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Excellent!  I didn't think anybody would get that.  Long before my time - of course!

Here's an interesting factoid: His wife Mabel played the piano in the quizzes in later days, but when HAG started in 1946 the piano player was non other than the latterly famous Violet Carson, so maybe that harmonium in Coronation Street was there by request?

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14 hours ago, pilgrim said:

I'm sure there was a Sinatra song that had the refrain Scooby doobie doo ... enchanted evening perhaps ??..

The song was made famous in 1966 by Frank Sinatra, although it was initially given to Melina Mercouri, who thought that a man's vocals would suit more to the melody and therefore declined to sing it. Reaching number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 chart and the Easy Listening chart, it was the title song for Sinatra's 1966 album Strangers in the Night, which became his most commercially successful album. The song also reached number one on the UK Singles Chart.

Last few lines, without any rain, are :-

Love was just a glance away, a warm embracing dance away
Ever since that night
We've been together
Lovers at first sight
In love forever
It turned out so right
For strangers in the night

Doo-bee-doo-bee-doo
Doo-doo-dee-dah, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah

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The reason(s) behind the doo-bee.. are even more interesting.  Laters if no one can come up with them.

Amazingly the charting of this song in the UK and the final days of HAG are approximately time coincident.  Coincidence or not? ;)

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5 minutes ago, Canny lass said:

...I swear that when I looked at the weather 30 seconds ago it said "Smoke" and there was a symbol to match. Was it really there or should I take more water with the whisky?

It did.  Not the only town to have a smoke problem; I'm still kippered from last night on the bike!  Shower beckons!

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4 hours ago, Canny lass said:

Thank goodness for that! It would have been a shame to waste water!

So you know about the solar array then. :)

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7 hours ago, threegee said:

The reason(s) behind the doo-bee.. are even more interesting.  Laters if no one can come up with them.

Amazingly the charting of this song in the UK and the final days of HAG are approximately time coincident.  Coincidence or not? ;)

This was a big comeback song for Sinatra, becoming his first hit in 11 years. Sinatra despised the song, calling it "a piece of s--t = songfacts.com

Sinatra ad libbed at the end of the song and sang a sequence of nonsense syllables that could be transcribed as “do de do be do” or “do be do be do”,  for the closing scat.

Iwao Takamoto, the animator who created the cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, said that he got the inspiration to name his character from Sinatra's ad-lib.

It is often said that this tripartite list first appeared in men's toilets (bathroom stalls) in the 1960s or 1970s, but sometimes different authors were specified.

“To do is to be.” — Socrates
“To be or not to be.” — Shakespeare
“To be is to do.” — Sartre

Whilst whiling away the hours, smelling like some flowers, in the men's toilets, many additions were added to the above 

“Dooby dooby doo.” — Sinatra
“Yabba dabba doo” — Fred Flinstone
“Dabba dabba doo” — Kate Bush
“Do be a do be.” — Miss Louise, Romper Room
“Scooby-doobee-doo” — Scooby Doo
“Hey-boo-boo” — Yogi Bear

HAG ??/ Haven't A Guess.

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Yes, that's certainly part of it: he was contemptuous of it, but as it was his "comeback number" couldn't refuse to perform it.

Main thing is his producer rushed the recording because he didn't have an exclusive deal, and got wind of another major release by...  I forget who.  As there was no time to organise a proper song arranger Frank simply had to ad lib the ending.  It was recorded in only two straight takes and the best bits of each one quickly spliced.  Then the producer got air stewardess' at the local airport(s) to hand deliver pre-release copies to radio stations in different parts of the USA to get it on the air before the rival version. This obviously worked well for Frank.

It's actually a foreign song (the Balkans?) with English lyrics added later.  I'd heard of the Scooby Doo connection but was a little dubious. But, if there's attribution it's most probably correct.


HAG = Have A Go    Sorry, lazy typist at times!  :)

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