Barry Booth - now that's what I call music

Somewhere in my stack of LPs I have an old record of Pete Atkin singing songs co-written by him and Clive James. I know it is an old record, because hovering in the background on the sleeve photo, behind a bearded and sprouting Atkin, you can see a rangy Clive James with a full head of hair, and that hasn't been something you could see for a long time.

It was recorded maybe 30 years ago, round about the late 1960s, and it reflects exactly the kind of stuff I was buying then – quirky, well-written songs with a bit of flavour about them. None of your supermarket rubbish – all hand-grown, farmers' market, organic kind of songs, which is why I liked people like Randy Newman, and Alan Price, and the Kinks, and the Bonzo Dog Band and... well, nobody else really, because there weren't any other people like that.

Am I right in saying that they don't have songs and bands and performers like that any more? I fear I am. No quirkiness, not much humour and not a lot of hand-carved songs, which I guess is why Pete Atkin and Clive James are needed back on the road again, and why there is still a continuing interest in such people as Flanders and Swann and Tom Lehrer, and why you can still get the Bonzos in a boxed set.

But there was always one LP that nobody ever mentioned, which I bought when it first came out in 1968 and which I still think was as quirky and attractive as anything from that period, and that was Diversions, by Barry Booth. The reason I bought it then was that all the lyrics were written by Terry Jones and Michael Palin, and I wanted to see what kind of lyric-writers these two comic chaps would make.

Pretty good, was the answer, but interestingly different. Terry's lyrics were more whimsical and skittish, with songs that tended to start:

O little butterfly
I wish that I
Could be more like you
Instead of being Henry Smith
And over five foot two.

Even when Terry was more sinister, he was still playfully sinister, as in his song about Henri Dupont...

For years, unspotted, Henri Dupont
Wheeled his barrow in Marseilles,
But at last fate overtook him
And they came to take him away.
Wheeled his barrow in the market,
Rose at six and went to work,
But at last they came to get him,
Six Israelis and a Turk...

Michael Palin was more domestic, with songs about men who are good with their hands, or a husband coming home to listen to his wife's teatime monologue ("I'll Listen"), but also interestingly introspective and moody ("Just get up in the morning and get back into bed...") or even worried about life:

Somebody make my mind up
Time's running out
Shall I buy the next round
Shall I live underground
Shall I be an actor
Shall I write a book?
Somebody make my mind up...

And he did become an actor, and he did write books...

But actually what really swung the LP for me was Barry Booth's music, which was as quirky as the words – lovely melody lines that went round the wrong corner and came back again, odd changes of time signature, fruity piano and arrangements, as well as his own sweet, oddly high voice. It must have been a good record, because for 30 years the tunes have been running through my mind, and at odd moments I find still myself singing things like:

After the War
Things were to be so different
A flat above the bakery with metal window frames
A job with boundless prospects
And teach the children games
Like Monopoly...

Which comes from from Terry's sad, sad song, "After the War".

It is very unfair to try to arouse readers' interest in a record that has been out of print for 30 years, so I can triumphantly reveal that Diversions has just been reissued on CMRCD404, on Castle Music Records, which is part of Sanctuary Records.

I learn from the notes that Barry Booth never intended to sing on the record, and when urged to do a tour to publicise it, politely declined. He has never, as far as I can make out, sung again, but has stuck to composing and playing.

If only his example had been followed by some more famous performers...