled road to Sai Kung via Shan Liu.

The whole walk took me more than five hours, but I was rather out of condition and it was pretty warm. Fit types will no doubt want to polish off a fair bit of southbound section 4 of the Maclehose before they call it a day, or, as Heywood might put it, call for their sampan back to civilisation.

For an excellent view of the ascent via the Hunchbacks, check out Big White Guy (click thumbnail to enlarge).

Dr Hook: Cover of the Rolling Stone

"Our minds won't really be blown like the blow that'll gitcha when you get your picture on the cover of the Rollin' Stone."

If not for the blows, what else are rock stars in it for?

Off to the Black Country

Tonight I leave behind the sparkling Hong Kong of pseudo models and Donald Tsang's policy address for the gritty reality of conference season in the English midlands, affectionately know as the Black Country on account of all the immigration from Trinidad and Jamaica.

Rather than exposing my readers to the dangers of deferred gratification, I will be using the Blogspot timer to launch a couple of posts before I return in a week's time.

Poly U Joins the Pseudo Model Craze

Stung into action by the fact that they came in only one place ahead of the University of Leicester in the quirky Times Higher Education QS World University Rankings 2009, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University has decided to join the pseudo model road show.

As in the case of the considerably higher ranked University of Science & Technology, who held their event yesterday, the choice of academic unit to run Saturday's seminar, called "Reflections on Leng Mo [Bimbo Models]", is curious, as, according to its own website, the China Business Centre is an independent unit providing guidance on China, focusing in particular on "economics, business, and market trends on the mainland".

Anyway, those who have nothing better to do on Saturday afternoon can go along to the romantically named Room Y302 at 2.30pm for three hours of "explanations and implications of the phenomenon of young female models".

Following the HKUST, um, model, Poly U are sweetening the pill of having to absorb the wisdom of a Chinese University lecturer and a Ming Pao hack by giving City University of Hong Kong First Year student Becky Lee Pui Yee the coveted 4 o'clock slot. As you may have guessed, Becky is herself part of the phenomenon that she will be helping to explicate.

Which leaves the graveyard shift to Choi Chi Sum, General Secretary of the Christian Conservative Society for Truth and Light, which has been dubbed the "moral Taliban" by some in the local media.

Appropriately enough, given the stratospheric sales of the photo books produced by the pseudo models, the seminar is being supported by the Joint Publishing bookshop chain.

One Night Only - Pseudo Model Chrissie Chau at HKUST

It seems there is no limit to what Hong Kong's universities will do to get their names in the papers. This evening 24-year-old Canton born pseudo model Chrissie Chau will appear at a seminar at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology in Sai Kung.

HKUST is expecting such a scrum of hacks, photographers and din che lam (roughly translated as spotty nerds who aren't getting any) to turn up that they've stuck a press release (Chinese only) on their homepage explaining how Ms Chau's visit is strictly academic, as it's all in the name of popular culture and gender studies ... blah blah blah.

There are a couple of strange things about this seminar, which kicks off at 6.30 in Lecture Theatre A, in case any of you are interested in going. First, it's being run by the School of Science, whose constituent departments are Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Maths and Physics. Second, the fall guy – AKA guest speaker, one Li Siu Leung – is from Hong Kong's bottom-ranked university, Lingnan. What makes his choice especially surprising is that he works in the Department of Cultural Studies out in Tuen Mun, and HKUST has its very own Center for Cultural Studies within the School of Humanities and Social Science.

Indeed, the Center would seem ideally equipped to host the event, as, according to its website, it proudly "organizes conferences, workshops, seminars and public lectures to stimulate research and intellectual discussions from a critical perspective". Moreover, one of its main areas of focus is "gender, politics and society".

In a related development, I am reliably informed that the Hong Kong Polytechnic University is running a similar event on Saturday, to which they will once again be importing an academic – this time from Hong Kong Baptist University – together with another leng mou (roughly translated as a bimbo), this time, very much a B-lister, a Year 1 student from the City University of Hong Kong by the name of Lee.

Perhaps because of all the hits it's getting from spotty nerds across the territory, the Poly U website is currently experiencing what locals call a downage.

A Kam to the Slaughter?

You know, I find it hard to choose between them ....

I dread to think what sane, sentient members of the human race would think of the pathetic spectacle of Hong Kong's lawmakers attempting to make political mileage out of an incident so devoid of substance that no self-respecting "-gate" would touch it with a barge pole.

