my only escape from it all, watching a film or a face on a wall (13. 507)

On a recent long road trip, I contracted quite an earworm in the form of the Bananarama song “Robert De Niro’s Waiting…” when it came on the radio. Though not an unpleasant intrusion (in fact such randomness is quite welcome in an overly-curated environment), I was hoping to exorcise it with a little research, discovering that the lead single from the Irish-Anglo girl group—British-Hiberno? I wonder what that particular construction is called and as for girl group, Sara Dallin, Keren Woodward and Siobhan Fahey were true pioneers with an imprint—was supposedly lyrically meant to suggest something edgier and darker than their usual quirky pop-songs but was just about fandom and hero worship in the end.  The accompanying music video for Talking Italian was directed by Duncan Gibbins (making videos for Glen Frey, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Blow Monkeys, Wham! and others, Gibbins tragically perished in 1993 whilst trying to rescue his cat during a wildfire that engulfed Malibu, sustaining severe burns all over his body and jumping into a swimming pool, Gibbins contracted blood-poisoning from chlorine in the water—the cat was later found unharmed) portrays one of the band members being followed by mafia-presenting man for a possible hit. Unable to locate a De Niro lookalike, they used a John Travolta impersonator for the shoot, who ended up being the pizza-delivery that they had had summoned. Honoured that someone had written a song about him, the actor, the renowned up until that time for his roles in the Godfather sequel, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull hosted the band for dinner.