Track of the Week - 3 April 2022
I had a rare visit to the cinema this week, to see The Phantom of the Open. It's a comedy drama based on a book about Maurice Flitcroft and his attempts to play in qualifying for the Open Golf Championship (even though he'd never played a round of golf in his life) and his subsequent battles with the golfing establishment (among other things.)
The film's quite good but the book is excellent. Go to see the film by all means but make sure you have a look at the book for the extra detail that wouldn't translate well to screen. Flitcroft was an extraordinary man and deserves to be celebrated.
I was a bit stuck on a song for this but as Flitcroft worked as a crane driver in the shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness before his golfing adventure I can go with Shipbuilding by Robert Wyatt. (And I've already used They'll Need a Crane by They Might Be Giants.)
Written by Elvis Costello and Clive Langer during the Falklands War, Wyatt's version was released as a single in 1982 and reached number 35 the following year. Wyatt's haunting vocal is perfect to deliver the ironic lyric of how the shipyard workers have to deal with the relief of getting work while understanding that the vessels they make may be sending young people, maybe their own relatives, to their death.
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