Today, or hereabouts, marks fifty years since the Wurzels had a UK Number One with Combine Harvester, their parody of Melanie's earlier hit Brand New Key, although memory insists that the group originally sang a rather different version in live performance, conveying the information that rather than pristine farming machinery their lead singer was merely in possession of a Brand New Pair of Underpants.
Let me say at once that I haven't heard the alternative lyrics for myself but I'm pretty sure that the existence of this ur-Harvester was reported in the music press at the time - or in one paper, at least. At the time I read most of them, however, and as I can't be certain of the date, nor how many of those publications might await me in digitised form in the British Library or elsewhere, it's not a search I feel particularly eager to begin - and if they haven't been digitised and I have to go through page after yellowing page then fuggedaboutit.
Once, when researching The Book What I Cowrote, I spent a fruitless day at the former newspaper library in Colindale, leafing through copies of the variety artists' paper The Performer. It was enjoyable enough as all sorts of interesting titbits presented themselves along the way, including a joke about the near-miraculous way in which a comedian well-known at the time had saved himself from drowning ("He clawed the d*mn pier"), but not a trace could be found of the vital clue which had been the purpose of my quest.
It had been a fair old journey too, and anticipating such a result I had been reluctant to go in the first place until my wily psittacine subject wore me down, assuring me it was "all in a good cause." One fellow-writer later commended said subject for his "impeccable" research, even telling him that they must, on occasion, have been in Colindale at the same time, too immersed in their respective investigations to be aware of each other's presence ... but no more o'that.
Let's fast forward to 2022 when, not having given them much thought in the intervening years, my thoughts turned once again to Somerset undergarments after I happened to purchase a Wurzels songbook from a well-known auction website.