You've never heard of Tom Lehrer???

I could hardly believe my ears the other day when a friend confessed that she'd never heard of Tom Lehrer.




His musical and stage career was brief, but he was unquestionably one of the great US satirists of the 20th century. You can read about his life in a Wikipedia article, which contains links to other sources. He's retired, and living in California at present.

YouTube has quite a lot of his material. For the benefit of those who've missed out on his satirical genius, I've selected a mere half-dozen tracks to post here. I highly recommend looking for more on YouTube and elsewhere.

First, as he was (and is) a mathematician by profession, we'd better hear Lehrer's tribute to Lobachevski and the field of mathematics in general. After all, who can resist his mental image of Brigitte Bardot playing the hypotenuse in the eternal triangle?

From mathematics we move to science, more specifically the Periodic Table of Elements (with profound apologies to Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan).

From science to religion, in 'The Vatican Rag'.

Lehrer was, one might say, an equal opportunity offender - his songs offended everyone at some point! This one's enough to make PETA froth at the mouth, I should imagine.

In 'A Christmas Carol' Lehrer skewers the commercialization of the season.

And finally, Lehrer reminds us of what happens when we grow older . . . and encourages us to do something about it while we still can.

As I said earlier, there's lots more of his material on YouTube. Highly recommended for a good laugh.

Peter