Comedy Double: Tom Lehrer Special

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A bit late today, but I’ve been having so much fun with today’s I got carried away. Tom Lehrer, reclusive mathematician/satirist extraordinaire and putative inventor of the jello-shot is perennially popular; I noticed that a contestant on Mastermind had Lehrer as her specialist subject last week, and she couldn’t have been more than about 23, far too young to have been around in Lehrer’s hilarious heyday. Even though he now shuns publicity, I don’t think he’ll be forgotten anytime soon – in fact Lehrer translates very well indeed into YouTube.

Here’s a selection of Lehrer songs with video added, starting with “We’ll All Go Together” with what else (this being YouTube) but added Star Wars.

Next up, an nice little stop-go animation of the braintwisting ‘New Math”. I was among the first age group to be taught that way post-11 after being taught the old maths at primary school and the song perfectly sums up my utter bewilderment by it: my arithmetic was sound (good old rote learning), but new math’s the reason why I never studied maths, physics or natural sciences any further than secondary school. Damn the new maths for producing a half-generation confused by numbers.

No Lehrer compilation would be complete without ‘The Elements Song”. There’s quite a few video accompaniments to it available on YouTube, some good, some exceedingly lame, but to my mind this is the one of the best.

I used to love watching “The Electric Company’ with them when my kids were small and they loved it too so for us and them here’s a real blast from the past, with the Electric Company animation of Lehrer’s “Silent E”.

Lehrer did a lot of songs for the Electric company, here’s his song explaining the ‘sn’.

This next is the song that first made me interested in Lehrer when they played it on the BBC’s Family Favourites at Sunday lunchtime when I was little. The mere mention of Family Favourites gives a clue as to my great antiquity….

Anyway, here’s ‘Poisoning Pigeons In the Park’. There are lots of animations to it, even a Eurovision one (,em>why?)but I liked this one’s cheeky minimalism. Sometimes less is more.

To finish this Lehrerfest here’s the man himself in sparkling form, proof that political snark is for everyone including mathematicians. Here’s “Wernher Von Braun”.*

No bonus clips yet, the wireless is getting a bit flaky for video. I’ll post some later on when I’ve sorted it out.

Published by Palau

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, washed the t-shirt 23 times, threw the t-shirt in the ragbag, now I'm polishing furniture with it.

2 Comments

  • Ed - The Music Man

    July 27, 2007 at 11:50 am

    For me, the attraction to Tom Lehrer is that he is a wonderful comedian on a different level – a fabulously rich and wealthy mind behind the songs. I grew up with the Electric Company and never realised that he was behind some of these songs! It was Sesame Street at 9 and then the Electric Company to follow on the Children’s Television Workshop! Ed

  • Palau

    July 27, 2007 at 12:57 pm

    And then we had a glass of milk a cookie then a nap :)