A question for everyone out there: what is the link between the following two items......
Stumped? Well, I was surprised. The picture on the left is of a 'Chia Pet' (the hippo version, to be exact) which seem to be advertised non-stop here on TV in the run-up to Christmas. They seem to be like a mustard and cress grower, only they're meant to appeal to children, and you can get them in a number of shapes and sizes, ranging from pets, to farmyard animals, to heads, to Garfield.
The picture on the right is of the band Spooks, which until last night did not seem to be linked in any way to a cress growing hippo. However, during a period of music perusing last night, I happened to listen to 'Karma Hotel' and soon caught the lyric....Look at his chips, all that green growin' like Chia Pets....
It's true, you can listen to it yourself. I bet someone in Spooks owns one of these. Maybe they are even the brains behind cress growing beasts.
As an aside, why can't people who post lyrics on the web actually get them right? Ok, it is entirely possible that I am the one who has got them wrong, so let me admit this possibility first. But going through the Karma Hotel lyrics, I see that the generally accepted name of the person who lures Eve into having a risky orgy in the hotel is called Macristo. All these years, I have been singing Mephisto. And it seems to me that I am more likely to be right, since Mephisto (or Mephistopheles, if we're being pedantic) was the name of the devil in Faust who lured Faust into selling his soul. Which seems to be a better bet than singing about someone called Macristo, who sounds like an old scottish guy who wouldn't have much chance of being involved in a hot orgy.