There are times when I wish I didn’t know him so well

Mar 19 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

THERE has been a tune going incessantly round and round in my head like an odd sock stuck in a perpetually turning washing machine somewhere in the caverns of Hell.

Few things are more annoying, although I admit the parents of the “schoolboy Dr Doolittle” featured in the papers last week, who has taken in more than 90 homeless pets, have a good trump card, as does the student who bought a laptop for £600 only to find out it was a bag of potatoes.

Then again, after the ninth day of “I know him so well” from the musical Chess, popping into my mind at inappropriate moments, such as the time my boyfriend accidentally painted the back of his head instead of the wall, the song-brain-thing must be a strong contender.

This particular choice (not that choice actually had anything to do with it) has been additionally infuriating because it is a duet.

I don’t understand the machinations of the brain that makes it possible to silently sing both parts of a duet in perfect harmony when I can barely manage one of them out loud, but right now, as they have been for the past week and a half, Barbara Dickson and Elaine Paige are battling it out vocally somewhere in my little grey cells.

Maybe singing duets inside your head must be something like dreaming in colour or in a foreign language – are we really able to do either of those things or do we just dream that we can?

However it works it is slowly driving me to distraction.

Even blasts of God Save the Queen (the Sex Pistols version) on my iPod or begging my colleagues to sing something (anything!) has not yet defeated Babs and Elaine.

The fatal flaw was in listening to the song in the first place, but it is my fame-aspiring friend’s audition piece and I was only trying to be supportive after accidentally revealing she would be in the older person’s group if she applied to X Factor.

She has wanted to be on the stage since she was a little girl and this is the first time she has done anything about it, apart from a few disastrous singing lessons with a woman who said she was part of the Beethoven family tree and only taught her hand and facial gestures.

Just in case success never comes, and I don’t mean to be pessimistic or cruel but so far her biggest role was as an extra in the school play, I have written her a musical that we performed at her 30th birthday party last weekend.

It is entirely her own musical, with her as the star, made even more suitable by the fact that her singing voice is far superior to those of the chorus (me and my other schoolfriends), except for the one who was once presented with Choir Girl of the Year by Esther Rantzen but doesn’t talk about it much now she’s in the Police.

I just about managed to write the spoken parts in rhyme but the music defeated me, so I took inspiration from the Liverpool Nativity and “borrowed” songs from other people.

And of course I Know Him So well had to feature, alongside other such greats as Pato Banton’s Baby Come Back and the theme tune from Fame.

Fortunately, my showbiz-obsessed friend loved it and is threatening to make us perform it at every social gathering until she’s 40, but I suspect the show was outshone by the Choir Girl rolling along the floor wrapped in bubble wrap after just a single vodka.

Personally, I would love to be friends with a star of musical theatre – front row seats to every show and the chance to go into one of those old-fashioned dressing rooms with lightbulbs around the mirrors (or do they only exist in films?). But she had better not audition for Chess or I will have to send a stunt double to go in my place.

lauradavis@dailypost.co.uk