Some songs you think of us your own. The ones you really love but seem to do nothing for anyone else. You don't let that put you off. In fact you revel in that lack of public acclaim. It could be The Trumpton Riots by Half Man Half Biscuit, it could be an album track like Lady Grinning Soul by David Bowie.
Or it could be the fantastic Different Drum by the Linda Ronstadt-led group Stone Poneys (not Stone Roses, the monkey faced Mancs everyone is getting excited about. Again.)
And when 'your song' suddenly appears on an advert, for Lynx no less, you feel as if something beautiful has been taken away from you.
It's as bad as hearing California Soul being used to sell Kentucky Fried Chicken.
There are songs for adverts. Mostly by Moby. Stick to those please.
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Did anyone see Louise Mensch on Have I Got News for You? Should I have two question marks at the end of that sentence?
To all extents and purposes she got monstered, particularly by Ian Hislop, for saying that the anti-capitalist protesters in St. Paul's were hypocritical for all lining up to get a coffee from Starbucks while having a go at big money corporations.
All three panelists rounded on her with the basic argument that it is 'only a cup of coffee' and Hislop was particularly scathing about how it is possible not to want to see bankers destroy the world economy on one hand while wanting a latte on/in the other.
Don't get me wrong, I loved watching the smug, shiny faced chick lit author get her come uppance. She represents what's wrong with so many of our elected politicians - all soundbite and no substance.
Somewhere, in parliament, there are politicians who will come up with an idea that will help make this country better. You get the feeling she is not one of them.
And this isn't a left v right argument. For every Louise Mensch there's a Barbara Follett.
The thing is, she may well have had a point. All those vicars' daughters and protest season ticket holders camping outside St Paul's to call for the collapse of capitalism, love their capuccinos and will one day go on to own buy-to-let properties and ISA portfolios. I have no problem with that. Capitalism is not going to collapse and even if it did, it would do nothing to alleviate the real problems of poverty and inequality anyway.
And it is good to see a small but noisy protest remind the bankers that they have still not been forgiven.
But the cheering at the sight of Louise Mensch's loss of hubris underlines our distrust of glory seeking politicians. In fact it highlights our contempt, largely, for politicians as a whole.
But what do we want, and what do we expect? During the Thatcher years, it seemed that most MPs were drab, grey men - apart from Thatcher herself of course. On one side of the house you had former union leaders and career politicans from local councils and the accusation was that they had never done a proper job.
On the other you had middle aged men with increasingly bizarre haircuts who had the career path of public school, Oxbridge, the forces, big business and then politics because that had been the long term plan all along. The complaint were these were men who had never experienced the kind of problems they were supposed to be solving.
As if to counter this, we began to see celebrity MPs who had been famous before going into parliament. Gyles Brandreth or Glenda Jackson, Sebastian Coe and Martin Bell. I blame Ronald Reagan of course.
Let's face it, MPs are never going to be 'like us' and I speak from a profession which has provided the Commons with Michael Gove so, personally, I'd rather they weren't 'like us'.
But I've come across plenty of MPs and liked and disliked many from both sides of the house. What we don't see, of course, are the ones who are not trying to get their face on Have I Got News For You? or you know won't come up on an advert for a price comparison website when they retire.
Which is a shame to a point because if we saw more of them, it might restore our faith - just a bit - in a collection of men and women who, at the moment, are associated with selling our gold reserves and building duck houses, putting thousands on the dole and taking peerages when they said they never would. And often called Neil.
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A quote from Newsnight this week: 'It was like deja vu all over again.'
Or in other words, deja vu.
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The death of Colonel Gadaffi, however you want to spell it, has brought forth reminders that dictators eventually get what's coming to them. I still reckon that if you offered any ambitious despot in a poor country whether they would take 40 years in power with gold toilets, hot and cold running prostitutes and the chance to meet Beyonce, in return for being shot in the head or hung upside down from a lamp-post at the end of it, most would still say yes.
It also makes redundant all that rhetoric from the West that 'watch out Saddam/Osama/whoever because we're coming to get you.'
Robert Mugabe is 87.
Have a nice day....Solly
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