Film Extra's Extra (Manchester Ritz)

Film Extra's Extra (Manchester Ritz) - John Cooper Clarke

An X-film extra's extra

I exit when I'm ex'd

I get it in the neck

I get my check

But I don't get what comes next

I got my break in the 'frisco quake

Clark Gable got the lead

They said 'make like a piece of steak

Lay on that plate and bleed'

Swine herds and hunch backs

Led to bigger things

I play Pontius Pilate's punch bag

You remember king of king's

Understudy studies scripts

And stunt men dice with doom

You found me staffy in a gothic crypt

Or in some squalid room

Where Clint Eastwood bis bis my teeth in

And the several times a day

I'm the best dead body in the business

I don't have much to say

Except

Thanks you lord

Of carried seven ceasars

Three seven cities of gold

I was the one who didn't whip Jesus

In the greatest story ever told

Fake snakes mock crocks

And killers cut my throat

That's me in the pine box

I know all about boats

I was on the titanic

I did what was required

I was the first to panic

On the day the earth caught fire

Hacksaw blades and hand grenades

Dum dum bullets and darts

When pagans raid the stockade

I get mangled by their carts

I fall from trains and torture dames

Just to keep in trim

I get slain on memory lane

And the people say 'oh it's him'

It was in this third rate thriller

I actually got to talk

I cry 'look the killer gorillas

See jeneroy New York'

I ride this phony pony

In a place a bit like the world

In the eyes of adults only

I never get the girl

Tarantulas invade my bed

Ohh it's wonderful

I'm a talking head full of lead

Watch the screams gold

I scream all the way to the chair

I scream in of the way from of tanks

I take the stairway to the stairs

I scream all the way to the banks

Photogenic passion

Impales me on it's knife

Hero's made from fashion

But dying's a job for life time