The Phonebox Podcast With Emma Conway - James B Partridge: Primary Assembly Bangers!

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Dress up as a wise man, sit on someone, pretend they are a donkey and join in with some CLASSIC primary school nativity songs with the amazing James B Partridge! We also discuss his top five primary school bangers...all together "I AM THE LORD OF THE DANCE SAID HE!".Follow James on instagram here go and find him on TikTok here and be sure to go and seem him on tour here.Grab your tickets to The Phonebox Podcast Christmas quiz here! https://10yearsofbrum.eventbrite.co.ukFor more of me follow @brummymummyof2 on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok and follow the all new @phoneboxpodcast account on InstagramIf you have any guest suggestions, topics you would like me to cover or send in a Christmas story voice note to be featured, email [e-mail] and be sure to tag so I can see where you are listening!Editing by Soundtruism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem?

Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hello James and welcome to the Phone Box podcast. I saw you on TikTok and I watch TikToks at like four o'clock in the morning because I'm just always awake and I was overjoyed by what I saw it's the time to do it 4am is the best time to consume all of this stuff they just get into a rabbit hole just like right I need more I need more of this scrolling away just I prefer primary school TikTok you know like songs than murder talk so I thought I felt like that was a positive one I've actually not made it onto murder talk yet my. My TikTok feed is like 90% cats at the moment.

Oh, yeah. I have a lot of dogs being reunited with soldiers in America that went to war. Right. Very niche, but very good. And it makes me cry every single time. So, guys, when I saw James on TikTok, I knew you'd love him. Would you cast yourself as like, it knew you'd love him he is would you cast yourself as like it's not a comedy act what would you say it's kind of a weird crossover

between it is there's there's definitely comedy in it but it's kind of like sing-along meets comedy uh meets kind of storytelling and like it's almost like a theater kind of thing in a way okay and you're traveling all around the country aren't you yeah exactly but on on TikTok itself it is kind of like just kind of leaning into the nostalgia, leaning into like, it is like the humour behind some of the stuff we did at school and like a lot of the songs we sang at school. But very much from a kind of like a loving way. It's not kind of say, oh, this was rubbish kind of thing.

It was actually like, this was great. And it brought us a lot of joy and kind of positivity. Nostalgia is embracing the fact that a lot of it was crap but that that was good yeah exactly that's fine like stuff being a bit crap and a bit naff and a bit rubbish is just is just what the heart this whole podcast is about everything on it is a bit naff and that is what we are here for so what year were you 14 uh so I turned 14 in January 2005 okay so you survived the millennium nothing happened I survived the millennium I got through it um but I I have a real kind of soft spot and fondness for the 90s because I grew up in the 90s and all of my formative memories were

in the 90s so I kind of feel like I associate myself more with the 90s than with the noughties oh brilliant um I love it even though 10 85 kind of came of age in the in the 2000s I think my heart is really in the 90s well you are in the right place okay what kind of music from the 90s did you like then when people say what's your guilty pleasure I would say that I was secretly one of the biggest fans of S Club 7. That's not a guilty pleasure. That's just a pleasure. It's a pleasure. Well, as someone said, there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure.

And S Club were very much kind of my pop band. I think it was like 98, 99, they kind of came out to that, like on the cusp of the millennium, I think. And then I would always get my friends together and we would be S Club 7 and we'd always choose you know who would you be who would you pretend to be let me guess let me guess were you pretending to be Paul I do what I actually always pretend to be Bradley because Bradley's got what is it Bradley's got that thing what's the some sort of line is it

that Bradley's doing his thing I can't even remember it now I mean Joe's got the flow Joe's got the flow obviously Joe's got the flow, obviously. Joe's got the flow. You've got to go. Some of the listeners are going to be listening like, I know every one of these. They will be screaming Bradley. So you pretend to be Bradley because you wanted to do some dance moves, I presume.

I think also because my middle name is Bradley. It's fate. It was fate. It was fate. And I just thought he was the coolest one. So I wanted to be the coolest one. So that's why I chose Bradley. Did you watch the TV programme?

I did. Miami 7, right? Yeah, I was a bit too old for that, but I do remember it being. I love S Club, but even now, if S Club, there ain't no party like an S Club party comes on, you just, you've got to go for it. Have you begun to see them on tour this time around i haven't got around to it actually but um in in the show that i've been doing i do i do have an s club section in in actually both so i've got two shows at the moment so i've just written a christmasy one a christmas themed one so i do a bit of uh never had a dream come true it's a classic which which is great but although it wasn't actually christmas number one i i in my mind i always thought it was christmas number one what was number one that in my mind, I always thought it was Christmas number one. What was number one that year? I'll tell you. So basically it was number one at the beginning of December, but only for one week.

