Hello Dolly ... back where you belong

Hello Dolly ... back where you belong

It was good to see Dolly Parton receive such an enthusiastic reception from the 150,000-strong crowd at the muddy Glastonbury festival last weekend. I am not a huge fan of country music, but have always appreciated Dolly as an entertainer and songwriter. I much preferred her own low-key version of I Will Always Love You, which she wrote, to Whitney Houston’s massive hit.

It takes a brave woman at the age of 68 with assorted facelifts, boob-lifts and bottom-lifts, to dress up in a rhinestone-studded trouser suit and strut about in front of a huge crowd, most of whom weren’t even born when she was already making hit records.

Dolly has handled her fame well, particularly the jokes about her generous bosom. And it still happens. This week the Daily Star couldn’t resist the headline “Dolly Gets Her Big Hits Out”.

She acknowledges frequent visits to the plastic surgeon. As she explained to the New Yorker magazine “you owe it to people not to look like a dog if you can help it”.

Her self-deprecating humour has probably contributed to her longevity as a performer. As she remarked in splendid fashion, “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.”

Glorious mud

Glastonbury is synonymous with sloshing about in mud and the crowd appreciated Dolly writing a song — appropriately entitled Mud — on the subject shortly before she came on stage. “I was born in the country so this mud ain’t nothing new to me,” she told the audience.

Dolly is not the first person to write a song about mud. Fellow wrinklies might recall the Hippopotamus Song by Flanders and Swann which was quite a hit in Britain in the 1950s. The ditty featured hippos having bit of a party down by the river and contained a memorable refrain:

“Mud, mud, glorious mud!

There’s nothing quite like it for cooling the blood

So follow me follow, down to the hollow

And there let us wallow in glorious mud.”

Love Lane

The very mention of mud immediately brings memories of college days in Kingston upon Thames and our quaintly named Love Lane ground.

It featured The Muddiest Football Pitch in Southern England, not to mention a considerable slope which made you feel like you were always going uphill whichever way you were pointing.

The worst thing about playing was washing my filthy kit, which was always caked in thick Surrey clay. I must have spent half my time at Kingston sitting in lousy launderettes staring at my football kit spinning around. Okay, the other half was spent in the pub.

So what bliss it was, only a few years later in Bangkok, to have a maid do all that washing stuff. What a spoilt brat I became.

Trouserless in Bangkok

Thai mud is up there with the best, if a bit on the smelly side. I was playing at the Port Authority ground in Klong Toey one afternoon when it tipped down, turning the pitch into a mucky swamp.

I had to be at the Post’s nightly editorial conference at 5.30pm and was already late when I jumped in a taxi still with all my gear on and covered in mud.

I had no time to change and when I finally entered the meeting, was still caked in stinking mud and wearing a soggy football outfit. Everyone just turned and stared, some sniffing with disapproval. After the meeting, the editor drew me to one side and suggested that next time I wanted to make a grand entrance it would be nice if I could at least put on some trousers.

Cue for a song

Back to Dolly Parton, or at least her first name. Can’t say I know many people called Dolly, but I did meet a Dolly once, in the unlikeliest of places. It was a media trip to a new golf course in Kunming, China. At the first tee my Chinese caddy informed me her name was Dolly. From that moment I couldn’t get the Hello Dolly tune out of my head and even burst forth into song on occasions, prompting curious looks from my playing partners.

Dolly’s English was very limited but I didn’t mind because she said “good shot” every time I hit the ball, even when it squirted 20 yards into a ditch. Dolly also had a disarming way of apologising when I lost the ball. Emerging from the undergrowth for the umpteenth time, looking quite distraught she would say apologetically, “Sorry sir, no find ball.”

Poor Dolly spent the whole morning plunging down ravines, fishing balls out of lakes and groping about in the shoulder-high rough, hunting wayward shots. But at the end of the round Dolly was sporting a wide smile.

It wasn’t clear whether it was because she had enjoyed herself, or was simply hugely relieved that it was all over. I suspect it was the latter. Dolly received a big tip.

Feeling sheepish

Dolly Parton does have another claim to fame although she understandably doesn’t talk about it too much. She is the only celebrity to have a sheep named after her.

The sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal, was derived from mammary glands.

When the embryologist responsible was asked to give the creature a name he admitted that, for reasons which don’t need explaining, Dolly was the first name that sprung to mind.


Contact PostScript via email at oldcrutch@hotmail.com.

Roger Crutchley

Bangkok Post columnist

A long time popular Bangkok Post columnist. In 1994 he won the Ayumongkol Literary Award. For many years he was Sports Editor at the Bangkok Post.

Email : oldcrutch@gmail.com

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