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According to Keith Allen, lead singer of Fat Les, legendary bassist Guy Pratt made more money from just being the producer of ‘Vindaloo’, the unofficial England World Cup song for the 1998 tournament, than from playing with Pink Floyd.
Despite some highbrow pundits attempting to elevate Vindaloo into a lofty comment on the English identity, perhaps on account of Blur’s Alex James and artist Damien Hirst also being part of the band, the song and accompanying video (a bizarre parody of The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony) made little sense, but it mattered not. Rhyme or reason might have been lacking: Allen later revealed that the entire concept of Vindaloo only came about because it was the only thing he – who, tipsy and hungry, co-wrote the song in Pratt’s basement after a night in The Star pub on Portabello Road – could think of to rhyme with Waterloo, the railway station from which Londoners then took the Eurostar to France and the tournament. Regardless, Vindaloo was a bonafide hit and such was the reach and popularity of the song that even the Scottish fans were caught copying the English tune (albeit amending the lyrics to ‘Irn-Bru’).