And then it was knocked off the number one spot by the, you know, the cheery festive classic, Stan by Eminem. You know, a song, a cheery song about a crazed superfan killing his pregnant wife I have rewritten history in my head because I don't remember any of that

I just remember S Club 7 that song Stan wasn't number one either so there was actually two weeks after S Club 7 so then it was Stan

and then number one in the year 2000 was Bob the Builder that's terrible yeah can we fix it look you know we said some things are crap and we like

them some things are just crap yeah and bob the builder was just oh that was number one that's terrible that's a terrible christmas number one we can also just acknowledge how that meant all the charts were in those days you'd have like s club followed by uh eminem followed by bob the builder and we had mr blobby popped up at some point and he just absolutely rocked the world. 93, Mr. Blobby. I went to a take. No, it was like

we used to do like teenage under 18 like roadshows one Christmas and Mr. Blobby turned up. Oh, we rioted. What a joy. Seeing Mr. Blobby

on the stage, it was just absolute dream. This year, we don't know what's going to be number one, do we? Because Lad Baby

aren't doing it this year. We're not having any more sausage rolls. No, I have no idea. we don't know what's going to be number one do because lad baby we're not we're not having any more sausage rolls um no i have no idea i don't even know who's in the running i think sam rider's gonna try for it uh which could be good actually yeah i like sam rider it will be interesting because we've not got an x factor and we've not got um a sausage song so yeah it's just maybe i should release maybe i'll just do one yeah i could release bob the builder again there we go bring it back i think it's all about the revival it'll be like band-aid you know they do it every like 20 years so yeah yeah i love the band-aid my favorite is with bros and kylie that's an absolutely terrible one but it's the one i love okay so where did you grow up i grew up in pool in dorset okay so on the south coast and um and

then i'll then now now i'm in london eventually i'll i'll escape london and get get out at some point but yeah yeah i grew up in pool was it nice around there yeah it was i mean it was um i think like the big the big perk about growing up down there is that we would have our summers at the beach and um we kind of like rented a little beach hut with another family and just all of us i've got three brothers as well so we'd all pile into this little tiny little beach hut and then i just literally spend every single summer at the beach not really doing very much um and then as you got older you get the beach parties and you get like the barbecues down a beach and all the craziness that comes with that. Living in Birmingham, there's no beach. The beach is days away.

I think the fact is we're the furthest away from the sea anywhere in England. We've got canals, more canals than Venice. Which is the fact that everybody knows we've got more canals than Venice. But no, it's terrible. Were you allowed posters on your wall? And if so, it's terrible. Were you allowed posters on your wall? And if so, what were they? I was allowed posters on my wall. My bedroom growing up, I lived in this,

I grew up, well, as I said, I had three brothers. So we shared rooms for quite a long time. And eventually I did get my own room, but it was kind of like Harry Potter in terms of its like space. It was very, very small. I could pretty much touch all the walls, like just standing in the middle of it.

But every single inch of my bedroom wall was covered in posters band posters and which ones so this was i eventually got my own room when i was about 13 14 so uh at that point i started getting into like rock music and kind of like emo and all that kind of stuff and pop punk and so i had i used to get kerrang magazine every week yeah um and and also enemy sometimes and it would be like all the bat like green day blatant 182 some 41 all of those kind of like rocky bands i would have them all over the literally every inch of my wall was covered and um but the hilarious thing is now those bands those fans are like called Dad Rock. Yeah, he's a bit Dad Rock-y.

On Spotify, it came up with like, you know, playlists you might like. And it said Dad Rock. And I was like, okay. We used to buy my dad a Dad Rock CD every year. And it'd be all the classic bands from the 70s and stuff. And I clicked on the Dad Rock album and the first track was Teenage Dirtbag. You're now ventured into Dad Rock. How do you feel about this change of events? Are you embracing Dad Rock? I don't know what Spotify knows that I don't but I don't have a kid.

Okay did you have any crushes on your wall or was it just rock? I mean most of the bands at that time were kind of like moody men in their 20s so i don't really have much of a crush on them but i mean some of them had like eyeliner they look pretty good with their like black hair over their eyes and stuff like that i think i think my first um my first proper kind of crush like awakening i guess would be um jessica rabbit in who framed roger rabbit have you seen that film? Of course I've seen that film. It's an absolute... Do you know what?

I need to show my kids that film. But then again, it's actually quite scary. It is scary. Yeah. Yeah. It's the baddie with the... Has he got funny eyes, the baddie? And is there some sort of slime involved or something?

It's the guy from Back to the Future, Doc Brown. Yeah. Is it Christopher Lloyd? Yeah. Is that his name? And he's very creepy. I can't remember the name. I think it's like the toy killer or the cartoon killer or something like that.

And he dips them in this kind of like acid that dissolves them. I used to love that film. I used to watch that all the time. They're the kind of kids films that wouldn't be made today. No. I think we need some more of it oh we need some we need some films to scare the kids in disneyland in california um they do like halloween nights and he's one of the characters you can meet and he did look absolutely terrifying maybe i should show because mine are like mine are tina erin's new 13 so maybe i should

show her that but i still think she'd be a little bit freaked out by it. But Jessica Rabbit, she's a classic. I think if you went to Halloween night and saw that, the parents would be more scared of it than the kids. The kids would probably be thinking, oh, who's that guy? And all the parents are kind of getting this PTSD from when they're a kid. That guy that killed all of our favourite cartoons, like dipping Mickey Mouse in it.

It's like, do you recall, it's not the chitty chitty bang bang yes child catcher yes terrifying do you know what i actually put up a clip from chitty bang bang on my instagram story yesterday because i was teaching one of the songs and i was like this this film is such a classic film and it's quite underrated it's not really like i don't think it's on any like streaming services or anything and it's not a disney film so it's not on like disney plus or anything but it's a great movie but then when you think about it there's a guy that literally goes around like abducting children putting them in the back of the van and like putting them in a dungeon absolutely terrifying they once in birmingham you know the toots toot sweet yeah yeah they had the original toot sweet

machine no way um a museum and i took my kids to see it and they couldn't have given less of a toss. I was like, look, it's the machine and they were like, what are you,

I was like, you know, Tutu Sweet and they were like, what are you talking about? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is brilliant which is the dolly as well.

