By MICHELLE HEWITSON
There are three forms of musical expression which sound awful if you don't get it right, the Topp Twins tell us on In Search of the Lonesome Yodel (8.30 pm tonight on TV One.) The banjo, the bagpipes and, yes, the yodel.
There are those who might argue that the yodel sounds awful even when you do get it right. The Topp Twins, star-struck as they were from an early age by the likes of Australia's Yodelling Sweetheart, Shirley Thoms, would not figure among their number.
Here's Lynda recalling the charms of Shirley: "It felt like a baby angel was singing to me." For a week or so after she first heard the dulcet warbles of the Aussie yodeller, Lynda wandered about, she recalls lovingly, in a delicious trance.
The Topps have remained entranced ever since. Their mother Jean was not. Driven to distraction by the twins' early yodelling efforts, she sent them down to the back of the family farm to practice.
"Down the old trail, back to the old homestead," they go, on a journey retracing their love affair with the yodel.
And back to their old school where they have an appointment, they think, to teach today's pupils how to yodel. Ha, say the kids who have obviously made a study of the Topps propensity to pull a prank on their audiences. "This Is Your Life, Topp Twins," they announce before breaking into a series of giggling song-and-dance performances including one astute musical adaptation: "Macho, macho twins. I wanna be a macho twin."
It's scenes like that - and one where the Topps put on a show at their hometown community hall - which remind us that wherever the twins appear they do more for gay acceptance than any big city parade.
Still, like any big city parade, there are well-known faces among the crowd, here stretching their vocal cords in pursuit of the yodel: Xena (Lucy Lawless), Helen Clark, Malvina Major - who the Topps, in typically cheeky fashion, introduce as "one yodeller who made a name for herself in the great opera houses of Europe."
Then they're off to glimpse the great yodel house of Sydney and the big country "where the giants of yodelling live," including Mary Schneider, the Queen of Yodelling.
"I wonder what she'll be like," muses Jools.
"I think," says Lynda gazing dreamily out the car window, "she'll be beautiful." She is, too. But her stage get-up rather proves the theory of the twins' brother, Bruce - the drawback with yodellers is "bad hair days and no dress sense."
Or maybe that should be bad hat days. At the Gympie Muster Country and Western Festival there is a man wearing a cowboy hat made out of Castlemaine XXXX cartons.
But never mind him.
"Shirley's here in spirit," sighs Lynda, celebrating the rise of the new yodelling sweethearts.
"And I guess we're the sweethearts of New Zealand," says Jools.
I guess they are. You can forgive the Topps just about anything. Even that old joke they keep dragging out about the central theory of yodelling being in the hip movement. And even, almost, for insisting that the yodel - an awful sound even if you do it right - is an art form.
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