Trevillion & Nine (with Deuce) - Anyone For Tennis

Novelty disc satirising Cliff Richard and Sue Barker's "relationship"

Label: Service

Year of Release: 1982

If there's one thing I love about novelty records, it's how timelocked so many of them are - so often dependant on the hot trends, catchphrases, follies or events of the few weeks or months around their release date that viewing them from five, ten or fifteen years distance can feel absurd, never mind forty.

 You could be forgiven for forgetting about the 1982 tabloid furore around Cliff Richard and Sue Barker's romantic relationship. Pictures of them playing tennis together - and never doing very much else, seemingly - littered the gossip pages and even the news stories for a season or two, with lots of desperate "are they or aren't they shagging?" speculation as the thinly disguised subtext, similar to the press stories about the pandas in London Zoo. As I remember it (and I really should thoroughly research this, but you'll hopefully forgive me for not wanting to waste too much of my life away) Cliff Richard denied all the speculations, arguing that Barker was just helping him develop his tennis skills. Hmm. It didn't sound plausible to some, but let's face it, it was almost certainly true and the pair seem strangely distant and barely mention each other these days, akin to the kind of relationship commonly enjoyed between sports trainer and their ex-client rather than two lovers.

That clearly didn't stop the media and public from peeking behind the hedgerows and into the tennis courts, though, and this single taps into that strange fascination by imagining what the tennis might be a metaphor for. All the puffing, panting and groaning from the balls being hit perhaps being a substitute for something else? 

These people had obviously put more thought into all this than I ever bothered to, and it's a very strange record indeed, taking whistled snippets of "Summer Holiday" at the start (without a songwriting credit, I notice) before leaning into what actually sounds like a very strange radio comedy sketch on 45. It was released on its own label, didn't sell in quantities which could even be described as miniscule, and made virtually zero impression on the public. Such is the fate of the novelty record that misfires and mistakes casual nosy interest for public obsession.

Strangely enough, though, the people behind it weren't music business shysters. Songwriter Keff McCulloch is perhaps best known to many corners of the internet as the creator of the 1987 Doctor Who theme and also (less famously) released the budget LP "The Synth Plays Prince" on Pickwick in 1991 (no, I don't have a copy). Paul Trevillion, on the other hand (partly responsible for "the concept") had a single called "Smile On" out on Pye in 1973, and another novelty record called "Bad Vibrations" done in a bad pub singer style in 1973 as well as the dancefloor/soccer crossover ditty "Pump Up The Ball" in 1988. 

Does this particular record make Cliff Richard cringe? I doubt he ever heard it, and if he had, I'm sure he would have just shook his head in a bemused fashion. On the other hand, my dog bloody loved the stereo panning effects when I played it, so it does at least have one fan.

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