"Luton Airport" is a song performed in 1979 by the British

all-female band An all-female band is a musical group in popular music that is exclusively composed of female musicians. This is distinct from a girl group, in which the female members are solely vocalists, though this terminology is not universally followed. While ...

Cats U.K. It reached No. 22 in the UK Singles Chart, and was inspired by the punchline of a 1977

television commercial A television advertisement (also called a television commercial, TV commercial, commercial, spot, television spot, TV spot, advert, television advert, TV advert, television ad, TV ad or simply an ad) is a span of television programming produce ...

for

Campari Campari () is an Italian alcoholic liqueur, considered an apéritif (20.5%, 21%, 24%, 25%, or 28.5% ABV, depending on the country where it is sold), obtained from the infusion of herbs and fruit (including chinotto and cascarilla) in alcohol and ...

featuring

Lorraine Chase Lorraine Chase (born 16 July 1951) is an English actress and former model. She became well known for her strong south east London accent and frequent use of cockney slang, and found fame through a series of television adverts for Campari be ...

Production

In the 1977 Campari television commercial, model and actress

is shown being wooed by Jeremy Clyde over drinks. In response to his romantic line "Were you truly wafted here from paradise?" she replies in a strong

Cockney accent Cockney is an accent and dialect of English, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term "Cockney" has traditionally been used to describe a person from the East End, or b ...

, "Nahh,

Luton Airport London Luton Airport is an international airport located in Luton, Bedfordshire, England, situated east of the town centre, and north of Central London. The airport is owned by London Luton Airport Ltd (LLAL), a company wholly owned by L ...

!". The humorous punchline became very popular, and in 1979, songwriter Paul Curtis and record producer John Worsley came up with the idea for a song while on holiday in

Majorca Mallorca, or Majorca, is the largest island in the Balearic Islands, which are part of Spain and located in the Mediterranean. The capital of the island, Palma, is also the capital of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands. The Bal ...

. Curtis was already well known for writing several UK Eurovision Song Contest entries. The writers approached Jill Shirley about finding suitable singers for the group. Shirley had been involved with the UK heats for Eurovision for a number of years and would go on to form

Bucks Fizz Bucks Fizz were a British pop group that achieved success in the 1980s, most notably for winning the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Making Your Mind Up". The group was formed in January 1981 specifically for the contest and comp ...

, Gem and

Bardo In some schools of Buddhism, ''bardo'' ( xct, བར་དོ་ Wylie: ''bar do'') or ''antarābhava'' (Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese: 中有, romanized in Chinese as ''zhōng yǒu'' and in Japanese as ''chū'u'') is an intermediate, transitio ...

. The song was also offered to Lorraine Chase, but she refused it. Finally it was offered to the UK girl band Cats U.K. The lead singer was Bea Rowley who, as a leading TV dancer, who had worked with many of the major choreographers of the 1980s including Geoff Richer,

Nigel Lythgoe Nigel Lythgoe OBE (; born 9 July 1949), also known as Nasty Nigel, is an English television and film director and producer, television dance competition judge, former dancer in the Young Generation and choreographer. He was the producer of the ...

and

Arlene Phillips Dame Arlene Phillips (born 22 May 1943) is an English choreographer, talent scout, television judge and presenter, theatre director, and former dancer, who has worked in many fields of entertainment. For many years, she was most noted as the c ...

. The band also included

Deena Payne Diane Margaret "Deena" Payne (born 29 August 1954) is an English actress and former singer. She is best known for playing Viv Hope in the long-running ITV soap opera ''Emmerdale''. Life and career Payne was born in Orpington, Kent. She used to ...

(who coincidentally went on to appear with Chase in the long-running

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

Emmerdale ''Emmerdale'' (known as ''Emmerdale Farm'' until 1989) is a British soap opera that is broadcast on ITV1. The show is set in Emmerdale (known as Beckindale until 1994), a fictional village in the Yorkshire Dales. Created by Kevin Laffan, '' ...

''). Payne, along with two others, supplied the backing vocals. The song was produced by Curtis and Worsley at WEA records.

Release

The song made number 22 on the

UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...

. In a 2010 interview, Deena Payne incorrectly claimed that the song reached number 9: Some releases of the record featured a censored version, which bleeped out the line "Sod it" from the lyrics. Although released with the same catalogue number (K 18075), this version is easily identifiable due to the word "Bleeped" added above the title on the record label. Cats UK released two further singles, "Sixteen Looking for Love" and "Holiday Camp" (both 1980), which failed to reach the charts. The group was disbanded. Both the song and the name of the group likely drew inspiration from the early 1979 Squeeze hit " Cool for Cats," which featured a cockney vocal and similar chord changes and lyrical cadences.

References

External links

Luton Airport
on

Discogs Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the la ...

1979 singles 1979 songs Luton Airport British pop songs {{1970s-single-stub