RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Sky-high taxes, strikes, a Labour election landslide...
We've been here before - just enjoy this Sunny Afternoon By Richard Littlejohn for the Daily Mail Published: 17:21, 24 June 2024 | Updated: 18:23, 24 June 2024 e-mail 3 View comments The taxman's taken all my dough...
all I've got's this Sunny Afternoon. Whenever someone asks me how I've managed to write this column twice a week when there's nothing new in the world and we're all going to hell in a handcart, I reply, honestly: I put on The Kinks and start typing. There's something about the Ray Davies songbook which never fails to inspire me.
Sir Raymond Douglas Davies, to give him his full honorific, turned 80 at the weekend. It reminded me that he spent the evening of his 50th birthday doing a turn on my long-forgotten London Weekend Television song-and-dance show. As the late, great Michael Parkinson once told me: 'In our game, kid, you get paid to meet your heroes.
' The Kinks' Sunny Afternoon was the soundtrack of the summer of 1966 Sunny Afternoon was the soundtrack of the summer of 1966. Some people are on the pitch, etc. Those of us who were around at the time tend to recall that summer as an uninterrupted idyll of glorious weather, of England winning the World Cup, mini-skirts, Swinging London, Carnaby Street and Dedicated Followers Of Fashion.
But Sunny Afternoon was as much a lament as a celebration. It also marked the year when Labour won a 96-seat majority at the General Election , tension.
