Not continuously. You’d be arrested. But on every occasion you’ve sung the Red Dwarf theme song in the past three decades – over the top of an episode’s opening credits, say, or alone, in the bath, you’ve sung that as the seventh line instead of the real lyric which is ‘Goldfish shoals’. Don’t feel bad about it. Probably, when you first heard the song at age eight, you didn’t know the word ‘shoal’, but you did, thanks to global consumerism and the virulence of 1980s America’s pop cultural hegemony, know what Cheerios were, so your brain did the rest. It’s not worth beating yourself up over. We’re all just doing the best we can. The point is, according to Red Dwarf composer Howard Goodall, who also came up with the theme songs for Blackadder and Mr Bean, those aren’t even the original lyrics. In the first episode of a three-part Red Dwarf documentary series starting tonight on Dave, Goodall performs an alternative version of the famous theme. And here are Goodall’s unused original lyrics: I want to taste lobsters and coconuts I want to swim Nakedly Get quite drunk Fun fun fun, in the Sun sun sun! I’d like to have Red blotches on my face Make a mess I’d love to peel In every awkward place Fun fun fun, in the Sun sun sun! Green lagoons, Local rum with mango juice Get things nicked and ruin all my shoes Fun fun fun, in the Sun sun sun! This isn’t news to hardcore Red Dwarf fans, of course. Goodall previously shared the above lyrics in 2004 behind-the-scenes doc Howard Goodall: Settling the Score included on the series VI DVD release. Three-part documentary series Red Dwarf: The First Three Million Years starts on Thursday the 6th of August at 9pm on Dave in the UK.
