Label: Pogo
Year of Release: 1978
When Jilted John's "Jilted John" stormed the UK Top Ten in 1978, it took on a life of its own. It was a fantastic and incredibly silly piece of work, taking the adolescent angst love songs of the permanently "friendzoned" Buzzcocks and giving them a suburban shopping parade spin. "I was so upset that I cried all the way to the chip shop" is now often quoted as one of the finest and funniest lines in rock music.
While Graham Fellows' career in music stalled (until much later on) and the subsequent "True Love Stories" LP failed to sell well, the Julie/ Gordon/ John love triangle clearly acted as an inspiration for others. As a result, an "answer" record was put out by Julie and Gordon and, er... it's a curiosity to say the least. Taking a similar style and tone to the original, Julie explains that Gordon only found out about Jilted John's song after finding it by accident on a pub jukebox, and was thoroughly bemused and hurt. To make matters more interesting, both Julie and Gordon have strong London accents rather than Manchester accents, despite the origins of the original track. I suppose the vast majority of record-buyers were none the wiser.
Fellows had absolutely no creative involvement with this record, which seems to be a parody of something which was clearly already a parody in the first place. Far more interesting, and with far more inspired quips and one-liners, is the B-side "I'm So Happy To Know You" where Gordon is asked by Julie to "do your Johnny Revolting". They seem like quite a sweet couple, really, if a bit dense.
Despite the fact that this failed to chart, there was a follow-up single following the further adventures of the couple entitled "J-J-Julie (Yippee Yula)", but that seems to have been the lot - and, on the audio evidence of that, quite right too.
Graham Fellows, meanwhile, eventually created the brilliant comedy character John Shuttleworth who continues to inspire to this day, and is occasionally heard to quip onstage: "That Jilted John - you don't hear much about him anymore, do you?"
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