That wasn't to do with like Cabri World because that's Birmingham isn't it? Birmingham is Cabri World, no, they did not have the Tutu Sweet Machine.

I think it was just in the normal museum but the Cab, if you think, if you've never been to Cabri World, Cabri World. That's Birmingham, isn't it? Birmingham is Cabri World. No, they did not have the Tootsweet machine. I think it was just in the normal museum. But if you've never been to Cabri World, Cabri World, if you're listening, I love you. It's not like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Don't be rocking up thinking you can lick the walls or there's Oompa Loompas. You get a tiny bit of free chocolate

and you look at some machines. Do you know what? I went a couple of times when I was younger and I feel like the first time I went, maybe it was just because i was young but i seem to remember it being like really magical and they're being like the fudge machine and you got all these chocolates and then the next time i went i was probably about 14 and that was quite depressing they're like here have one crunchy half a crunchy ration it share it with your friends but it is great you know we've not got much going in birmingham but we have got cover and also all around there bourneville smells of chocolate

which is absolutely delightful okay so question was jessica rabbit did you have any fashion faux pars um i i honestly think that the fashion faux pas i had i still kind of have which is wearing like skinny jeans there's nothing wrong with a skinny jeep there was a time and a place for like skinny jeans on men like very skinny jeans and then i just did i think out out of kind of loyalty i didn't want to throw them away or give their way to charities so i just kind of kept them and now it but it's gone the other way now because the gen z is all wearing like flares basically like very like like bell bottom jeans and all that kind of stuff likes, the ones that get rain at the bottom and it just soaks it all up and goes all, like,

scruffily at the bottom. And I think one with this skinny jean, they're not crop skinny jeans. I'm not a huge fan of them. No. Are you wearing a crop skinny jean? You're looking like you might, you've got a pair on now. I've got some, like, kind of cool tartany things going on.

But these are quite skinny. Oh, no, cool tartany things going on. But these are, these are quite skinny. These are pretty skinny. But another, skinny's fine. Another, well, I don't know if it was a faux pas

or if it was just a fashion at the time. It was just like, I had my, I had like a black shirt with flames on it that I used to love. And I used to have like, loads of chains hanging off my jeans as well. I think when we got to like 2001,

2002, that was kind of the territory of like loads of chains hanging off my jeans as well i think when we got to like 2001 2002 that was kind of the territory of like it was like rap meets kind of like new metal culture where everyone just wore loads of chains yeah where did you buy chains from you wouldn't be going to h&m and getting some chains no they had there were special shops there was like the the emo shop or whatever i remember in pool i can't remember it was cool but we used to get stuff from there that's where you get the black shirt with flames flames on the bottom of it see a black shirt from flames is in my head one of the members of five might also have worn that maybe jay because he was a little bit he was a bit of the bad one jay definitely would have would have i did i did love five they were great weren't they okay so did you have any fashion

then we know you're wearing skinny jeans but is there anything then that you'd still wear now of would have i did i did love five they were great weren't they okay so did you have any fashion then we know you're wearing skinny jeans but is there anything then that you'd still wear now apart from the skinny jeans i remember i got one of my favorite items of clothing i got as a teenager was um i had like a bright red adidas tracky like hoodie and i absolutely loved it and wore it all the time and i don't know where it's gone i've lost it over the years but i would definitely wear that now and my daughter has got like she's like nearly a teenager she's got adidas stuff and my um son has aspirin adidas tracksuit for Christmas nice everything just comes it all goes round in circles and circles and circles okay so when did you start

to get interested in like primary school songs? What clicked in your head and you were like, this is fun. So I've been teaching in primary schools for the last nearly 10 years now from like 2013, 2014. Kind of teaching music, teaching singing. And so I actually teach a lot of the songs that we used to sing at school. So for me, it was kind of like, it was nostalgic, but I get that nostalgia fix by passing it on in a way but by teaching some of these songs but the thing for me that really clicked was um i got a copy of i know that this is a podcast so you won't be able to see it but um i got a copy of this book which was called come and praise and it was like the complete piano edition basically and i opened up the contents

page and i looked at all the songs in here and like literally just going through from number one you've got like morning is broken water of life all things bright and beautiful autumn days like all these classics and i i opened up this book that i found at school and i was like oh my god this is just like taking me literally transporting me like back to when i was you know belting out these songs cross-legged on the school floor, basically. Yeah. enjoy the number one feeling winning in an exciting live dealer studio exclusively on fan duel casino where winning is undefeated 19 plus and physically located in ontario gambling problem call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca please play responsibly

everyone's a banger as well everyone is an absolute bomb so did they still learn the songs that so i obviously i learned these songs you know 10 years before you and then you learned these songs and then the kids still learning the same songs i think it depends on the school to be honest i think some schools they do especially if you've got a music teacher that's like piano player or if you've got a music teacher that is like particularly into these songs, then or if it's maybe it's like a C of E school or something like that, then you might do. But I think times are changing a bit.

