Frankly if I have to have this stuck in my head, you have to too…

Published on 3 October 2011 in , , , , ,

Friday was an interesting day. I went out for a meeting, had lunch with some old work colleagues, came back early afternoon and was in an absolutely great mood. I was feeling pretty good.

In some sort of “relaxed, can’t be bothered to do anything, anyway it’s Friday afternoon” mood I ended up sat on the sofa reliving childhood theme tunes. And that’s where the clip above came in and it’s been stuck in my bloomin’ head ever since.

It’s the title sequence to Around the World with Willy Fogg, a 1980s masterpiece shown on CBBC which took Jules Verne’s classic novel and turned all the characters in to animals wearing waistcoats. The show was good but the theme is frankly genius in its way to get completely stuck in your mind, and even the really bad bits let you have no escape.

Take the really awful, flat singing of Princess Romy (“It’s my turn, the gentle touch, something something me so much”) for example. Whoever did that bit can’t sing for toffee yet no one seems to care. Then there’s the oddly pronounced fake upper-class accent of whoever played Willy Fogg (just listen to the way he strains out “right on time” and “we must be ready to go away”.)

The titles themselves don’t even match the lyrics. Characters mouths move with absolutely no relation to the tune at all. One minute Fogg’s “lips” will be moving lots, the next minute he’s just got an inane grin on his face. Okay it was a Spanish/Japanese co-production and I wouldn’t expect perfect lip sync but it was like they couldn’t be bothered to do things consistently. Indeed I’ve been trying to find a non-English version of the theme just to try and find out what the Spanish saw.

After much hunting I did at least find the Japanese version. And I think it’s fair to say we got off lightly…

All together now… Fogg. I’m the one who made the bet and I know we’ll be exactly right on time…

Update: after writing this I found the Spanish version about 3 minutes in to a montage of Spanish 80s cartoon title sequences. Faux opera? Nice…