Hong Kong's dullest member of the 60-seat Legislative Council, one Kam Nai Wai, M.H. – heaven only knows what that stands for – fancies his assistant Kimmie Wong Lai Chu, who used to be a senior editor-cum-anchor at ATV (so she certainly knows how to play the media, if not the field). He has a little tête-à-tête with her in a restaurant in June and tells she gives him a "good feeling", while wanting to do a little good feeling of his own, no doubt. Which red-blooded male wouldn't?

A couple of weeks ago, allegedly, when Kimmie she doesn't turn up for a meeting, Kam goes ballistic and fires her. Kimmie lodges a complaint with Democratic Party vice-chairwoman, old "unguided missile" herself, Emily Lau Wai Hing, and goes into hiding.

Meanwhile ... Kam's predecessor as the dullest person in LegCo, Mandy Tam Heung Man – who managed to lose her Accountancy Functional Constituency seat after holding it for just one term between 2004 and 2008 - decides to wade in on Kimmie's behalf – without receiving her consent to do so. You see, Kimmie had been Mandy's assistant before she lost her seat.

Demonstrating just why the bean counters kicked her out of one of the world's safest seats, Mandy showed that she isn't the kind of person you'd want to trust your balance sheet to when she takes a leaf out of the "Mary Ma"* book of talking complete garbage:

"The problem now is not whether Kam has wrongfully dismissed his assistant, but whether he has fired her after her rejection of his advances. He has publicly lied about ever making any expression of affection and he must resign for losing his credibility."

Denying her revelation of details of Kam and Kimmie's lunchtime liaison meant she was eyeing Kam's seat, Tam was scarcely able to keep a straight face as she intoned:

"I was never authorised by the victim to speak on her behalf, but I had to speak out to defend justice, prompted by my conscience."

With more jockeying for position going on than will be seen in tonight's Shouson Hill Handicap at Happy Valley, as Kam continues to deny making advances to the fair Kimmie, the only sure bet is that some of Hong Kong's lowest life forms will be plotting their own advances towards a soon to be vacant seat on Hong Kong Island.

* If you feel like a good laugh, you can read the Hong Kong Standard's Editorialiser-in-Chief and Pontificator Maximus here.

Vivat! Vivat Georgiana!

If you like girlie women and middle-aged men who look one moment like Liam Neeson and the next like Leonard Rossiter, then you might enjoy The Duchess, a film starring Keira Knightley as Lady Di's ancestor, Georgiana Devonshire, neé Spencer, and Raif Fiennes as William, the richest man in England with an enormous pile in Derbyshire.

Also appearing, as tea baron Earl Grey, no less, is Dominic Cooper, who drew the short straw in Mamma Mia! (some effort, that) as the gawky kid with enormous eyebrows and no personality who is cursed to carry the name Sky and marry Meryl Streep's frumpy daughter before he is rescued at the altar by Pierce Brosnan and his dreadful singing voice.

Stealing the show, though, is thinking man's crumpet Charlotte Rampling, hamming it up in her twin roles as Georgiana's mother and fearsome dominatrix, whose chemistry with son-in-law Raif simmers away, threatening to explode and disprove Keira's theory that her cold fish of a husband loves only his dogs.

As you may have guessed, Georgiana is no ordinary duchess. We first get an inkling of this from the fact that no one is exactly sure how to pronounce her name. One minute it's Geor-jayna, the next it's rhyming with vagina. The duke is smart enough to call her "G", or at least you think he's smart enough to do that on his own until you realise that he's just submitting to his mother-in-law, who started calling her that to stop all the arguments when she was a nipper at Althorp.

Besides the husband who doesn't appreciate her (during the compulsory ball scene, one character remarks to G, "The joke in the country is that the only person in the room who's not looking at you is your husband") we have the Camilla Parker-Bowles character, Bess – name straight out of a Henry Fielding novel – looking and sounding every inch the high-class whore.

But, while Di was being figurative when she lowered those doe-like eyes before her interviewer and delivered her line about her marriage being "a bit crowded" with the three of them in it, when Georgiana peppers her dinner table conversation with references to "our husband", she means it. Having been introduced to her erogenous zones by Bess in a tantalisingly brief bedroom scene in which the seductress, in classic soft porn style, offers to give Georgiana a massage and deems the top layer of clothing surplus to requirements (cue audible shudder from G as the garment slides off her shoulders and nestles in a heap at her feet), G is naturally enough keen to explore said zones, especially the one named in her honour.