So because a lot of the songs did have like a religious element to it, a lot of schools don't do them now. And which is a shame in a way. And I do obviously understand it, but they are just like great tunes. So it's a shame not to just, you know, even if you like are religious or not it's just fun to build them out i'm not religious in any way shape or form but on good friday i'm singing lord of the dance nobody's gonna stop me i'm screaming at my kids i danced on the final when the sky was black it's hard to dance with the devil on your back screaming at my kids they're looking terrified

what are you talking about i'm like everybody should know this song. Yeah. Lord of the Dance is a classic. It is a classic. It's one of my top five. It like, it could even be like the top, top tune. Ah,

Lord of the Dance. It's because it takes you on a bit of a journey. There's a dark element to it. It's just an absolute, I love it. In fact, I think a lot of the weddings

I went to when everybody was getting married had the Lord of the Dance as a name. See, I got married at Christmas. It's just, it is a great tune. It's a great bop. And I like the drama. There was one song,

I've had a few people send in a few songs because I was like, what songs do we want to talk about? There was one song that people found a bit scary, which had in, do you remember this? I was cold, I was naked. Were you there? Were you there? Yeah. So that song was called When I Needed a Neighbour. had in do you remember this i was cold i was naked were you there were you there yeah so that

that song was called uh when i needed a neighbor and so i i do it as part of my show and then when it gets to the third verse there's the there's the core there's the verse which is i was cold i was naked were you there and because at school we used to find hilarious that we were singing the word naked i get everyone in the room to shout the word naked when we get to naked. And it's great. Everyone loves it. I would be really howling with laughter. Are you naked?

Were you there? It's a little bit of a scary element for five-year-olds to be singing. Do you know what? Some of the lyrics are quite dark for some of these. It's hard to dance with the devil on your back also is a little bit terrifying there's a song which is called cross over the road my friend and like one of the verses is like would you walk by on the other side when starving children cried and things like this and it's like it's some of these lyrics do get pretty dark it has another great oh

my gosh there's so many great songs i one of my favorite is um did you ever do you know and the painted matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs have you ever heard that one do you know what i i actually don't know that one but i have had a message from someone asking if i knew it and i was like i don't think i do it's one of those ones that i think it's probably in a book somewhere but i think i think it's maybe an old one and I think it was based on terrifying pictures of Max Schtick people. You know, it was a classic and I enjoyed belting that out. So what would you say is the top five that you get requested or that you get the best interaction? So I did actually make like a top 10 video.

That's kind of like the first. So like you asked like where this all kind of came from. Basically, I kind of was reflecting on it during lockdown. I was doing a lot of online teaching and then I started doing a TikTok channel. I thought, oh, it'd be quite funny to do like a top 10 of primary school assembly bangers. And I saw a couple of other people had done like all their favorite school songs. And I thought, oh, I actually know how to play them on the piano. So I thought it'd be quite fun to actually just play them and I did make a top 10 and then my top five were

uh Autumn Days, Lord of the Dance, This Little Light of Mine, Give Me Oil in My Lamp Keep Me Burning and then Shine Jesus Shine is that one that you sang? All just wonderful songs and you'd be sat there you'd be sat and your bum would be cold because i was in a skirt unless you were like sometimes when you got to year six you're allowed to sit on a chair which is a real or the bench at the back yeah the bench and if you got the bit at the end where it had like the little two lumps you'd have to sit with one of them up your bum um but those were i think they're pretty much what people sent me in me into got um one more step along the world i go yeah that one keep give me oil in my lamp keep me burning

and it's this is a strange one i'm an alien creature do you know that song was that a request or is that someone just confessing i don't know um no she said i'm an alien creature please tell me other people know this banger no that's not one i know unfortunately no i i need to get a list of all these like really obscure ones and i could just do like a top 10 obscure songs yeah that'd be good i'll share your top 10 is it still on tiktok on instagram i'll share it so people can see yeah yeah yeah yeah lord of the dance magic penny oh what's magic Penny? How does that go? It just so happens I've got the piano in front of me. Excellent. So that goes down.

Love is something if you give it away. Give it away. Give it away. Love is something if you give it away. You end up having no. There we go. That was a really nice song. That wasn't a... It's very wholesome. Yeah, that is a really nice song that wasn't it's great it's very wholesome yeah that

is a really nice song oh there was some hang on what else we've got that was a great one obviously cauliflower sluffy which seems to be that wasn't in your top five was it cauliflower sluffy do you know what i actually didn't even put it in my top 10 um which is really really controversial but uh the reason is we actually never sang that song at school i never sang it at school i i learned it only like a few years ago i'm sure i sang it at school it wasn't one of our harvest bangers yeah cauliflower is fluffy and cabbage is green strawberries are sweeter than any of the i know and the broad beans have been in a blanket yeah yeah we so i wonder if there's like a regional divide as to where these songs were strawberries are sweeter than any of the, I know, and the broad beans are sipping in a blanket. Yeah.

Yeah, we saw that. I wonder if there's like a regional divide as to where these songs were sung. Like, where, I don't know. The more I think about- It'd be interesting to know. Yeah, the more I think about the Matchstick Men, I think that feels like it might be like a black country going down to mine's kind of-

Well, there's that painting, that Lowry painting with all the Matchstick Men. That's Manchester, isn't it? Oh, well, that's what it must have been about that'd be like north yeah like a north um we would have no idea what that was about in Paul Wendell's story far away they're like come on kids let's let's think about going down to mines well I was thinking about going down to beach yeah it'd be interesting there probably is a bit of a divide because sometimes i have words like we use in birmingham for forward roles we use the word gamble have you ever heard that before no that's a prime prime school teacher

be like come on kids do gamble and until you meet other people you think everybody says the word gamble i saw a picture on instagram i think it's like what did you call this and it's someone And until you meet other people, you think everybody says the word Gambole. I saw a picture on Instagram, I think it was like, what did you call this? And it's someone holding up a piece of bread with chips in it. And it's like, what did you call it? And then everyone's like got their own terms for it. Yeah, there's like bath, carb, all sorts of things. Chip buttery. Yeah.

