I Hate Mornings

Today I made a video (or a “music clip”, as the Australians would have it) for “Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall”:http://5090.fawm.org/songs.php?id=556, the second song I have written for the “50/90 Challenge”:http://www.ihatemornings.com/blog/im-going-to-write-50-songs-in-90-days. Shot entirely on location in rural Oxfordshire, it features several different fields, some sheep and even some lavender. Check it out:

I was going to include a load of explanatory photos to add to the comedy effect but I couldn’t bring myself to detract from the pure rural beauty of the raw footage, so I’ll explain here. Firstly, for those of you who don’t know who “Hugh”:http://www.rivercottage.net is:

!=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1408/1278066227_4029982030_m.jpg(Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall)!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/gazzat/1278066227/

bq.. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (born 14 January 1965) is a British celebrity chef, television presenter and “real food” campaigner, known for his back-to-basics philosophy.

On television, Fearnley-Whittingstall’s reputation is that of a eccentric chef. Initial exposure came in Cook on the Wild Side, an exploration of earthy cuisine. His habit of “picking up roadkill and eating the hedgerows [...] earned him his nickname of Hugh Fearlessly-Eatsitall”. He followed this with the series TV Dinners, during an episode of which he notoriously flambéed and puréed a human placenta which was served as a pâté and “much enjoyed by the baby’s family and friends”.

from Wikipedia

p. !=http://profile.ak.facebook.com/object3/1169/45/n17808140565_1594.jpg(RowanBailey)!:http://www.rowanbailey.com

I was introduced to Hugh by my friend Rowan, who recently appeared out of the blue on the Channel 4 reality holiday show Shipwrecked. Back when we were in a band together, Rowan used to bring bags of videos to the studio and make us all watch alternating episodes of “River Cottage”:http://www.rivercottage.net and “Ultimate Wrestling”:http://www.ultimatewrestlingfederation.com/, in which fighters from every discipline would be pitched against each other in a battle to the death. Or so it seemed. Lucky for me, I repressed all memories of Ultimate Wrestling until recently and instead concentrated on the rural, organic idealism of the Hugh.

There’s a line in the song that says “he grows PSB(Purple Sprouting Broccoli) in the shade of a tree”. If you haven’t tried locally grown Purple Sprouting Broccoli, you haven’t lived:

!=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2410/2078075990_776d087eea_m.jpg(Purple Sprouting Broccoli)!:http://flickr.com/photos/wordridden/2078075990/

I also mention that Hugh can tell his woodcock from his snipe. Can you?:

!=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3007/2378726692_17cdc82397_m.jpg(This is a woodcock!)!:http://flickr.com/photos/73899863@N00/2378726692/

!=http://farm1.static.flickr.com/102/310581998_806abfcd91_m.jpg(This is a snipe!)!:http://flickr.com/photos/peturgauti/310581998/

And while we’re at it, to pass the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall chicken test, can you tell the difference between battery farmed and free range chicken?:

!=http://farm1.static.flickr.com/118/270583903_7aa7d8b73f_m.jpg(Free range)!:http://flickr.com/photos/ciordia/270583903/

!=http://farm1.static.flickr.com/56/150625780_a815c27cac_m.jpg(Not free range…)!:http://flickr.com/photos/rideyourbike/150625780/

That’s probably enough quasi-educational rambling for now. I hope you enjoyed the song and the video. And if you happen to run into Hugh in your local Tesco car park, be sure to tell him about it…

[thanks Flickr for the Creative Commons licensed photos. Click the images for originals.]