Meatloaf

I absolutely loathe Meatloaf.

Not the foodstuff - I'm particularly partial to that as it happens, but the frilly shirted fat lad from Dallas.

Now it's nothing personal against the beefy hanky-waving, over-dramatic balladeer and provider of third rate over produced soft-rock twaddle. It's just that his music sucks big time.

The reason for this? Simple - Bat Out of Hell. A song that sends an almost terminal shiver of loathing down my spine every time I hear it. Let me explain why..

In the late 80's and early 90's I worked in my local pub, which had, as is customary in hostelries the length and breadth of the land, a jukebox.

Now if nobody put any money in this machine, it would "randomly" select tracks to play whilst waiting to relieve punters of their hard earned cash. Invariably this jukebox always chose a Meatloaf track to play and 90% of the time it would be Bat Out of Hell. This may seem like a cunning plan in many ways, as hearing a song that is so long and tedious that you could easily build, decorate and furnish a house during it's length would surely encourage people to pay to hear something less sh*te.

Believe me, if you are in a virtually empty pub for eight hours, repeated playing of this over-pomped bollocks is enough to either turn you into a fully-fledged dribbling mentalist, or cost you a small fortune in playing better songs.

What compounded this further, and thus turned a minor dislike into full hatred, was the fact that when the pub got busy and people put money into the jukebox, guess what was the most popular selection?

You got it - bloody Meatloaf.