Welcome back my friends to the flamboyance that never ends, as Fabulously Flamboyant Friday sashays up to the crease to deliver yet another light-loafered, lubed-up (but quite possibly life saving) googly from the gasworks-end of musical magnificence.
As I mentioned in part one of this article, I was recently on the Cote d’Azur, in Cannes, working on the annual festival of fun and frippery known as the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity: a 5-day, mid-June shindig that styles itself as the world’s premier event for creative industries.
The festival covers pretty much all facets of creative communications, which of course pulls in all the big tech companies. These companies install a series of impressive erections on the beach at Cannes and use them as networking venues by day and party venues at night. As a result, these locations are visited by some pretty high-profile individuals, so security is tight and emergency medical arrangements are substantial.
I mentioned in part one of this article that I had been laid low with a touch of what I assume was food poisoning (assumed because I was stricken just a few hours after scoffing a cheap, but really quite scrumptious, late-night kebab). However, describing my condition as being laid low was perhaps something of an understatement. Quite frankly my digestive tract staged a coup, pulled the emergency cord and seized full control of my beleaguered body. The feeble and barely conscious entity known as Ivory Cutlery was very quickly reduced to the role of powerless passenger: certainly along for the ride, but with absolutely no control over the evening’s subsequent proceedings.
Once in command, my insides decreed that everything deposited inside was to be rapidly relocated outside – with as much vigour and alacrity as possible. Two convenient exit routes were available, and both were to be repeatedly and explosively utilized to their full (and, IMHO, effusively excessive) capacity. By the time the first rays of dawn began creeping through the blinds of my apartment, I had been reduced to a befouled, shivering and thoroughly dehydrated wreck: barely able to stand and fit for neither the company of man nor beast.
Wisely, I decided to spend the day doing as little as possible, apart that is from nervously researching the term “full rectal prolapse” and contacting our event medical team to enquire if they perhaps had any useful suggestions (apart from the immediate and forceful utilisation of industrial-grade butt-plugs) to ease my unfortunately pitiful condition. And, after being mercilessly mocked by our paramedic team (largely made up of British ex-military lads – former battlefield medics – with the grim but entirely understandable dark sense of humour which inevitably accompanies that trade) I did in fact uncover some useful information.
Being a freelance operative, I knew I would have to return to active duty far sooner than I (and my beleaguered guts) would wish. However, whilst chatting with our medical team, I learned that one of the side effects of the event support plans our clients had put in place was the kind and generous offer of various free First Aid training courses for us worker drones. My First Aid training is up to date, so I was about to politely decline when I realised there were enough courses on offer to easily fill a day and so legitimately push back by 24 hours the dreaded time when I (and my beleaguered guts) would need to return to full duties. Additionally, I noticed that one of the courses on offer (presumably in case we had an unplanned outbreak of Suddenly!) was defibrillator training. Aha! I thought. Just the ticket.
You see, I had long fancied dramatically ripping open the smashing blouses of stricken burds – in a manly and heroic and not at all pervy kinda way, you understand – since I’d first watched James Cameron’s The Abyss. It’s not his finest filum, but it’s a pretty decent effort with a pretty decent cast that happily included the rather lovely Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. And, as the movie contained lots and lots of water-based shenanigans, I was rather hoping for some hot and skimpy bikini action involving the aforementioned Ms. Mastrantonio. I was therefore sorely disappointed when her character was cruelly bumped off before any such hot bikini action was served up on the big screen.
However, as anyone who has seen the filum will know, all was not lost because the dead character’s blouse was very soon ripped asunder – in a manly and heroic and not at all pervy kinda way, you understand – to give us a fine if somewhat gratuitous display of corpse boobies. As neither the actress nor her boobies were in any actual way dead, I was most impressed by this corpse booby performance, found it thoroughly convincing and have re-watched that particular scene a good many times.
