Alex James says that having a long-lasting football record is half as good as having a good Christmas record, because whereas Jesus’ birthday rolls round once a year, a football tournament comes round every two. Not that the Blur bassist, coming off the back of a triumphant 2023 with the returning Britpop heroes, is moaning. As the co-writer of Fat Les’s Vindaloo, the spin-off rabble he formed with comedian and actor Keith Allen and artist Damien Hirst, James was the creator of one of football’s most enduring anthems, one that will be undoubtedly unavoidable over the coming weeks as England’s Euros campaign cranks into gear. Vindaloo stands alongside Lightning Seeds and Baddiel and Skinner’s Three Lions as one of the all-time great football songs, and James loves how it gets reignited as soon as tournament-season is underway.
“I know how Noddy Holder feels at Christmas!” James told The New Cue in 2022, just before the World Cup. “It’s really amazing. There was a new version of Vindaloo that I didn’t have anything to do with, with Keith Lemon and a bunch of people for the last Euros. England had a good win and I looked at my phone, I was looking at iTunes, and I was like ‘wow, it’s number three’, and it went up to number two whilst I was looking! Then one of my kids sent me a screenshot of iTunes and it was number one and it was number nine as well, both versions.”
James said the song’s persisting appeal was a testament to what he called the “just keep turning-up ethos of work”. “Looking back, it’s a miracle that it happened,” he recalled, explaining that the track had its origins in a trip him, Allen and Hirst took to watch Fulham at home to celebrate Allen’s birthday. “I remember Keith got a kind of hen party stretch limo and we went down to Craven Cottage to cheer Fulham on,” James recounted. “He liked wearing women’s underwear and standing on the terraces singing, taking cross-dressing to the masses. Ahead of his time really, quite provocative. So, me and him and Damien dressed up in some nice lingerie and piled down to Craven Cottage. We’re all absolutely bladdered wearing women’s underwear, freezing in the cold and there was a drummer just doing that beat that really invites chanting over it. The verse stuff that was the sort of thing you might start singing along to if you’re on the terrace, “Where on earth are you from?!”, a question and answer thing. Keith was like, ‘let’s do a football record!’.”
