Neil Hannon, with added BPM, does Noel Coward in this track from the 1998 triple album Twentieth-Century Blues: The Songs of Noël Coward, which featured many big British musical names of the days. It was masterminded by Neil Tennant, and the profits went to AIDS charities.
Coward wrote the song, under the title I Went to a Marvellous Party, for his Broadway revue, Set to Music, which opened in January 1939. It was performed by Beatrice Lillie, who introduced London audiences to it in June of that year.
Most of the words are recited in clipped, Cowardly tones, but where Hannon copies a trick from The Master and sings a line or phrase - as in "scampering past" here - for some reason it's intensely moving.
Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
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