Of course, the blouse-ripping chap wasn’t ripping open dead burds’ shirts simply to display corpse boobies. He actually fancied a spot of hot defibrillator action, which happily worked and promptly converted the dead character and her corpse boobies back into a live character with live boobies. I was deeply impressed by this turn of events and have been somewhat keen on defibrillators ever since. So when it was offered, despite my weakened state, I decided to do the noble thing, jumped at the chance of some free training and was rather looking forward to getting stuck in with me lubed-up chesticle paddles.
Sadly, to be honest, the de-fib training programme was really quite dull and quite frankly a bit of a disappointment. Modern units are very slick and pretty much automated, and the androgynous dummies we practised on looked nothing like a Hollywood hottie and were no fun at all. Even worse, modern units won’t fire if they detect any kind of normal pulse, so there was absolutely no chance of any high-voltage, after-show, comedy shenanigans (once a few of the intoxicated chaps started passing out, backstage, at the after-show party). Most disappointing. However, the de-fib training did give us all a chance to brush up on our cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) skills and I was rather intrigued to note the elephant was no longer in the room.
You see, when I first completed my original CPR training course, out tutor encouraged us to pump the chest of our stricken patient in time with the tune of Nellie The Elephant. Not singing out loud, of course. That would be weird and – considering the life or death nature of the situation in hand – potentially quite distressing for any nearby friends or relatives. However, we were encouraged to sing the tune in our heads to assist with the timing of our chest pumping.
The idea would seem to be a good one: a simple and familiar song with the correct number of beats per minute (bpm) to act as a built-in metronome and help keep our chest compressions consistent and regular. And let’s be honest here – if some poor bugger drops down in front of you in full-on cardiac arrest and you’ve bravely decided you’re gonna do the decent thing, step up, and take full responsibility for keeping the ol’ blood and oxygen moving, you’re gonna be under quite a bit of stress.
And the sad truth is that many a bystander will understandably hesitate to get stuck in and perform CPR because of a perfectly reasonable fear of doing it incorrectly and potentially costing someone their life. Under these circumstances, using a familiar song as a performance aid seems like a simple, reliable and effective tactic.
Personally, I have only been required to put my CPR skills to the test on just one occasion. It was a couple of years ago when I was working in Nottingham. I got back to my hotel in the wee small hours and was quietly tip-toeing along the bedroom corridor when some poor sod came crawling out of their room and promptly sparked out in front of me.
The realisation that our stricken individual was no longer breathing rather unhinged the room’s second occupant, so we were soon joined by a collection of curious and bleary-eyed onlookers. Someone quickly dialled 999, someone was discharged to reception to drum up assistance and I and another chap got stuck into the CPR.
Dear God, it was knackering! Truly exhausting. I was genuinely surprised at how much energy is required to do it properly over an extended period of time. Happily, a member of the hotel staff turned up with a defibrillator unit and, between the three of us, we managed to keep the individual in question ticking over until the ambulance team arrived and took charge of proceedings. Interestingly, despite my training, at no time during our prolonged and sweaty efforts did the thought of timing my compressions by using Nellie The Elephant cross my mind.
Anyway, as my CPR training was a good few years ago, I was quite happy to jump on board and take part in the proffered refresher course. I was pleased to note that very little had changed (order of operations, mainly) and my technique was given a curt nod of approval by our resident medical team. However, one thing that most certainly has changed was the recommended chest pumping tune. It seems that Nellie is out and the Bee Gees are in.
The rate of chest compressions for CPR is generally recommended to be between 100 and 120 compressions per minute – which, as noted above, is bloody hard work. And the current track du jour to accompany your pumpy labours is now the Bee Gees’ disco classic, Stayin’ Alive – an appropriate title, I’m sure you’ll agree. As this track was recorded at a tempo of 103 bpm and is very well known to a very large portion of the general public, it would now seem to be the favoured song of choice for CPR training in a great many countries.
