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This blog posting has been welling up within me for some time. Please excuse any rage-induced incoherence.
I take seven or eight trips to Leeds each year - a journey that I can make with either Jet2 or Flybe. Both cost roughly the same amount when travel costs to from the airport is accounted for - so I used to just plump for whichever was flying at the most convenient time.
Then, a year ago, Jet2 started playing Radio Aire’s breakfast show at their hapless passengers during the flight, thanks to some particularly unimaginative cross-promotional deal. Faced with enduring an egregious blend of Smashey & Nicey style forced chuminess and breathless updates on whatever traffic jams had happened in Leeds that morning, I made the obvious choice to travel only with Flybe in future.
Since December, though, Flybe seem to be doing their best to get rid of me, too. Yes, kids, they’ve got themselves a piss-poort in-flight radio service. “ON THE AIR…. IN THE AIR!!!” yells the bloke who also does the links on the in-store radio in your local Spar corner shop. No, I’m not making this up.
Worse yet is the content of this “radio” service - namely, three songs played over and over and over again.
First up is the Kaiser Chief’s “Oh My God”, a particularly poor song that improves no end if you recite the lyrics in a sarcastic tone of voice (qv. Blur’s “Song #2”). Go on, try it: “Oh my gawd, I’m so excited. I’ve never been so far from home before.”. etc.
Next, the bastards choose to inflict on us a song that goes something like:
And so on. All very reasonable, you might think. Another song continuing the theme of travelling; very apt for an airline; etc; etc. BUT NO! YOU HAVE NOT YET UNDERSTOOD THE FULL HORROR OF WHAT I HAVE EXPERIENCED! For my textual representation of the song fails to convey the staggeringly poor technical ability of the “singer” responsible.
As a quick pronunciation guide, try to think of the “Hoo-oooh-ooome!” as sounding like a hyperactive 7 year old bullying a slow learner by pushing his lower lip out with his tongue and yelling “Duuurrrr-urrrr!”. The “Duurrrrrr-arrrrr-arrrrgh!” should sound similar to the noise made by an elderly dolphin experiencing the joys of reciving anal sex from a very large and well-endowed walrus for the first (and probably last) time in it’s life. Finally, the “Wuh Uh Wuhnnuh Guh!” component harks back to that hyperactive bully, this time putting on a deep voice and shouting “Duh! My name’s Billy Beggs and I can’t tie my own shoelaces!”.
Sounds astoundingly poor, yes? Yes.
Finally we reach the crowning achievement, the absolute pinnacle of the heap of shite that pours forth from the tinny speakers. A song sung in a peculiar strangulated style approximating that of upper class ladies in the 1930s by what appears to be a pre-Tony Hatch incarnation of Petula Clarke. The lyrics are as follows, and, I swear, they are absoltutely verbatim:
JESUS FUCK! JESUS FUCK! JESUS FUCK!
That’s not a fucking fact you fucking cretin! At very best, that’s merely a vague approximation - I should know, I dole out enough of ‘em myself. More likely yet is that it’s a finger-in-the-air guess, or even a complete fabrication. Certainly no sources are cited, and no original research on the matter appears to be forthcoming. Yet another repetition of the “ON THE AIR - IN THE AIR!!!!” slogan is the only explanation we get at the end.
What’s that? You suggest that she may merely be making use of poetic license?! Jesus fuck! Have you not read the lyrics? Let me repeat two key lines:
No, I’m sorry. Her poetic license has been revoked.
Obviously, both Jet2 and Flybe have decided to cater only for the mentally enfeebled. May I suggest that, if you do not count yourself as being amongst that group, you take a look at http://www.seat61.com/NorthernIreland.htm before making your next trip to Great Britain?