American singer-songwriter Barry Mann, who is best known for putting the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp, has been hospitalised with repetitive strain injury from the effects of shaking hands with the untold numbers of men who told him it made their baby fall in with love them.
‘It’s been a bit of a nightmare,’ said Mann from his bedside at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. ‘Scarcely a day has gone by since 1958 without some wiseacre coming up and pumping my hand for making his baby fall in love with him.
‘I mean, I grew up in 1950s America too, so I don’t have a particularly high regard for women, but even I didn’t think some dumb lyrics would have this effect on them. Not to mention the few hundred subsequently divorced men who have punched me in the face and told me I’d ruined their lives.'
Mann’s co-writer Gerry Goffin, who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop and the dip in the dip da dip da dip, died in 2014 after suffering twice as much hand shaking from loved-up seniors.
‘I suppose it’s as well I didn’t actually put the ram in the rama lama ding dong too,’ said Mann. ‘Especially considering that in the 1970s it emerged that Rama Lama Ding Dong is actually a woman. You can insert your own 'Welsh' joke here.’
Image by Marie Sjödin from Pixabay