The last farewell.

The James Last Orchestra are about to play the Royal Albert Hall for the 90th time. And the veteran bandleader, not far off 90 himself, has announced that this will be his final tour. With his cheesy line in popular classics, James Last has always been regarded as spectacularly naff but nonetheless, a phenomenon. He’s sold about 100 million albums and when this track appeared in the Richard Gere film American Gigolo, few realised that it was James Last. A famously genial and good-natured man, I’m sure he won’t mind me repeating a joke I first heard at school: What’s the difference between the James Last Orchestra and a cow? A cow has horns at the front and a c*nt at the back.