h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Has anybody else seen any of the recent interviews with Outkast where they mention that the main person they'd like to work with is Kate Bush?! I think that would be brilliant!

I remember being equally surprised at the Q Awards about three years ago when John Lydon went to accept some lifetime achievement award for the Sex Pistols and he dedicated it to Kate Bush saying her music was 'rudeword-ing brilliant' and that she was a genius. I remember the camera cut to Kate who was smiling and obviously didn't know whether to take it as a genuine compliment. (I'm sure it was - but this was in pre-'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here' days when Lydon was even more scary).

Kate Bush and Outkast - now that I would like to hear!

Here are three more fairly improbable Kate collaborators:

1) Donald Sutherland. In the video for 'Cloudbusting', the noted American actor portrays the controversial psychologist Wilhelm Reich, with Kate playing Reich's son Peter as a boy. 'Cloudbusting' was apparently inspired by 'A Book Of Dreams', a book Peter Reich wrote about his Dad.

2) Rolf Harris. Rolf plays didgeridoo on the title track from Kate's album 'The Dreaming'.

3) Rowan Atkinson. Kate sang a comedy duet with Rowan called 'Do Bears...' at a Comic Relief benefit show at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London on 4 April 1986. The lyrics for the song were written by Richard Curtis of 'Love Actually', 'Four Weddings And A Funeral' and 'Blackadder' fame.

My source for most of this information is the terrific Gaffaweb site, on http://gaffa.org - a goldmine of Kate facts.

Any entry about Kate Bush must contain a link to http://gaffa.org .

Of all the fan sites out there, that is the most thorough bunch I know.

I've just been taking another trawl through Gaffaweb's archives, and have found some more unlikely Kate collaborators. In alphabetical order:

Larry Adler: The harmonica virtuoso recorded a version of George & Ira Gershwin's 'The Man I Love' with Kate for an album called 'The Glory Of Gershwin'. The track was released as a single, and reached number 27 in the UK chart in 1994.

Robbie Coltrane: before he starred in the 'Cracker' TV series and played Hagrid in the Harry Potter films, Robbie provided one of the voices trying to rouse the sleeping heroine in 'The Ninth Wave', the song cycle on the 'Hounds Of Love' album.

Percy Edwards: contributed some of his celebrated animal impressions to the title track of 'The Dreaming'.

Dawn French: appeared in the video for Kate's single 'Experiment IV'.

Lenny Henry: provided backing vocals on 'Why Should I Love You?' on Kate's album 'The Red Shoes'. The same track features vocal and instrumental contributions from the artist now once again known as Prince.

I seem to think that Tim McInnerny (Percy in Blackadder) was in the video for 'This Woman's Work' as well.

I've just checked and you're right, Natalie. McInnerny also appeared with Kate in 'Les Dogs', a 1990 Comic Strip TV film written by and starring Peter Richardson, in which Kate made her acting debut. The cast also included Alexei Sayle and Miranda Richardson.

Kate wrote songs for two other Comic Strip TV films. A song called 'Home For Christmas' appeared in their film 'Wild Turkey'. Three more Bush compositions - 'Ken', 'The Confrontation' and 'One Last Look Around The House Before We Go' - featured in the brilliant 'GLC', in which the Comic Strip team told the story of the abolition of the Greater London Council as it might be presented by Hollywood. Robbie Coltrane played Charles Bronson playing Ken Livingstone, Dawn French played Cher playing Joan Ruddock, and so on!

I can remember the song 'Ken', which was a deliberately over-the-top, hysterical-sounding power ballad. Mr Livingstone should surely revive it for his forthcoming re-election campaign.

I have nothing much to add so I'll just blather on about Kate and "This Woman's Work"... I first heard that when I watched "She's Having A Baby" with Kevin Bacon... It played over the scene where Elizabeth McGovern is suffering through a very difficult labor. The rest of the movie was fairly forgetable in my estimation, but THAT scene... WOW ... I instantly knew who was singing even though I'd never heard the song before (As far as I know it might have been written for that scene, I don't think it had been released anywhere else before... the Sensual World album hadn't come out yet.) I squeezed my girlfriend's arm and said quietly "That's Kate Bush singing!" ... as I listened to the lyrics I couldn't help but get VERY choked up. I still do whenever I listen to it...

When my sister died I put on a brave face for the rest of the family, stoically holding up so that the others could mourn... but when I got home after the funeral I put on that song on repeat and cried for hours... It will always be the saddest, most beautiful song I know.

Going back to Natalie's first post: thinking about it, I seem to remember that the mutual appreciation between Kate and John Lydon goes back a long way. I'm sure I recall Kate enthusing over the way Mr Lydon used his voice way back in the early days of her career.

It stuck in my mind because Kate emerged into public view in early 1978, when the division between the post-punk 'new wave' and the musical establishment was still quite sharp. Kate was one of the few acts who managed to bridge the gap between the two warring factions, and I'm sure that crossover appeal helped her success a lot. On the one hand, she seemed like a bit of a hippy and had Pink Floyd connections. On the other hand, she had an extreme, confrontational style: so it didn't seem like such a big step to go from listening to, say, Siouxsie And The Banshees to listening to Kate. She might not have been strictly 'new wave' but she certainly seemed *new*: no woman who sounded anything like her had appeared in the mainstream before, although other comparable women would appear later. Tori Amos' apparent debt to Kate has often been noted, and could Bjork have made it so big without Kate paving the way?

Two more Kate collaborators who I don't think we've mentioned yet are Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Clapton plays guitar on 'And So Is Love' from 'The Red Shoes', while Beck plays on 'You're The One' on the same album.

(Incidentally, please excuse me for calling Kate by her first name throughout all my postings on this topic. I'm not trying to pretend that I know her or anything. It's just that, for some reason, following the name 'Bush' with anything positive feels wrong... )