Oliver Twist - Luke Haines

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 in 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