Words: titfer, n.

Christopher Hawtree
Wednesday 18 November 1998 00:02 GMT
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"TITFERS ALOFT", writes the disc-jockey Andy Kershaw in the latest issue of Mojo magazine, by way of praise for those who had produced its coverage of Bob Dylan's 1966 performances. (Amphetamine-fuelled, Dylan had told a bewildered Swedish interviewer, "I myself happen to be Swedish.")

Kershaw - who locked himself away for three days to decipher Dylan's every brilliant, mumbled remark on the disc - makes one pause, but his rhyming slang then makes sense.

Tit for tat: hat, which goes back to the First World War - and on to the musical Me and My Girl, a work which is a far cry from that blistering version of "Like a Rolling Stone" into which Dylan was goaded by the audience cry of "Judas!" A masterpiece.

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