Nana News from telegraph.co.uk

Nana News from telegraph.co.uk
The real stars are beyond the need for hype
By Sam Leith
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 03/11/2007

Who is the most successful female recording artist of all time? I'll give you one guess. No, tell you what. I'll give you three guesses. No. Five. And I'll bet you still don't get it. You'll probably say "Madonna" first. You'll be wrong. Then you'll groan, and say: "Celine Dion." You'll still be wrong. You'll look crafty, and say: "Maria Callas." Nope. "Barbra Streisand!" you'll exclaim, slapping your forehead as if it were a thigh. I'll put on my smuggest expression. "Bonnie Langford?" you'll suggest, defeated. And you will, amazingly, be wrong again.

And that is why this fact, this sublime piece of pub-quiz trivia, is my favourite discovery of the month. I've tried it on everyone ? even my music-obsessed, snorkel-parka-wearing, quiz champion friend Andy.

And even Andy, from the unthinkable depths of his fur-lined hood, ventured: "Celine Dion?"

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Try it on your friends. Not one, not one of them, will say: "Nana Mouskouri."

Then tell them that that is, in fact, the answer. "Nana MousKOURI?" they will exclaim, before muttering: "Blow me. Nana bleedin' Mouskouri." Or, if they are under 30, they will say: "Who?"

And yet if the "Greek with the squeak" has sold more than 300 million records, recorded more than 1,500 songs in more languages than most of us speak, let alone sing in, served in public life as an MEP, spent the past two years on a farewell tour and last week sold out the Albert Hall to play her last ever London concert… if all of this is true, and to the best of my knowledge it is, don't you think we'd see her on the telly, or read about her in the newspapers, a tiny bit more?

For me, her name conjures the image of her ? with those heavy black 1970s specs, ironed-straight, centre-parted 1970s hair and russet-coloured 1970s polo-neck ? that adorned the grey 1970s eight-track cartridge that fitted into my mum and dad's orange 1970s VW camper van.

For another of my colleagues, she was "the boring bit on Morecambe and Wise, wasn't she?"

The last time she was the subject of an article in this newspaper ? as opposed to a comic aside; she's mentioned as a lookalike for Bono and Ugly Betty ? was in 2001. And yet there she is, adored by millions and still performing. She has just (which is how I came to discover she was not only still alive, but the most successful etc) released her autobiography.

"Where are you going with this, Leith?" I hear you ask. "Why are you troubling my otherwise pleasant Saturday morning with your hare-brained ruminations on the injustice done to Nana Mouskouri by the lickspittle conspirators of the international media and their sickening running dogs Morecambe and Wise?"

Well, bear with me. I am meandering in the direction of a modestly proportioned point.

And this point is something along the lines that there are hundreds of Nanas out there.

There are hundreds of activities, or people, or areas of life that are all but completely invisible, and yet the popularity of which is enormous.

In part, this is attributable to the fact that the day-to-day output of the media tends to be run, on the whole, by university-educated men and women between 30 and 50.

They want to put out programmes and write articles about things that they are currently interested in, or remember with fondness, or reckon are cool, or wish they had been involved in at the time.

When people of my age and geekiness, for example, started finding their way into those jobs, suddenly the cinema screens and arts pages filled with tights-wearing comic-book heroes and Tolkien tropes.

Hallelujah! I thought.

Yet there remain these Nanas, as I shall designate them, that are all but ignored: either because they are uncool, or long enduring, or beloved of a different class or generation (younger as well as older ? I suspect computer games, for example, are five to 10 years off becoming as visible as they are popular).

What are the biggest Nanas of our day? Angling, I suppose, is an obvious one. Country music. South America. Bingo. Knitting. Goldfish ownership? Here ? as a representative of exactly the Nana-ignoring demographic I describe ? I start to struggle. Tunnock's caramel wafers?

Many Nanas, like Ms Mouskouri (I had the good fortune to meet her this week at a lunch in her honour, and she was lovely), seem perfectly content not to be on the cover of every magazine going.

Other Nanas may feel neglect as a keen injustice.

But they deserve a salute. And when ? in the manner of a wee boat bumping gently and, by surprise, against the protruding tip of an iceberg ? one runs up against a Nana, it's a useful reminder that the world is larger and more various than we often enough notice.

In recent years, Nana has taken to singing My Way on stage. She feels, one of her friends told me, that she's earned the right. Here's to her, and to Nanas everywhere.