A problem worse than Bonnie Tyler. (You heard me.)

I’ve come to you for help before, kind reader.

Some of you will recall – possibly with full-body shudders and theatrical flashbacks – the grim details of my darkest hour, when I confessed to an enraptured blogosphere that I was utterly incapable of getting Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart out of my head.

For days the song lingered there – hounding me, torturing me, reminding me time and again that forever’s gonna start tonight. [Brief pause.] Forevvvvver’s gonna start tonight.

With your help, I tried repeatedly to dislodge the song but it had grabbed onto my subconscious like nothing since that 1979 photo of Kristy McNichol in short shorts. I deployed the usual countermeasures: trying to sing other annoyingly catchy songs; trying to sing other annoyingly catchy songs from the same era (several people overheard me at Loblaws – does this mean I owe royalties to Kim Carnes?); theme songs; jingles; masturbation. Nothing worked. (With the benefit of hindsight, I see now that it was counterproductive to masturbate to the image of Bonnie Tyler.)

Eventually, after almost a week of effort, frustration and my seven-year-old son singing the chorus to Funkytown, I regained power of attorney over my mental synapses. Victory was mine.

But victory, like Bonnie Tyler’s mastery of the pop charts, was short-lived. The menace of Bonnie Tyler had been bested, but now there is a new nemesis – more insidious, more debilitating, more… Italian.

Ladies and gentlemen, as God is my witness it has been four days now and I cannot get out of my head the 1981 novelty song Shaddap You Face.

Eating Apple Jacks this morning and… whassamatta you – hey!

Making the bed this morning and… It’s-a not so bad, it’s-a nice-a place!

Damn you, Joe Dolce.

Damn you and your controlling mother to hell.