6th May What if the Hokey Cokey is what it's all about?


Oh Saturday night TOM and I went into Nottingham to see 'Flo and Joan', who are uhm how shall I describe them, a rather ascerbic but very funny comedy musical duo. They also happen to be sisters in real life.

Some of you might recognise them as they did a series of ads for the Nationwide Building Society a few years ago. Anyway we discovered them via an Amazon Prime special, and seeing as they reminded us both of Facsinating Aida, who Tom likes, we thought we'd give it a whirl live in the flesh.

Mixing whimsy, cynacism and a little self-deprecation,  quite how they manage to remember all the words to the songs they performed in one thing, how they actually manage to sing them is quite another. The linguistic dexterity and tongue-twisting lyrics of Carol The Cracker-Packer is probably the best example of their songwriting.  

And if the rhyme wasn’t already enough of an earworm, encouraging the audience to sing along at an increasing tempo further helped to drill the words into our brains. And just so those members of the audience who actually knew the lyrics didn't get too comfortable, Flo and Joan have added a further verse of even more cunning complexity just to ensure they retained the uppper hand.

Their songs also made us think. I mean what if putting our right hand in, your right hand out, in, out, in, out, shake it all about, do the Hokey Cokey and you turn around, really is what it's all about. Should we just stop stressing about everything else? It would make my life much simpler that's for certain.

In earlier shows they have simply relied on a piano, some mini egg shakers and a tamborine, but with this enlarged 2022 show the stage production has got decidedly bigger with a drum kit being thrown into the mix. Unfortuatly this had the effect of making some of the lyric hard to catch on the louder numbers especially if the laugter of the audience was added into the mix. I'm not sure how much TOM managed to hear even with his hearing aids set to maximum.

But it was a good night out, a chance to see something a little bit different and a chance to get back to doing something a little more normal. And so to finish, in honour of cracker packers everywhere, and I hope you have got your tongues and tonsils all ready to go...here is the lovely Carol...all together on the chorus.

She was Carol (Carol)

The cracker packer (the cracker packer)

She packs a cracking pack of crackers (She packs a cracking pack of crackers)

She's Carol, cracker packer, packs a cracking pack of crackers!


 



 

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