Beware of the Bull: The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray

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In the midst of all this Thackray had an all-too-brief tenure as the resident minstrel, singing songs that were clever, funny, and poignant in equal measure. in which the song’s protagonist, a self-confessed misogynist, complains about certain women’s propensity to talk at length (“I love breasts and arms and ankles, elbows, knees / It’s the tongue, the tongue, the tongue on a woman that spoils the job for me”).

We’ve marched off and the way we march off, you’re supposed to think to yourselves, ‘Well, good God. Although the title track is a product of its time in terms of its misogynistic premise --a man’s complaint about his excessively talkative wife-- such is the skill and humour with which Thackray laments her incessant chatter that the cleverly comedic lyrics override misgivings about sexism. Above all, the book makes a very convincing case that the high-stakes use of the word 'genius' in the title is fully justified. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.His life revolved around Monmouth and its pubs, where he could still have the locals in fits of laughter with his tall tales.

Videos of Thackray during the period where he was, if not in actual decline, looking towards the stage exit, make for sad watching and reinforce McTell’s worries. It’s a theory strengthened by a story of McTell’s: “After one London gig we sat up late and I dug out my Randy Newman albums. Curiously enough, it was written around the time of punk rock, but its message is more genuinely anarchistic than anything the Sex Pistols ever came up with. This draining existence as a solo performer was somewhat alleviated when Thackray took on Alan Williams as a double-bass accompanist and the two men embarked on a series of adventures together.

It’s a genuinely moving revelation, and one that throws into sharper relief some of the murkier aspects of his later years.