Music on the Ladder - Crowdsourcing lyrics for our next event

Hello folks!  Many of you will have seen previous posts about our next event, which is "Come and Sing The Mikado" on 8 June.  Those of you who are familiar with The Mikado will know that there's a patter song in it which is commonly referred to as "The List Song" or "A Little List".   It is sung by Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner (who has his post because he's committed the capital offence of flirting and is next in line to be executed - the reasoning being that he can't execute himself, and no-one else can be dispatched until he has been, so everyone's sentence is commuted - remember the whole thing is extremely silly!).  Ko-Ko is trying to assert himself in his post (bearing in mind that he was previously a "lowly tailor") and so sings about the list of people he would remove from society should he ever be forced to find a victim (by the emperor).

The original song (see the original, not politically correct lyrics here) is full of 19th century satire, some of which remains relevant today.  However, it has become the norm for at least one or two verses of the song to be rewritten to include some more up-to-date references - by way of example, have a listen to this recording from a 1998 production in Manchester that I was in (alternative lyrics also attached as a Word document).

This is where we hope you come in - initially we thought we'd write some new lyrics ourselves, but we thought it would be more representative and much more fun to ask the interweb for ideas, themes, snippets of lines or even whole verses that we can put together to form a whole song to be used in our Come and Sing The Mikado on 8 June.  It's just for a bit of fun - no money in it, I'm afraid - but we will credit significant contributions in the programme.  We also can't promise we'll use every single idea or word that comes to us, but we'll do our best to represent a wide range of ideas, and of course there have to be a few ground rules:

• please, please make sure anything you write is not libelous
• please keep it light-hearted and suitable for a family audience
• please remember that it's going to be performed in a church and should be suitable for that venue
• if you're writing actual lines rather than "something about x" type ideas, please pay attention to the rhythm of the song - following the syllable pattern of the original or alternative lyrics is a good place to start
• please post your ideas here or e-mail them to us at musicontheladder@gmail.com by no later than 19 April (we'll need to put them all together and give the chap who plays Ko-Ko a chance to learn the song in plenty of time for the performance!)

We're really looking forward to seeing what the masses come up with and fitting it all together!

If you'd like to hear more about what we're doing at Music on the Ladder, you can "like" our facebook page at www.facebook.com/musicontheladder or follow us on Twitter: @musicontheladdr (that last "e" really isn't there), or you can drop us a line at musicontheladder@gmail.com.