We have Gambole. And also in Birmingham, in primary schools, we spell the word mom, M-O-M. And I could not get, i'd always try and go and buy my mama mother's day card i'm like why does it say to me why is it all these cards spelt wrong no we just spell it wrong we just spell it wrong in birmingham so it's spelt m-o-m all the primary school kids every mother's day card you get is to mom it's because i suppose it's the way it's like an american thing isn't it like in america they do mo yeah but when we are in birmingham but until you meet other people so obviously when i started a blog i started to meet other other mums and and then they were like a bit confused about

my spelling of certain words um and in in uh west london where i am now they say mom m-a-a-m do that mom that's like what i'd say to the queen or the queen wouldn't come in now would she because she passed if Camilla came in I'd say mom no we say we say mom okay so mummy oh yes mummy and we're going to be talking about nativities so nativities are they still going strong in the primary schools that you've been visiting definitely they they are I wonder whether some of the characters have been kind of like slightly phased out because like who i've not seen so many tea towels wrapped around heads recently um i mean i guess it's not the most culturally you know sensitive portrayal of middle eastern shepherds out there but um no it's not but

also we've got asda now and you just go and buy them for £12. Yeah. In the olden days, you'd have a tea towel or you'd have, I was Mary probably in the blue sheet. But now you can just go to Sainsbury's, £12, Mary outfit. Thank you very much. I was always one of the wise men. So I always had to make a paper crown. My daughter a few years ago, I love her. And if she's listening back to this when you're older this is a lovely story but you were very wrong she got very aggressively angry that it was wise men and white women can be wise just women could and i was like well they're technically they were men but no but women can so she asked to be a wise woman. So she was a wise woman with the wise men,

rocked up with a crown and everything. There we go. So, yeah, I mean, it's not what the story was, but she took a stand. You do get some interesting characters in the nativity now. You know, the classic lobster from Love Actually. What's the lobster about? Why is that in a nativity?

I have no idea or space space people and stuff not like i like a classic nativity to be fair i used to think it was frank not frankincense that they brought i used to think the wise men brought frankenstein to the nativity so you'd have all these different characters it basically just be a fancy dress part you've got the wise men you've got a shepherd you've got the little drummer boy smashing out a drum solo in the corner you've got the frankenstein standing there it was yeah they just are this is my my son's last year at primary school so i will be doing all the sobs at the nativity it is i've had my daughter was mary and my son was joseph so i feel like i've basically reached the pinnacle of all parenting.

I managed to get them to start the star roles. Okay, so what are some of your favourite Nativity songs? If you think more traditional songs you've got Away in a Manger, Silent Night, all of those sorts of ones. There's some older ones as well that are really nice

songs like It Was on a Starry Night. Do you know that one? No, how does it go? Okay, I'll give you a little snippet so hopefully a few people in this game will know this one. It goes... It was on a starry night when the hills were bright I'll skip to the chorus, it goes

And all the angels sang for him The bells of heaven rang for him For a boy was born King of all the world That is a lovely song. Yeah. That's a really nice one. It's a beautiful one.

And it kind of links in nicely with Silent Night. And then we also had Little Donkey. Classic. Classic. Yeah. Which some people said is like the Marmite Carol because some people absolutely hated it. And a lot of people loved it.

Yeah. I like it in Little Donkey. I got married at christmas and we had the classically hard to sing what is it what is that what's the name of that hymn ding dong ding dong why we chose that so that just a cat chorus that you're torturing your wedding guests. Maybe you're just warming up their voices for the party later on. Yeah, it was nice getting married at Christmas because it does have some good songs.

Okay, so what would be your number one nativity song? I think probably Away in a Manger. That has to be out there. I mean, it must be sung in Earthly Nativity. And I've actually learned a couple of newer ones recently. Well, there's one called Rat-a-tat-tat, which I've never heard of before. And I quite like that one. How does that go?

I go, Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. No, no, no. There isn't any room and you can't stay here there isn't any room for strangers it's all about mary going door to door asking to get into the inns i really like that one and then all the kids can knock on the door they go rat-a-tat-tat yeah and the innkeeper's just pointing no exactly exactly and then the one inn keepers like come because the innkeeper is another great role to have yeah panto exactly in a nativity um yeah i was angel gabriel when i was um angel gabriel doesn't really have too many shouldn't really have any lines i

was a bit bit disappointed but i got to walk we did it in church one year and i got to walk down were you one of the popular girls at school were Were you the popular one? I had long blonde hair. That was the only thing. They were just like, right, angel, white, long blonde hair, that's you. You're in. Get up. And my mum made me silver foil wings or something.

