Mandy leaves me quivering

Thanks a lot, Richard Peebles. After news reports that the Christchurch property developer played Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up back-to-back outside a central city real estate office to move along rough sleepers, I can’t get the ditty out of my mind.

While I don’t condone the use of earworm torture of homeless people, it was gratifying to hear that Peebles’ first choice – playing Radio New Zealand’s Concert Programme – went down a treat with rough sleepers, who found it soothing.

If this was Hollywood, a film would immediately be in production with a storyline about how an enlightened Kiwi symphony orchestra director, inspired by the good musical taste of Christchurch rough sleepers, decides to stage a concert dedicated to them.

Think The Fisher King crossed with Slumdog Millionaire with the film ending on the high note of homeless people dancing in the aisles to the orchestra’s updated version of Never Gonna Give You Up.

If you think that’s far-fetched, may I refer you to NZ Opera’s proposed production based on the notorious ‘‘unruly tourists’’.

Annoying music that’s not your cup of tea is no joke when it’s played repeatedly or loudly in the early hours of the morning by selfish neighbours. Last week Tristan Locke was given a life sentence for stabbing his neighbour Mark Cowling to death on Father’s Day 2020 after Cowling made repeated complaints to noise control about Locke’s loud music.

As reportage of the court trial was published, who didn’t feel for a young father at his wits’ end from lack of sleep, taking matters into his own hands and cutting off Locke’s power.

Noise as an instrument of torture is cruelly effective. If you wanted to turn me into a quivering wreck play me any of the following: Abba’s Super Trouper; Barry Manilow’s Mandy; Billy Ray Cyrus’s Achy Breaky Heart; Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On and On; and the theme music to Coronation Street.

Let’s not confine ourselves to music torture. There’s plenty of run-from-the-room screaming moments to be had from the sound of fingernails on a blackboard, constant sniffing, the mastication of a banana or an apple and stentorian snores, which could all be bundled together into a ripsnorting recorded medley to make one do one’s block.

And what about bad literature in the manner of a bedtime story read out loud in strong Kiwi patois complete with vocal fry and uptalk? I’m thinking instalments of 50 Shades of Grey, The Da Vinci Code, or the upcoming 2022 publication of an ‘‘intimate and heartfelt’’ memoir by Prince Harry.

As yet the Duke of Sussex’s proposed bio is untitled, but its publication, on track to coincide with the Queen’s platinum jubilee, hopefully won’t bea How I Sold My Own Grandmother.

Apparently, the bio will blah with the high and lows, the learned life lessons and early days with Princess Diana, his experiences in the military, and what it’s like to be a dad, all in the hope of making readers realise that we commoners and he have more in common than we thought.

Surely the 36-year-old, described in the publisher’s blurb as among ‘‘world renowned leaders, icons and change makers we have been privileged to publish’’, is way too young to be writing an autobiography of his life and times.

What will he fill it up with that hasn’t been covered off already? Hopefully not more hand grenades to be unpinned and lobbed at the royal family. Prediction? The remaindered copies bin a month after publication.