This song is written from the POV of someone who's ill, ill enough to have to go to the hospital (or as G&C would say, go to hospital). His main companion is an AM radio, which he listens to Radio Luxembourg on. Radio Luxembourg was an AM station based in Luxembourg that targeted the UK--and being outside the UK, it could bypass UK laws giving the BBC a monopoly on radio and forbidding advertising. It broadcast on a wavelength of 208 meters (hence "Fabulous 208", a magazine associated with RL), or for us Americans, 1440 KHz. Radio Luxembourg inspired the pirate stations that broadcast to the UK in international waters. One such station was Radio Caroline, which the song mentions.
Speaking of 208--there are a lot of RL jingles on YouTube, but a VERY cursory scan of just a few doesn't turn up anything resembling G&C's "Fabulous 208" in the bridge that morphs into "contagious flu cold faint". Anyone out there know whether they were inspired by a particular jingle?
The character is not feeling well at all--he can't even turn the radio off. All he can manage to do is glug down his Lucozade, a Japanese Gatorade-like beverage marketed as an energy drink for the sick in the UK that this poor guy doesn't even like. He calls it "hospital champagne", something that one might drink for a toast, hence "Charge your glasses, Radio Luxembourg" (to charge one's glass is to fill it or have it filled so one can drink a toast).
AM is a lot better for DXing (hearing distant stations) at night, and the European peninsula is pretty small by US standards. 800 miles east as the crow flies takes you from England to Belarus and Ukraine, and 1000 miles would take you at least to Moscow. If you do much AM listening at night in the US, you know that it's trivial to hear stations that far away or further at night (especially the "clear channel" 50 kW stations)--hence the "lousy words and bad percussion/fading in and out of Russian" as stations go on and off the air, ionospheric conditions change, and radio component values drift with temperature changes.
It's a battery-powered radio--we know because of the possible coincidence of its "Ever Ready heart" (the batteries, presumably from Eveready) stopping when the character the singer represents gets well.
This song is written from the POV of someone who's ill, ill enough to have to go to the hospital (or as G&C would say, go to hospital). His main companion is an AM radio, which he listens to Radio Luxembourg on. Radio Luxembourg was an AM station based in Luxembourg that targeted the UK--and being outside the UK, it could bypass UK laws giving the BBC a monopoly on radio and forbidding advertising. It broadcast on a wavelength of 208 meters (hence "Fabulous 208", a magazine associated with RL), or for us Americans, 1440 KHz. Radio Luxembourg inspired the pirate stations that broadcast to the UK in international waters. One such station was Radio Caroline, which the song mentions.
Speaking of 208--there are a lot of RL jingles on YouTube, but a VERY cursory scan of just a few doesn't turn up anything resembling G&C's "Fabulous 208" in the bridge that morphs into "contagious flu cold faint". Anyone out there know whether they were inspired by a particular jingle?
The character is not feeling well at all--he can't even turn the radio off. All he can manage to do is glug down his Lucozade, a Japanese Gatorade-like beverage marketed as an energy drink for the sick in the UK that this poor guy doesn't even like. He calls it "hospital champagne", something that one might drink for a toast, hence "Charge your glasses, Radio Luxembourg" (to charge one's glass is to fill it or have it filled so one can drink a toast).
AM is a lot better for DXing (hearing distant stations) at night, and the European peninsula is pretty small by US standards. 800 miles east as the crow flies takes you from England to Belarus and Ukraine, and 1000 miles would take you at least to Moscow. If you do much AM listening at night in the US, you know that it's trivial to hear stations that far away or further at night (especially the "clear channel" 50 kW stations)--hence the "lousy words and bad percussion/fading in and out of Russian" as stations go on and off the air, ionospheric conditions change, and radio component values drift with temperature changes.
It's a battery-powered radio--we know because of the possible coincidence of its "Ever Ready heart" (the batteries, presumably from Eveready) stopping when the character the singer represents gets well.