JOHN MARTIN'S TALES

I was once professionally involved in not just one, but two, annoying jingles.

This was the mid-1980s, when I worked as a sub-editor on a newspaper in Launceston and was sometimes rostered on to a Saturday evening newspaper shift. If I was really unlucky, I’d be assigned to compile the afternoon’s horse-racing results.

Today, that information would arrive almost instantly via a computer feed.

Back then, our computers were only a little bit smarter than an abacus, and everything came in by telex — usually many hours after the event had finished.

Our aim was to go to press at 5pm with all the day’s football and racing results included. The paper would hit pubs and front steps by about 7pm. And bear in mind: all sport was played on Saturday afternoon in those days. This was long before the internet and 24-hour news channels, so if you wanted to know who won what, the newspaper was it.

Our workaround for the racing delay was charmingly low-tech. One of us would wear headphones and listen to radio 7EX’s Saturday afternoon sports show.

The show had two sponsors — a dry-cleaners called Morgan’s and a tailoring service whose name has mercifully escaped me — and their jingles were played relentlessly throughout the broadcast, always just before the next batch of race results.

This meant you could safely tune out most of the yabbering and get on with other tasks. But the moment a jingle kicked in, it was your cue to grab a pen and be ready to pinch the results live off the radio.

Whether I always wrote down the right numbers is another story. I suspect I was personally responsible for more than a few disappointed punters tearing up what they thought were winning tickets.

I’d love to say I’ve tracked down recordings of those jingles.

I haven’t.

Instead, I’ve picked out what may be the most persistent earworm ever inflicted on Tasmania.

From 1990 to 2013, there was a chain of discount stores across the state called Chickenfeed. They sold gaudy, cheap, and gloriously daggy junk — and they had a jingle to match: gaudy, daggy, and proudly C.H.E.E.P.

With its upbeat, sing-song delivery and chirpy chicken sound effects, the Chickenfeed jingle became utterly inescapable. It played on local radio and TV, blasted through store speakers, and lodged itself firmly in the Tasmanian psyche.

Kids mimicked it in schoolyards. Adults swore they hated it — and then caught themselves humming it anyway.

Even now, decades later, mention Chickenfeed to almost any Tasmanian and you’ll see the same reaction: a groan, a smile, and a tune they never quite managed to shake.

Some jingles fade away. Others stay with you for life.

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THE OFFENDING JINGLE

(listen at your own risk)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke1E0Exigic

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