Who’s your favourite female vocalist of all time? Ella Fitzgerald? Billie Holiday? Nina Simone? Aretha Franklin? Debbie Harry? Amy Winehouse? Mama Cass? Carly Simon? Karen Carpenter? Stevie Nicks? Carole King? Chrissie Hynde? Dua Lipa? Béyoncé? Candi Staton? Sharleen Spiteri? Adele? Shirley Bassey?
Blimey, it’s hard, isn’t it?
Dolly Parton? Patsy Cline? Roberta Flack? Randy Crawford? Paloma Faith? Agnetha Fältskog? Anni-Fridd Lyngstad? Pauline Black? Barbra Streisand? Taylor Swift? Mary J Blige? Missy Elliott? Miley Cyrus? Cerys Matthews? Pink? Kate Bush? Minnie Riperton? Janet Kay? Eartha Kitt? Grace Jones? Ari Up? Siouxsie Sioux? Etta James? Eva Cassidy? Dusty Springfield? Peggy Lee? Joni Mitchell? Diana Ross? Anita Baker? Rihanna?
I’m sure I’ve missed a few.
This week on Radio 2 (the broadcasting equivalent of stretch denim, where much of my favourite music hangs out these days) retiring football commentator John Motson revealed to the nation that his ‘favourite female vocalist of all time’ was… wait for it… Kirsty McColl.
Yep, Kirsty McColl. You know… She did that one called Days. And that cameo with The Pogues on Fairytale of New York. And that one about Elvis and the chip shop.
Funny thing, isn’t it, opinion? I remember an episode of Minder, in which Arthur Daley explained it to Terry something like this. ‘It’s a question of opinion and taste, Terence. You’re entitled to your opinion, I have the latter.’
It turns out we all hear things in different ways: some hear ‘yanny’ where others hear ‘laurel’. I also discovered this week that at certain times of day, regardless of what’s being said, I hear types of cake. For example, when someone said, “Milk’s all gone,” I heard “Chocolate log”. You say “potato”, I say “lemon drizzle cake”. Research is continuing into whether this is a recognised psychological disorder or just wishful thinking.
Fortunately there are people who are paid to clarify our opinions for us. We call them pundits and tomorrow, every pundit in the world will be focussing on a precariously small segment of the Earth’s crust between Wembley and Windsor, some clarifying our opinions on the FA Cup Final, some pontificating on the cut of Meghan Markle’s jib, some declaiming on the rights and wrongs of arranging your wedding on Cup Final day. I mean, seriously, Harry! What were you thinking? I would have been there, you know I would, but it’s United…
The word pundit originates not in Greece or Rome or Olde England or France but in India. It derives from a Sanskrit word meaning ‘learned man’ and was a term applied to scholars of the vedas. It entered the English language in the 16th century as a word for Hindu scholars and the more general application of the word to mean an expert in a given field emerged in the 19th century.
In the 1860s, pundits became even more important to the British national interest than Gary Neville is today, due to the heroic role they played in the Great Trigonomic Survey of India. If you’ve been with this Word of the Week thing from the start, you’ll remember vividly that the second ever word of the second ever week, Cartographer, described the dauntless feats of surveyors in the great Retriangulation of Great Britain. Well, the pundits of northern India made their endeavours look like a walk in the park.
The Great Trigonomic Survey of India was Britain’s campaign to map the subcontinent and it was all going swimmingly until they reached northern India and discovered that places like Tibet were running a ‘no westerners’ policy. The solution was to retire to the nearest hill station with a large gin and tonic and train the brave locals to go out and do the surveying, while masquerading as holy men or traders in order to avoid expulsion, execution and the unwanted attentions of the Yeti. These local surveyors were dubbed pundits or pandits and by the time they’d finished, they had compiled a pretty impressive map of the Himalayas, Tibet and other forbidding border territories.
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Indian Prime Minister after independence, was known as Pandit Nehru because he was descended from the Kashmiri pundits. Jamie Carragher’s claim to the moniker is more tenuous.
Whether you agree or disagree with the punditry on offer tomorrow, the lesson from the wise men is that we must respect the opinions of others, no matter how daft they might seem.
But come on! Kirsty McColl?
