Does anyone remember before "Dishes" at Finsbury Park in 1998, Jarvis dedicates it to someone who had a 20 minute conversation about their dishwasher? Does anyone know who he's referring to? For some strange reason, every time I see that "Maigret" advert on TV, I think of this! Obviously Maigret is fictional so it's not him but it does sound a bit similar.
I think "Sylvia", though probably not her real name, is based upon a real person. Whilst I don't think Jarvis had a relationship with her, there is evidence in the lyrics to suggest that they were (close) friends and have possibly drifted apart ("I've not seen her for a long time though I've heard she's still around").
I'm taking a wild stab in the dark here but I think it's possible that she is the same person in "Common People" a few years later, and by the time she got round to calling her dad who could stop it all, he wasn't interested because he's "living with some girl who's a year younger than her".
Hang on, didn't Jarvis introduce the song by saying "There was one girl... it's not the one you think"? So that's that out of the window. Oh well.
-- Edited by Ian on Friday 2nd of December 2016 11:49:03 PM
Isn't it referring to a TV character? I thought Jarvis was talking about the crowd missing that day's telly and that Big Ray was a character in a soap or something; 'I'm A Man' was trimmed from the concert video, and came immediately before 'Dishes', so the start of that chat could have been removed.
Mind you I see there's also a Big Ray at discogs.com who did some remixes around 1998, so perhaps it's him and I've just imagined the above for the last 18 years!