Sunday, March 11, 2012

My life in song and pictures (yesterday's)

As Wales played Italy yesterday afternoon I tried to think of an Italian sort of song for my choice but the best I could come up with was 'Bangers and mash! Rigatoni!' But that led me to Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren singing, 'Goodness, gracious me.' 


I noticed there were comments on the youtube pages about this being incredibly racist so, though it was a song from my childhood and one I can sing now at the rise of a pulse rate, I decided against it. (And the youtube clips weren't brilliant.) But Peter Sellers remained in my mind and I remembered - vaguely - the excitement in 1961 when he and Britt Ekland were in Swansea for the filming of Only Two Can Play. The film is based on That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis who taught at Swansea University for a time.


I certainly recall watching the film mainly for the 'Oh, that's constitution hill, that's the library,' thrill. You only to get to see the outside of Swansea library; the inside is a set. Incidentally the old Swansea Library is now an arts centre and we have a fabulous new one on the sea front, which makes up in airiness what it lacks in grandeur.


This was the only clip I could find from the film and could well be considered racist as instead of a Pakistani accent Sellers adopts a Welsh one - although the two are often interchangeable!

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