The angel would always be the popular girl and all the girls, it would be the competition to see who could be cast as the angel. So I think you nailed it there Do you know what, I'm going to change my bio I'm going to change all of my formerly angel name Angel at a school in 1993 or whatever it is

I think it was just times were different then Birmingham's very multicultural and they were just like white person with blonde hair boob, get down there, you're it um yeah and erin was uh married but erin also was an angel once as well oh god we just i wonder what my husband was i don't know what i'll have to ask him when he gets he probably won't even remember so you were always a wise man i was a wise man yeah i don't know what it was maybe i just had this like element of feeling very like

i don't know respected or something were you ever a narrator because i did that a couple of times that's the crappiest one to do i was i was too nervous to be the narrator i couldn't i couldn't have done it i was too scared to do to be the narrator because you just bop up in your school uniform yeah and you read out two lines like that and then mary said to jesus and then that's it and it's rubbish do you know what um what's really funny is that i think like it's kind of a free for all like who gets part of the lascivity because in terms of like what who the characters are i think like some schools have got confused because i have seen some lascivities when you got joseph in it but it's not joseph as in like mary's husband it's joseph from joseph and his technicolor dream coat so you've got you've got like the wrong joseph you've got like joseph

with his technicolor dream coat singing any dream will do while mary's like no that is you haven't please tell me that's not true that is absolutely true i was i'm a former re teacher so that hurts that hurts my re little heart yeah you've got Joseph rolling up in his technical dream coat. Yeah, absolutely true. But the thing is, I think, I don't know, maybe Ari education needs to, sorry, religious education needs to kind of, I don't scare you because you've got people.

The thing is, you'd also have Joseph there. So you'd have like Mary's Joseph and then you'd also have Joseph in his technical dream coat. Different times, just like it's been a crossover i think harry's i think harry's pretty much being phased out now which is yeah i'm not religious but i like i'm just really nosy yeah so i love knowing what other people are doing so it's quite easy to teach religion when you're not religious because i'm not biased i'm just teaching it all i think it should be like you know compulsory just to know about everyone else's,

even if you don't have anyone in your school that is Sikh or Buddhist or Muslim, whatever religion you are, I think it's just interesting to know about the background, because then you have an appreciation of different cultures and things like that. I find it interesting. Unfortunately, some people don't want to know about people's cultures. Yeah. Some people aren't. I'd be there on open evening welcome to the re room and you'd have the moms and the dads going she ain't interested let's go let's go to maths or whatever but we did like quite a lot of um discussion and debate that's the kind of stuff that i would like so we talk about like abortions

or euthanasia or whatnot like with the older kids not with the years i was gonna say some year threes they're like what's euthanasia no not that was that was in there a year 11 yeah um but every year we would do i would do a lot about the nativity so it's it like the this half term i always say to the kids is the best half term to be in primary school yes definitely i think it's a great time we it can be fun i remember when we did re lessons we used to get asked to make up raps because again this was maybe like late 90s and and obviously like rap was being like you know eminem was like getting really big and stuff they said you need to make up a rap about i don't know moses or something so we would like go away and like make up a rap and i think that's quite a good way to get into it and like the re teachers that we were getting trying to get anything to engage make do a

rap do a freeze frame do some sort of comedy interpretive of this story like of moses just to get some sort of like engagement going um and we'd obviously we'd show show some classic classic films do you like the film nativity do you know what i i do like the film nativity i didn't part of my christmas show i do a little snippet of the song sparkle and shine do you know that one of course my daughter is in a drama group and they are singing sparkle and she sang sparkle and shine on the weekend it's a that is one there's it's hard to become a classic it's hard i don't know how to describe it it's hard to be a new song and become a classic does that make sense yeah yeah yeah exactly and

and also you know there are some great it's got some like great competition for like christmas films so i do a little bit of um walking in the air as well from the snowman yeah um but you've got some great you've got some great christmas films out there but i think i feel like that's that's probably going to become one of those like there's there's the staples you've got some great you've got some great christmas films out there but i think i feel like that's that's probably going to become one of those like there's there's the staples you've got love actually you've got the holiday you've got the christmas films that come on every year so i feel like that is becoming one of them i think it's already kind of become it to be honest i love it my kids love it mr poppy is hilarious yeah we can all relate to it it's like for me it's like set in coventry i think so it's like quite local accidents so like my kids can relate to it and sparkle and shine and what's the oh in nazareth that's a great song

i have to say i it's not a film that i was into when it came out because i don't know when it was in like 2010 or something or 2008 but um you know i i guess like being like 20 years old i probably wasn't really the demographic but now that i've been teaching in primary schools for the last 10 years i kind of like yeah i can relate i can relate a bit do they sing those songs in primary schools now like sparkle and shine and the nazareth one um i i've not heard it actually sung in school but um a couple of my pupils have sung it in their drama groups and stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's what Erin did. It's always a little bit of a tearjerker one.

It's just so cute and happy and it just suits kids' voices just so deliciously, doesn't it? I think it just has that element of what makes our primary school songs fun, which is just that positive. I mean, yeah, there were some dark songs songs but a lot of them were just very positive and like one of my favorite kind of underrated primary school songs was who put the colors in the rainbow um so it goes um who put the colors in the rainbow who put the salt into the sea

and it was kind of like it's just it was all about animals. And it was just super kind of upbeat and positive. Kind of a similar melody to One More Step Along the Water. Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to recognise that song. Yeah. It was the primary school. I guess why it's being, I get why it's being phased out. Because we are a more multicultural society. But I wish there could

be like some sort of different alternatives that the kids could sing these days there there is a company that is actually doing it called out of the ark and they've got some ones that are really popular with the kids on tiktok they love them so um the kids on tiktok yeah so some of them are which I did not sing growing up like Like there's one called Spring Chicken. There's Wake Up, Shake Up. There's like Harvest Samba and some of these songs. And they're really popular with kids that are probably like 14, 15, 16 that are on TikTok. And they always request those ones.

