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Liberal Democrat minister Norman Baker releases pop single 'Piccadilly Circus'

 

Daisy Wyatt
Monday 18 March 2013 11:05 EDT
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Lib Dem MP Norman Baker in the video for his single "Picadilly Circus"
Lib Dem MP Norman Baker in the video for his single "Picadilly Circus"

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Liberal Democrat junior transport minister Norman Baker has released a pop single with his band The Reform Club.

The 55-year-old MP for Lewes co-wrote the single “Piccadilly Circus” with his band mates.

He appears in the video for the song walking around the famous tourist hot spot in an open-necked shirt and black trilby.

The song does not obviously reference politics, aside from the lyric “Don’t get caught under flashing neon signs in recessionary times,” and a shot of a sign in the video that reads: “Jesus will soon come and sweep all politicians from power.”

“I wouldn’t write a song slagging off the prime minister. But I was never going to write about politics. That would be naff,” Baker told the Sunday Times.

Speaking on the Today Programme the junior transport minister said: “Music has always been very important to me. That’s what I like to do when I go home and switch off the day job.”

However, the Telegraph’s pop and rock critic Neil McCormick said on the show that the single shared the same opening chords from The Kinks' “Well Respected Man”, and told Baker “just because you can sing, doesn’t mean anyone else should have to listen.”

Baker has been a member of The Reform Club since the 1990s. He was elected Member of Parliament for Lewes in East Sussex in 1997, and was previously best known for his book The Strange Death of David Kelly.

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