When I was a young boy My mama said to me There's only one girl in the world for you And she probably lives in Tahiti I'd go the whole wide world I'd go the whole wide world Just to find her Or maybe she's in the Bahamas Where the Carribean sea is blue Weeping in a tropical moonlit night Because nobody's told her 'bout you I'd go the whole wide world I'd go the whole wide world Just to find her I'd go the whole wide world I'd go the whole wide world Find out where they hide her Why am I hanging around in the rain out here Trying to pick up a girl Why are my eyes filling up with these lonely tears When there're girls all over the world Is she lying on a tropical beach somewhere Underneath the tropical sun Pining away in a heatwave there Hoping that I won't be long I should be lying on that sun-soaked beach with her Caressing her warm brown skin And then in a year or maybe not quite We'll be sharing the same next of kin I'd go the whole wide world I'd go the whole wide world Just to find her I'd go the whole wide world I'd go the whole wide world Find out where they hide her words and music Eric Goulden / Wreckless Eric (Zomba Music)

There's so much to say about Whole Wide World that I don't really know where to start - if you want to know how I wrote it and the recording of it you can find an account of all that in my book, A Dysfunctional Success. Apart from that...I've always had a secret fear that the geography isn't correct, so much so that I've never dared to look at a map to check it out. But as I wrote the song just over thirty something years ago (May 1974) it's probably OK to admit to that now - incorrect geography might even perhaps add to what journalists have referred to as its urchin charm. There was a time when I regarded Whole Wide World as an albatross round my neck - I thought it was the only song of mine that people wanted to hear. It's the track that unimaginitive radio presenter always play when I go on their shows. At the start of the second Stiff tour (the one with Lene Lovich, Jona Lewie, Rachel Sweet and Mickey Jupp) I wasn't going to play it because it was out of date - I had a new album with Take The Cash, Walking On The Surface Of The Moon, Veronica, I Wish It Would Rain on it - there wasn't room in the thirty-five minute set for Whole Wide World! But we did it and we ended up putting the B side, Semaphore Signals, in the set too - the band had to learn it by listening to it over and over again on the jukebox in the bar at some university we were playing at.