My Christmas song today is ‘Mistletoe and Wine’. This a Christmas song made famous as a single by Cliff Richard 1988. The song was written by Jeremy Paul, Leslie Stewart and Kath Strachan for a musical called ‘Scraps’, which was an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Little Match Girl’ set in Victorian London.
Richard liked the song but changed the original lyrics to reflect a more religious theme (which the writers accepted). This song was Cliff Richard's ninety-ninth single and it became his twelfth UK Number 1 single, spending four weeks at the top in December 1988. It became the highest-selling single of 1988. Simultaneously, it also spent four weeks at the top of the ‘Irish Singles Chart’. One of the record-breaking statistics often cited about Cliff Richard is his achievement of Number 1 hit singles in five consecutive decades.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
I was brought up in an era when one was either a Teddy Boy or a Mod and either rode a motorbike or a Lambretta scooter. Even the hairstyles defined which social teenage group one belonged to. One had long, greasy hair with sideburns and had a crease down the back of the head (Duck's Arse) instead of on top of it; whereas the Mods wore their hair neat and short and parted on the top left of their heads, like their fathers always wore it. The clothes worn by the two groups could not have been more opposite. The Teddy Boys wore jackets of Edwardian length that stretched passed the knees, and trouser bottoms which tapered into narrow drainpipes. The Mods wore smart clothes that their fathers would have been as equally proud to be seen in. The Teddy Boys hailed as their King of Song, the American pelvic mover, Elvis Presley, who parents considered as being the son of the Devil, whereas the Mods gave their loyal support to the British singer, Cliff Richards. Cliff had that clean-cut boy-next-door image, and his quavering-lip singing pleased grandparents, parents and teenage children in equal measure. These two groups of teenagers were as different as chalk and cheese, and once every year, thousands of motorbikes and Lambretta scooter riders would converge in Brighton and meet up on the beach for a good, old Bank Holiday bust-up!
I was a Teddy Boy in my youth with all the trimmings apart from the motorbike. I never did manage to get to a ‘Brighton Beach Bank Holiday Bust-Up’ but I often made up for this by involving myself in regular Saturday night gang fights at Cleckheaton Town Hall.
I was naturally an Elvis fan, and as such, I grew into manhood with a ‘marmite’ dislike for the British ‘pretender’, Cliff Richards who tried to steal the King’s crown when Elvis was drafted into the U.S.A. Army (1958-1960), During Elvis’ two-year period of army service, Cliff tried his best to usurp ‘The King, but the Teddy Boys were having none of it! We kept on buying Elvis’s records and every time a group of us passed a café with a dozen Lambretta scooters parked outside in neat rows, and a dozen Mods drinking coffee inside, we’d topple the lead scooter to the ground and create a domino effect of collapsed scooters and broken mirrors (It was common for the scooters of Mods to have dozens of mirrors at each side of their steering wheel). It was just like a set-up for 'the perfect accident waiting to happen!'
I would be in my mid-twenties before I was made to sit down for three minutes and listened to a current Cliff Richard’s record. That was when I was courting my first wife-to-be and had been convinced by her that she was ‘a good woman’ and that her idol, Cliff, was ‘a good singer’. I was most certainly proved wrong on the first count and the judges are still out about the merits of her second assertion.
Since I got older, and eventually changed my string tie for a satin one, before going open-necked in my old age, I have managed to find ‘two or three’ songs sung by Cliff that I like among his hundred-plus of hit records over the past sixty years. Today’s Christmas song, ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ is one such example.
I will end with a tale I heard second-hand about 'mistletoe and wine'. It concerned a young man in his thirties who had never had a real girlfriend. The man in question was clever and had a good job in a managerial capacity, but his shyness whenever in the presence of an attractive woman made him a social wallflower and he never made the first base in the round of dating and courtship. His only highlight of the year was the office party at Christmas time. He would look forward to the office party like a drug addict getting their first needle of the day. Although he rarely drank alcohol throughout the rest of the year, at the annual office party he would unusually have a fair amount of wine to drink to drown his inhibitions.
Once suitably inebriated and the party was well and truly going, the shy man would become socially animated and highly daring. He would take a large sprig of holly and mistletoe from his desk drawer and he would circle the entire room, kissing all the women under the mistletoe. These were not festive 'little pecks' at the side of the lady's cheek, but full-blown 'tongue touchers' which left the recipient gasping for a fresh intake of breath. Being in the Christmas spirit, no woman present would ever refuse to kiss him under the mistletoe.
Following the Christmas party, the shy man would return to his normal reserved behaviour for the rest of the year and he would not kiss a woman again until the following Christmas office party. I don’t know what he did in between Christmas office parties, but it was rumoured in jest that he would remove the mistletoe from his office desk and leave it under the pillow on his bed, where he would look at it every night to recall the image of one or two particular women he had kissed.
I dedicate my Christmas song today to my Facebook friend, Amanda Katina Bright who lives in Manchester. Thank you for being my Facebook friend and have a nice day. Bill x
Love and peace Bill xxx