So, in the blisteringly hot and humid surroundings of the beach at Cannes – and with one of our CPR dummies now producing a pleasing series of farting sounds when compressed – we all practised and perfected our CPR skills, no doubt to the bemusement of Cannes’ elegant passers by, whilst enthusiastically singing along to the majestic 1970s disco thump of Stayin’ Alive. Incidently, Barry Gibb was apparently well-chuffed when he discovered Stayin’ Alive was being widely used for CPR training, calling it a truly gratifying and wonderful thing.
But what, I hear you ask, is one to do if one is not a fan of the Brothers Gibb? Well fear not, dear reader, because there are now entire playlists of approved songs, all with a bpm of between 100 and 120 bpm, that are all deemed suitable for sundry CPR shenanigans; and, of course, a selection of those splendid life-saving songs make up tonight’s chest-thumping Friday night playlist.
However, I must admit, the abandonment of Nellie The Elephant and her replacement by a full playlist of suitably uptempo songs does trouble me somewhat. I have some slightly nervous concerns about Gen Z brats, who, when faced with one of us old codgers clutching our chest, turning blue and crumpling to the floor, will begin idly scrolling through the countless music files on their smart phone, looking for the correct playlist, and will then waste even more time trying to decide which track would best accompany their planned heroic endeavours. By the time they’d picked a suitable audio file and set up their social media live streams, I fear rigour mortice might very well be setting in.
Anyway, Gen Z concerns aside, one of our rather splendid event paramedics was not at all happy with our training. She insisted that singing songs in your head inhibits, rather than enhances, your CPR performance. I must have appeared sceptical, because she immediately called up some medical research papers on her laptop that did indeed seem to support her claim that our music-based training was inappropriate and performance inhibiting.
The problem seems to be that while singing tunes in your head is a very good way to improve bpm accuracy, it also seems to reduce compression effectiveness. Put simply, people concentrating on singing a tune in their heads performed very poorly at delivering smoothly forceful and suitably deep chest compressions – they in fact became compression lightweights. However, in complete contrast, CPR training that skipped the musical accompaniment altogether and simply focused on timing and compression efficiency, seemed to produce far more effective CPR practitioners.
By the way, good quality CPR, when effectively delivered, can apparently double the survival chances of a cardiac arrest victim. Free training is available on line, so I encourage anyone without this very simple skill set to consider signing up. You never know when it might come in handy and there’s always the chance you might get the opportunity to rip open the smashing blouses of some stricken burds – in, of course, a thoroughly manly*, thoroughly heroic, and not at all pervy kinda way.
*other genders are available
So, putting aside the doubts and concerns of our event paramedic, I drew up some suitable search parameters and tasked one of our fine A.I. buddies with an in-depth examination of a number of suitable CPR training sites, the recommended top tuneage they contained and the cross-site frequency of those recommendations, to enable the determination of a Dodgy Ticker Top Ten chart countdown; and I must say, the results produced a very suitable soundtrack for a fabulously flamboyant Friday on Going Postal. So cue the Top Of The Pops theme tune and away we go:
CPR Top Ten
- Peter Gabriel – Solisbury Hill (102 bpm)
- Stevie Wonder – Superstition (101 bpm)
- Michael Jackson – Billie Jean (117 bpm)
- Survivor – Eye Of The Tiger (109 bpm)
- Pink Fong – Baby Shark (115 bpm)
- Johnny Cash – Ring Of Fire (very #FF – 105 bpm)
- Gloria Gaynor – I will Survive (117 bpm)
- ABBA – Dancing Queen (100 bpm)
- Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk (115 bpm)
- Bee Gees – Stayin’ Alive (103 bpm)
Anyway, I think that’s probably quite enough of my CPR prattling for one evening, so I shall bid you TTFN, dear Puffins. May all your tickers be sound, your passages salubrious, your gardens inclined and your puddles well jumped.
Goodnight, and may your frog go with you – Not ‘arf!
Featured Image by the author
© Ivory Cutlery 2025
