Thursday 10 September 2009

On Tooting Broadway Station

"On Tooting Broadway Station I knelt down and wept. My fingers hit the concrete floor until my fingers bled ..." The Kitchens of Distinction's grandiose and dramatic song of despair based on Tooting Broadway Station, with its echoes of Elizabeth Smart's tragic tale, is itself doomed. Doomed, for mention Tooting Broadway Station to anyone of my generation and they'll clench their raised fist and look to the skies and cry: "Power to the people ..." before starting to whistle The Red Flag in tribute to the great John Sullivan's comic creation, Wolfie Smith, the urban revolutionary who never quite got his act together. Jim Connell incidentally wrote The Red Flag in 1889 on a train from Charing Cross to New Cross. Probably stuck on a signal at Spa Road Junction ...

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