Is This the Real-Life Woman from Pulp’s “Common People?”
All good Britpop kids know the words:
She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge
She studied sculpture at Saint Martin’s College, that’s where I caught her eye.
She told me that her Dad was loaded
A real person? Or a figment of Jarvis Cocker’s imagination? If you went with (a) a real person, you might be right.
The Athens Voice, a Greek newspaper, says that they’ve tracked down the identify of this woman: Danae Stratou, now the wife of Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. Here are the facts:
- Danae studied at St. Martin’s College between 1983 and 1988. And yes, she was into sculpture.
- Jarvis Cocker took a film studies course at the same school between 1988 and 1991.
- Danae’s father was definitely loaded. She comes from a giant textile family which ran Peiraki-Patraiki, 0ne of the largest employers in all of Greece.
Pretty interesting, no? But there are a couple of problems with this. First, Danae won’t comment. And second, a Greek Cypriot artist named Katerina Kana told a Greek magazine that she was the one mentioned to Jarvis that she wanted to live like common people.
Could this unnamed woman in the song be an amalgamation of the two?
(Via The BBC)
