Chelsea Girls

Is it possible for anyone to listen "Handbags and Gladrags" these days without thinking of "The Office"? It's sad when bad things happen to great songs – not that there's anything wrong with "The Office" – and the personal images they conjure up for you keep getting interrupted by things like dreary Slough roads.

The song was written by Mike D'Abo, lead singer of UK beat combo Manfred Mann, and is about the shallowness of being trendy and desiring expensive clobber. Even though it's actually aimed a teenager, it always made me think of a certain kind of girl you'd run into in bars and clubs around Chelsea and the posh bits of Fulham. Beautiful girls with names like Natasha and Amelia who had some vague job in magazine publishing and affected a devil-may-care, bohemian attitude which you knew was because they came from stinking rich families and could afford not to give a shit. Charlotte Rampling in "Georgy Girl" (above) reminds me of that type: a free-spirited princess with a vaguely plummy voice, perfect bones and lustrous hair. I can imagine her at 2am in the Cafe Des Artistes off the Fulham Road, chainsmoking Marlboro, dressed in something from Harvey Nichols, talking to me about me about the skiing trip she just came back from and I'm simultaneously thinking "Christ, you're annoying" and "Christ, I'd love to sleep with you."

Though Rod Stewart's version of the song is by far the best known (please don't mention Stereophonics when I'm in the room) I don't think a lot of people know that the original was by white soulster Chris Farlowe, he released it as a single in 1967 and it was only a minor hit. Farlowe's singing style might be a little overwrought for some – he sounds like he's going to burst his trousers on the line "they told me you missed school today" – but I love the hyper-passion he brings to it which matches the grand production perfectly. Even better, this version doesn't ever once make me think of Slough or Tim and Dawn.

Download: Handbags and Gladrags - Chris Farlowe (mp3)
Buy: "Handbags and Gladrags: The Immediate Collection" (album)