Oliver Twist

With a calm and strategic no
I'm back and I'm solo
This is the Oliver Twist manifesto

For the age I was born, for Victoriana
This is Oliver Twist pissing over Britannia
50 years of Tin Pan Alley
I learned good from a king thief mentor
200 years of teenage anarchy
Papist threats and no popery
Revenge? the cold in Soho
This is the Oliver Twist manifesto
Totality for the kids
Oliver Twist

This is Oliver Twist

There was this gang who I used to run with
Swindlers, knaves, urchins scum, spivs
Looking good comes in handy
When you're dipping from the pockets of a dandy
And there's murder in the air at the Connelli room
And there's treason in the air at the Groucho
If there's a TV pop in the Soho house
It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to tell you
That it's Oliver Twist
Doing it for the kids

Keep the boy on gruel
There's a young British artist in the room
This is Oliver Twist

What if all of the village idiots
And all the raspberry ripples
Are just putting it on
And they're the brightest of all of the cripples?
Oliver Twist I cartarista
Disappear into a pea souper
Swooping down like the Hun
Over the gas-lit streets of London
Into a pea souper
A Cartarista

Unto you my children I bestow this gift
It's a ballroom blitz
This is Oliver Twist
This is Oliver Twist

A cartarista
Into a pea souper
Totality for the kids
Oliver Twist
Swooping down like the Hun
Swooping down over Soho
It's the Oliver Twist manifesto
Oliver twist