Patrick Cargill Sings "Father Dear Father"

Following Tom D's tip-off last week, I ventured to Ocean Books in an extremely wet and windy Stoke Newington on Saturday and there, still sitting in the "One English Pound" section, was the above album in pristine condition (sorry Tom if you were still looking for it but, you know, I couldn't just leave it there, I'm sure you'll understand...).

It's an extraordinary thing. A track entitled "Women" with a cheery George Mitchell Minstrels-style vaudeville chorus of "Women, women, it's a disgrace, that they are part of the human race" and I'm already in WTF?-land but happily the song gets deconstructed as it goes along and Cargill's left to look a chump, as was the intent.

Basically it sounds like you'd expect; as a singer, Cargill makes a great actor but he doesn't take himself seriously at all. The concept (yes, there's a concept) is one of the middle-aged man looking at the world and going dear oh dear and, indeed, oh dear. Bill Shepherd (who oversaw Odessa for the Bee Gees) is in charge of the music but it's all still extremely strange; he goes on about terrible pop singers in a deliberately out-of-tune voice, wants to bring back the songs of yesterday with ultra-camp "vo-de-oh-do" backing vocals (and ends same song by saying "I wish I was dead"), moans about sport on television and junk in the attic masquerading as art, sings love songs to his car and his dog.

It's definitely one of a kind and the RCA imprint gives it away; as with the Peter Wyngarde record, it was intended to be a tax loss, and, unlike the Wyngarde record, it achieved its aim. The question is: just how many other concept albums by actors who played Number 2 in The Prisoner still wait to be rediscovered? The George Baker Selection? The Many Moods Of Anton Rodgers? Derren Nesbitt Explores Your Mind?