Sadly, that's as much of her Sapphic side as we're allowed to glimpse. From hereon in, it's all Earl Grey in the James Hewitt role, as she learns what it's like to do it with a man whose understanding of foreplay goes beyond a clip around the earhole and an update on the dogs, but for all that a man who ultimately dumps her for a woman called Ponsonby so he can become Prime Minister and sell yellow tea bags. (It should be said, in fairness to the duke, that he's a dab hand with the scissors when it comes to the awkward business of getting to G's hot spot when she's trussed up like a turkey.)

And so the saga unfolds. Cunning as foxes who've just been appointed Professors of Cunning at Oxford University, the Hong Kong distributors of the DVD have given the film a Blackadderian title which encapsulates what the film is all about as part of a Diana industry that still turns handsome profits more than a decade after her death: "Rebellious and passionate – the fate she shared with Diana".

Having watched Knightley in this film and Atonement, as well as some of Diana's performances, I am in no doubt as to who was the better actress.

Repeat After Me

The Mainland China tabloids are as ever a great tonic on a Monday morning, the print equivalent of the Japanese TV show Endurance for taking you down rarely travelled avenues of the mind.

A female bus conductor in Shenzhen was asked by a passenger to repeat "Please buy a ticket" a hundred times before he would pay for his ticket. In a bizarre throwback to the dark days of the Cultural Revolution, the conductress actually agreed to do so. It gets weirder, though. The passenger agreed to grant the woman remission for good behaviour, allowing her to stop after she got to 30 repetitions. In the weirdest twist of all, the ticket seller was commended by the other passengers for her patience.

Another 60 years, and maybe their grandchildren will tell the tosser to stop being such a prick and pay his fare like everyone else.

High D Hi Nicolai Gedda

The incomparable Nicolai Gedda hams it up as he sings the aria "Freunde vernehmet die geschichte" (better known by its French title "Mes amis, écoutez l'histoire") from Adolphe Adam's comic opera Le Postillon de Lonjumeau – high D and all.

Les Enfants du Paradis

It was in a recent newspaper interview with Charlotte Rampling (star of Alistair MacLean's never to be forgotten Caravan to Vaccarès – right up there with Where Eagles Dare in the pantheon of most outrageously improbable films) that I first heard of Les Enfants du Paradis ("Children of Paradise" for any Americans out there). Given that this 1945 French film is in all the Greatest Movies lists, I realise that my credibility as a Barry Norman wannabe will have taken a bit of a hit by this admission, but I'm reckoning on the fact that a little strategic honesty usually pays dividends in the long run.

Now, Ms Dumpling also raved about Death in Venice, which has to be the most boring Dirk Bogarde film ever made – which is saying something, so I approached Enfants, as I shall henceforth call it in the style of those Eng Lit types who call King Lear "Lear", with some trepidation, especially as it comes in at a little over three hours, nearly as long as The Sound of Music.

This may strike you as a disturbing comparison, but the two films do in fact share more than their length in common – both have an Intermission and both tail away in the second half. Although this is not such a pronounced flaw in Enfants as it is in Sound, it does, for me, mean that the film falls just short of the cult status afforded it by film critics. (But what do they know? They give Terry Gilliam's Brazil 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. For the record Enfants comes in just behind at 94%.)

Which brings me very neatly, as Barry Norman would say, to the similarities between Brazil and Enfants. Not only does the ex Python "funnyman" pop up on the Criterion DVD to rave about the film, comparing it acidly to banal and vapid American studio offerings, but both films had to overcome monumental difficulties before they gained release on the silver screen. In the case of Enfants, not the least of these difficulties was that it was shot in occupied France in 1943 and 1944.

This led to a number of problems, not the least of which was that the crew kept eating the edible props because they were fed up with Parisian rations, which consisted of a box of Boursin, a packet of Gitanes and a bottle of Liebfraumilch the Germans couldn't give away at Carrefour. Add to that, there was a shortage of materials with which to construct the Boulevard of Crime set, and the star (Arletty) was sleeping with a Gestapo officer and receiving death threats from members of the Resistance.

Despite all these challenges (perhaps because of them) director Marcel Carné and writer Jacques Prévert weave a magical film centred on a street, a theatre and two main characters – ageing actress Garance (Arletty), who combines deceptively easy virtue with tremendous strength of character, and her star-crossed lover Baptiste (played by mime extraordinaire Jean-Louis Barrault).

Les Enfants du Paradis is a diamond of a film – flaw and all.

Dr Hook: Everybody's Making It Big But Me

If you can't take the chat, the song itself – recorded live on the Beeb's Old Grey Whistle Test, circa 1975 – starts at 2:05.