Barroso sings The Kinks

European Commission president expresses his love for British band.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso is developing some kinky habits. Put another way, he surprised an audience last week by quoting from the lyrics of the English rock band The Kinks. 

Speaking at the launch of a report on renewable energy from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Barroso departed from his published text to muse on whether the Commission was like “The Village Green Preservation Society” (a 1968 hit for The Kinks). He indulged himself by quoting “We are the Desperate Dan appreciation society/God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties.”

This commendable support for biodiversity (at least in jam) was presumably deemed safer than a more obviously appropriate reference to the 1979 Kinks number “A Gallon of Gas”, in which the shortage of gasoline prompts a dealer to offer the singer “some red-hot speed and some really high-grade hash”.

One is left with a mental picture of a well respected man looking out from the top floor of the Berlaymont in search of a Waterloo sunset and asking “where have all the good times gone?”