But they're not ones that I personally sang. So sometimes I do kind of throw them out there. So I went away and learned some of them and um some of them are really popular and uh so there are newer songs like school assembly songs coming out but i do agree like the the funny thing is for the christmas is that actually we we sing some really old songs and even now like heart the herald angel sings and all of those sorts of songs they're really old songs they're like 250 years old or something um but they are still being sung by the children so i kind of feel like if we can sing those we can probably sing some of these as well i think it's yeah yeah put a bit of a healthy

mixing yeah if you ever have children in the future do you hope that they're going to do the primary school singing as well definitely yeah i really uh well even if they don't sing these songs in school i will teach them anyway yeah like me screaming lord of the dance wake up my eyes open like yeah i danced on the friday he's like what are these old person songs that you're teaching us why do you think it's why do you think nostalgia has just hit a sweet spot for you why what because i've watched these tiktoks and these instagrams and these men and women are screaming these songs at the top of their lungs and they look so happy genuinely i i've been i kind of put on this show basically the show in a nutshell is me kind of

like telling a story for nearly two hours basically like it's reminiscing on our school days thinking about growing up in the 90s i've got a bit of like Disney bit of musical theatre but mostly around our school assembly songs and I kind of had the lyrics on a QR code and you scan it and you put it on your phone you sing along to it and honestly I kind of put on one show as like I could maybe get my friends and family along and thought it might be just quite fun a little get together and then it sold out straight away and I put another one and then I had messages from people said oh you know you need to bring this show over to wherever Birmingham Manchester and so I put on like started putting it on and people were coming along to it I'd never met and I think this is you know it's really really exciting and I think

the part of it is that it honestly does transport you back to just a very kind of wholesome time where you don't have a care in the world and and i think there's something about music as well that's very kind of transformative and you can listen to a song that you might not have heard in 25 30 years or whatever and it will just take you back to a certain time and place you'll know all the words probably you might not even need to look at the lyrics and and when i've been doing the shows literally every single show people just leaving like smiling and singing and like i just think that's so nice just to have that you know it's almost like i've been in therapy to feel like millennial therapy no i i love it because you're going back to a time when your only problem was your mate you thought might fall out your mate or exactly what you're going to have for your lunch

also something on the podcast when it said that the good thing about nostalgia like because we didn't have any kind of social media yeah experience that felt very like it was just us but then when you go out into the world everybody else experienced the same thing and it's kind of like a unifying um feeling i just love it i kind of feel like with these songs what's interesting about these songs actually is I feel like they kind of unite a couple of generations because you've got like the tail end of like a lot of them were kind of popular

in like the mid to late 70s but then that was like the tail end of people growing up then but they were really big in the 80s and really big in the 90s so I think basically anyone that kind of grew up in the 80s and 90s and even likes so i think basically anyone that kind of grew up in the 80s and 90s and even like this probably the late 70s would know most of these songs but after that they kind of got phased out and then at the same kind of point where social media kind of picked up massively and like the internet obviously just kind of went crazy so i kind of

feel like we i don't know i feel like maybe i was in the last kind of generation of people that we would there would be no kind of connection with social media growing up there was there was no there was kind of like internet but we didn't really use it uh very much growing up so i think maybe we were just that last generation of people that all sang the same songs like going back a couple of generations um and then and then it just changed after that so maybe it's just that like sweet spot of people that are unified in their like childhood experience because the weird thing is that even though i was born in january 91 i'd probably have a very similar primary school experience as i'm born in 81 because like

yeah or like 77 yeah it's probably it's probably very it's probably very similar and to be honest even when you're going to primary school today you're like I'm sure that though you know the things that hang off the wall that kids climb up yeah I think that's been there for 40 I went around looking at secondary schools for my son and I was like this this science lab looks like it's 50 years old yeah I think it's quite changed do you wish you'd grown up now with social media so yeah I think as as I got to because you said like what was it like when i was 14 i think at that time kind of social media was coming in like we had myspace and that was always very very political because you had like your top eight

people or something that you could like pins to your profile and it was like that was always like oh you had to have your top friends in there. Otherwise, and also I kind of, I was in the generation of MSN Messenger. And so literally just growing up with MSN Messenger every single night after school, getting home, getting on MSN Messenger, the amount of hours I must've spent on there. I dread to think like how much time. Because I did not have,

is that just like WhatsApp on a computer? Well, kind of, but you didn't need anyone's like, I don't think you really needed anyone's number or anything so you just i'm just trying to think exactly how it worked you just logged into into it using whatever fake email address you made at the time you just speak to strangers no it would be people you know i'm just trying to i'm sure someone listening to this will know exactly how it worked but i'm trying to remember how exactly you connected with people i think it was just you just like added people in it like added contacts and added friends and you just chatted to people you'd have these like epic group chats and i remember them even being

