It was a toss-up whether to put this one in the dungeon or the Hall of Fame. But then Sparkle got a yen to do Theda Bara in the latter and those pictures of the original vamp in a series of fabulous outfits were too much for us to resist. So, ladies and gentlemen, down here in the crepuscular depths, sweating unattractively into his restraining straps, we have Ron Miller, whose name, I am willing to bet any amount of money, will be totally unfamiliar to any of you. But his work might well be. Together with Ken Hirsch, he wrote the song 'Never Been To Me'*, which was a hit for a jumpsuited young woman called Charlene, back in the 1980. I think. I was pretty young. Or it might have been the late 1970s. While writing the introduction to our Mom column, I quoted a few lines from 'Never Been To Me', and the flood of e-mails it provoked from the entire body of tarts demonstrated that it had been lurking in our collective subconscious.

It's one of those songs that stays with you, and there's a very good reason for that. In fact this song is a perfect example of the return of the repressed; or, to put it another way, how a writer's declared intentions can be subverted by the hidden power of their own subtext. 'Never Been To Me' is overtly about how dangerous it is for women to charge around the world following their own selfish pleasures and how much better it is to bite the lip, stay at home and do what nature intended for us to do (breed). That, in any case, is what Ron THINKS he's here to tell us.

Charlene begins by addressing one of the latter type of women, a stay-at-home mother in the middle of a pretty nasty bout of housewife blues.+

"Hey lady, you lady, cursin' at your life.
You're a discontented mother and a regimented wife
I've no doubt you dream about the things you'll never do.
But I wish someone had talked to me like I wanna talk to you."

We will return to the various phrases Charlene uses to describe the pissed-off homemaker later. But let us look first at the way she tries to convince the POH that the latter has made the right choice in life:

"Oh, I've been to Nice and the Isles of Greece where I sipped champagne on a yacht.
Moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed 'em what I got.
I've been undressed by kings and I've seen some things that a woman ain't s'posed to see.
I've been to Paradise but I've never been to me."

That the POH hasn't brained Charlene with a baby stroller by this point shows considerable restraint. There is nothing worse than someone who's had the kind of good time you haven't telling you it wasn't worth it after all, like supermodels complaining that they only get offered bimbo parts in movies. When Helena Bonhan Carter moaned in a Time Out interview that she always got the boring heroines and would love to play character roles, Kathy Burke wrote a famously blistering letter to Time Out pointing out that, as a self-proclaimed ugly cow, she wouldn't at all have minded Helena's dilemma. The more Charlene bangs on about having been undressed by kings, the more it makes any self-respecting POH desperate to shoot off to the Riviera and flaunt herself in a string bikini in the hope that some monarch with time on his hands will immediately summon her to his yacht and start peeling the macramé two-piece off her with his teeth.

"Sometimes I've been to cryin' for unborn children that might have made me complete", Charlene confides in POH. "But I took the sweet life and never thought I'd be bitter from the sweet." POH, laughing bitterly, responds with stories picked at random from the Mother Files: projectile vomiting, seventeen stitches in your ripped privates, three years with no sleep, pre-teenagers who will only wear violently expensive logoed clothes while screaming every time they are asked to do something about the house: "I didn't ASK to be born!"

Charlene blanches and looks down at her perfect manicure. Suddenly the single life - and her nice flat unstretch-marked stomach - don't seem so bad after all.

And now let's go back to the original description of POH: a 'discontented mother and a regimented wife'. Regimented. That's an interesting word, isn't it, Ron? Why did you pick that one? Who's regimenting our POH? Society? Suburbia? Loving husband? It's a very strong word, isn't it? It's the kind of word you would use about someone in a situation that they OUGHT to escape from in order to preserve their sanity. The return of the repressed operates in the principle that the more you shove something down, the more it pops up, like a ball held under water. What is repressed can't help bursting out eventually, usually at the most inappropriate moments. No wonder Charlene's arguments become increasingly desperate. Despite himself, Ron contrasts her freedom so eloquently with poor old POH's regimented life that the argument ends up turning round 180 degrees.

"Please lady," the song ends, "please lady, don't just walk away.
'Cause I have this need to tell you why I'm all alone today.
I can see so much of me still living in your eyes.
Won't you share a part of a weary heart that has lived a million lies."

Now Charlene, sensing that she's losing the argument, is positively having to beg POH to see things her way; but the more she tries to convince her, and us, that POH's choice is the right one, the less we do. We're busy fantasising about making like Harlow in Monte Carlo. Who cares about the million lies? Hell, when you're keeping kings and Greek tycoons and sinning clergymen on the go all at once, no-one expects you to be George Washington!

"I've been to Georgia and California and anywhere I could run,
Took the hand of a preacher man and we made love in the sun.
But I ran out of places and friendly faces because I had to be free,"
Charlene whines. "I've been to Paradise but I've never been to me."

Well, that's what therapy's for, isn't it, Charlene? Now you've spent your twenties and thirties flaunting yourself around Europe (and Georgia and California, what riches! I love Ron dropping those locations in - after Nice and the Isles of Greece they're just a touch disappointing to those of us who were hoping for the Caribbean and the Rio Carnival, but Ron's perspective, as we have already seen, is pretty limited) you can go settle down in New Mexico and find a sympathetic therapist who'll help you work out who you really are while getting a huge kick out of all your lurid memories. "I've been to Paradise but I've never been to me" - is that supposed to scare us, Ron? Do you really think that POH is really going to listen to that clincher and say: 'You know what, that's a very good point, I may be cursing at my life while knee-deep in smelly nappies but at least I've, um, been to me"? Don't you think that POH, like any other woman (or man), strongly believes that the real her IS that girl in a bikini on a yacht in Monaco? There's a great bit in Kate Atkinson's recent novel 'Human Croquet': the boy the heroine is in love with, a sweet, nice, hardworking boy called Malcolm who's everyone's favourite, confides in her that he doesn't feel that this is his real, true self, and he's desperate to work out what that is. The heroine can't help reflecting that sometimes it's better not to find your true self... you might not like it so much... and indeed she's perfectly right. Malcolm drops out, goes in quest of himself and dies some years later in a pool of his own drug-induced vomit.

By the end of the song Ron Miller has created a situation whose contradictions he can't contain. Blame Charlene all you want for 'having to be free'; the more you try to make that sound like a crime the less anyone takes your other arguments seriously. Charlene, standing there prettily on a stage singing her song, is obviously just a little over-tired from partying and in no deeper crisis than a few weeks at a health spa, giving up the booze and following a juice-only programme while seeing a series of alternative practitioners will sort out. POH, meanwhile, having gathered beauty tips and a list of Charlene's Ten Best Places In St Tropez For Picking Up Millionaires, is embarking on a radical diet and grooming regime prior to dumping the kids with her mother-in-law and heading off to Europe to find herself/a king with a lot of time on his hands, whichever comes first. And Ron Miller has given us exactly what he didn't want to (or didn't think he wanted to. Never underestimate the power of the unconscious): a series of mantras for the tarts of today to chant as they set out for another busy evening's partying, fully intending to see as many things that a woman isn't supposed to see as possible, or die trying. You see why I wondered whether to put Ron in the dungeon. For providing us with such an eloquent example of what happens when you try to regiment a woman - total failure - he almost deserved the Hall of Fame instead.

But save a space there for Ken Hirsch, who wrote the music. That was SUCH a catchy tune!

* available on the soundtrack to 'Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert', according to Katy.

+ Big sloppy kiss to Tony Fennelly for unearthing the lyrics and transcribing them for me.