Origin of Green Shirt

[johnfoyle]

Looking through photographer Chalkie Davies' Facebook photos I today noticed this -


19 March 2013

Reading that BBC Centre is closing for good this week I thought I might share this little anecdote. It was the night before they left for a gig in Dublin that started the British Tour and they had just played Chelsea on Top of the Pops, EC and I were sitting in reception waiting for a mini cab. Suddenly Angela Rippon appeared wearing a Green Shirt and walked right past us, we sat there with our mouths open in lust and shock. The next thing I know he's got his little notebook out and is scribbling down lyrics.


The Dublin gig was in March 1978 . Since 'Shirt was first performed in Portsmouth in April 1978 this seems a accurate source of some of the song's origins. The 'Quisling clinic' was , of course, inspired by the subsequent U.S. tour.

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... reen_Shirt

There's a smart young woman on a light blue screen
Who comes into my house every night
And she takes all the red, yellow, orange and green
And she turns them into black and white ... etc.


Ms Rippon in action in a green garment -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysVzc3hSB50


Though Chalkie says at the same f/book posting -

That's not the same shirt, she was wearing one with more buttons, a darker shade of green and no scarf.It's not a sight you forget. It was silk.

More likely, then, this ( also posted in a comment on f/book) -

[A rope leash]

I must now play the song.

Thank you.

[johnfoyle]

See review of the Plymouth show

[Otis Westinghouse]

Wow, I never knew Elvis had been inspired by Ms Rippon! I saw her recently at an awards do as compere. She was as elegant and slender as ever, with a pair of shiny silver shoes. no green shirt. This was a British Council event and was being broadcast on their site, and involved her telling a filthy if funny joke about a woman aspiring to be an oil pipe in the desert because it was lad by 250 men.

I wish he'd played this song in Cambridge.