like all the local lads in the area wanted to fight i was like i'll meet you down the park at the time like that people are organizing fights on on there i meet you down the um st george's ever happened because often these times fights never happen oh they always definitely never happened they were always you know my dad's bigger than your dad let's have a fight i'll meet you down the field meet you down the field at five o'clock and then no one ever turned up or you might get no one ever went to the field no um but then you know i had an msn messenger relationship when i was 12 or whatever you know like someone that i knew but you know it was like oh jolly go out with me kind of thing

and they're like yeah let's let's go out and then and then like before we even managed to go on in like a real life date it would be like yeah i'm not interested anymore so you know you'd have that whole heartbreak love stories happening on msn messenger but um but then yeah just to kind of answer your question i guess like i am glad that i don't that i didn't grow up with the level of social media we had now when i when i was like 16 that was when facebook started picking up and then you but that was kind of getting into like university territory like what's like 17 18 started getting facebook but now facebook's kind of like for i'm like my personal Facebook it's just kind of like stuck in a time warp it's like something some kind of apocalypse has happened and everything

I see on my personal Facebook now is just like happy birthday from like four years ago or something it's like yeah happy birthday town yeah Facebook I because I am a bit older the the gen what am I a gen x am I a gen x I'm not a millennial I'm a gen x yeah the one above or is that the one below I'm not a gen z I was just trying to think if you're a zennial because there's like an x xennial which is like no I think that's very kind of yeah I think I'm I think I'm I'm probably a boomer to be honest but so it's so much so in your thought like kind of like mid to late 40s people are still using facebook they're still posting an album of 40 photos for a night out going yeah great night

out with the girls nice well you're still you're still keeping it going i feel like i feel like well i guess maybe it's like a reaction to social media a lot of people my age just aren't on social media anymore i feel like especially especially facebook but um I think I mean I see it with all the like the kids I teach like TikTok is such a such a tricky one because uh I can understand the positive reasons behind it but um I'm so glad I didn't have TikTok when I was younger because I just wouldn't have got anything done it's so addictive telling you now it's so addictive and also it's like when i stumbled across you there's some people are just so clever and so funny and that is why i do like tick tock because i see stuff that genuinely does enhance my life because it makes me like smile but also some of the comments on TikTok. You're like watching a lovely video, I don't know,

of a woman giving her husband a puppy because his dog died three years ago. And you're like, lovely. And then the comments. You're like, how can people be so awful? I know. That is, it is. Do you get a lot of negativity or is it quite a positive space? Do you know what?

I'm extremely lucky in the world of social media that i have had very very few negative comments and i think brilliant that is which and i do not i do not take that for granted and i i i know that it is so hard for so many you know content creators and things the amount of abuse people get um but the vast majority of comments i get will be oh this song takes me back or like nostalgia unlocked or you know are these songs brought by happy happy memories and that's genuinely the reason that i've stuck with it for so for so long because i just and and you know and putting together the show and everything it's just like i want like social media can be a super toxic place

and a very stressful place and i think just like hopefully putting that like nostalgia element and like the positivity and the wholesome nature out there there are some other people doing it and i love it when i see other creators doing it because it's it's kind of what we need and sadly like algorithms kind of run off of people getting angry in comment sections and that's why twitter was so successful and all that kind of stuff so i'll never be big on twitter because i'm not angry enough i've just I've just stopped on Twitter because yeah it's terrible it's not called Twitter is it X it's terrifying I just was like I can't I can't be dealing with this anymore it's too it's too aggro um maybe you should put them

on YouTube YouTube is a quite a nice place as well I do like YouTube I was checking out your YouTube and it's so good it's so good oh. Oh, it's me and Poundland. It's literally all my followers and they're lovely. They just want to see me and B&M and Poundland. I love that. That's just what they want.

Me going to Poundland and going, look at what I'm buying today. But that's like positive. I just want to put positivity out there as well. Exactly. You're doing that.

You're bringing positivity to people's lives and I think that's the main thing that you can get from, I think like connecting with people, creating communities is amazing thing and and i think what is also great is that people will be watching your videos that won't necessarily get to go out that much for example or they might be quite lonely and actually watching one of your videos every week might make them feel connected with you or connected with the community around you and things like that so i

think that's that's a really really nice thing and and i've kind of had that a bit with my stuff and i've had people coming along to my shows on their own and they said oh i couldn't find anyone to come with trying to convince people to come along to a primary school assembly sing along all their friends like that sounds completely laugh um but uh they've come along and they've actually made friends with other people that have come along oh that's so nice oh i just love it well thanks so much for coming on the podcast it's been lovely to speak to you where can people where can people find you uh so i am on social media at james b partridge on instagram tiktok and youtube and then i do have a facebook page um as well and you can find that through i just been signing off facebook but i do i do i actually do use facebook but not

in my personal one it's it's the uh my kind of other my social media page um and also i am doing this tour of um sing-alongs and comedy and nostalgia and um hopefully coming to as much as the uk as possible i'm finding it a bit tricky because i'm getting messages from people saying oh come to this place and then i'm emailing like every theater in that town and nobody's getting back to me so i am i'm doing my best um yeah well as my followers want you to go to plymouth plymouth they were just like please come to plymouth me and all my friends will go that's what she was very excited but thanks so much for coming on the podcast and i will see you on social media yes thanks so much. Bye.

FanDuel Casino Daily Jackpots. Guaranteed to hit by 11pm with your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Daily Jackpots. A chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11pm every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guaranteed winner by 11 p.m. every day. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded. Or 11 p.m. Eastern. Research and supply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly.