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THREAD. Some of you have waited a long time to hear more about an infamous cassette that has been part of my life since the year of my birth. It is called 'Carols At Christmas' and it is by the Greater Manchester Police Choir featuring the cast of Coronation Street.
It was released in 1985 (same year as Now: The Christmas Album, genuinely my favourite ever record), and was sold exclusively in the Wigan & Leigh borough, in person by off-duty police officers in pubs, clubs, bingo halls etc. I have heard it hundreds of times, and it is insane.
Its concept - and it is a concept album! - is a service of relaxing carols performed by the Greater Manchester Police Choir and Wigan Youth Choir, continually and abruptly interspersed with MISERABLE and TERRIFYING crime prevention tips from the then cast of Coronation Street.
I have spoken about this on podcasts in the past, most notably right at the beginning of the below episode of @looksunfamiliar, but it is difficult to convey just what a jarringly SINISTER listen it is or how odd it was that it became a family tradition. https://timworthington.org/2018/06/07/looks-unfamiliar-21-darrell-maclaine-the-russ-abbots-madhouse-cosplay-kit/
(Incidentally the Corrie cast, as thanked in loathsome bastard James Anderton's Phil Spector-style sleevenote, have been crudely recorded at Granada on a portable tape recorder as a personal favour, clearly with no direction, and then haphazardly spliced onto the master tape.)
This tape is mentioned nowhere online. It isn't on eBay, it isn't on Discogs, it's not Googleable. I might well have the only copy left in the world (I'm certainly the only person alive who knows it word for word). So, like the Monkey's Paw, I have to pass it on. Let us begin...
We open with Betty Driver, as herself, jovially setting the scene. This is nice, yeah?
We now see the flaw in the concept. It is fair to say that carols and crime prevention tips don't segue together that well. Nonetheless, William Roache suddenly JOLTS back in to terrify you that RIGHT NOW there are burglars TRYING EVERY LOCK IN YOUR HOUSE. And then, 'Torches'.
The first of several appearances by Thelma Barlow - in character as Mavis! - with more child-troubling anti-burglar tips and a line fluff they couldn't even be bothered to cut out.
More Mavis, this time telling you all your money will be stolen if you don't do as "Derek does!" (Note: "Derek does!" is still an in-joke me and my dad repeat to each other)
William Roache pops in again to remind you to think about the "old folk", with a sinister, troubling line-reading that makes it sound like all the elderly people in your neighbourhood are likely to have met a horrendous fate.
More Mavis, more burglars. This time, strangers are trying to gain entry to your house. "Don't be afraid... just DO IT. Ask them." Can you tell why I had terrible anxiety and insomnia as a child?
Bill Waddington opens Side Two, a la Stanley Unwin on Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, and starts to parrot random lines from the links we've already heard on Side One, like Bowie's lyric cutup technique gone rogue.
Bryan Mosley - Malpha himself - has decided to do his link not just in character as Alf Roberts, but in the jumpy manner of a portentous doomsayer at the beginning of a folk horror film. Also check out his final line. Pure Phoenix Nights!
Betty Driver's back with a tip for the ladies, and she's massively unimpressed with your handbag etiquette. Scornful is not the word.
William Roache back for even more, reminding you that you will almost certainly be violently attacked in a dark alleyway this Christmas. Keep it light, Ken.
Bill Tarmey appears on this cassette for a grand total of seven seconds, all of them angry.
Finally, it's Mavis again, with advice best categorised as "35 years ago". For the benefit of the doubt: DO NOT PRINT YOUR CHILD'S ADDRESS AND POSTCODE ON THEIR BICYCLE OR ANY OF THEIR PROPERTY.
If you want to pretend you are in my childhood living room (and why wouldn't you!) here is the ENTIRE TAPE to listen to, carols and all, so you can enjoy the cognitively dissonant, homely-yet-horrifying Christmas of your dreams. It's your problem now. https://www.mixcloud.com/darrellmaclaine/carols-at-christmas-featuring-the-cast-of-coronation-street-1985/
Okay, because some of you clearly want to sample the living Alf out of this, here's a WAV pack of all the links!
https://www.sendspace.com/file/ylxws0
https://www.sendspace.com/file/ylxws0
