Rockall - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

The 1955 British landing, complete with the trappings such as the hoisting the flag, caused a certain amount of popular amusement, with some seeing it as a sort of farcical end to imperial expansion. The satirists Flanders and Swann sang a successful piece entitled "Rockall", playing on the similarity of the word to the vulgar expression "fuck all". Similarly, in The Goon Show episode "Napoleon's Piano" Seagoon made a less-than-triumphant landfall on Rockall with the titular piano. Rockall was the launching site for the prototype "Jet propelled guided NAAFI" in the Goon Show episode of the same name. Musty Mind, the parody of Mastermind on the lunchtime radio programme of Noel Edmonds featured a send-up subject, The Cultural and Social History of Rockall. And the cast of I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again claimed to have spent the break between two series of the programme making a "triumphant tour of Rockall".

In literature, it has been suggested that Rockall is the rock which forms the setting for William Golding's novel Pincher Martin. The Master, a 1957 novel by T. H. White, is set inside Rockall. William Sarjeant's series of fantasy novels, The Perilous Quest for Lyonesse is set in an imaginary version of Rockall. Ben Fogle made a claim to Rockall by sticking a post-it note onto the rock bearing the words "Property of Ben Fogle" in his book Offshore. Rockall is cited several times in Kirmen Uribe's 2008 novel, Bilbao-New York-Bilbao.

In Steve Bell's Guardian cartoon strip, one of the characters – a penguin – annexes and claims Rockall as the "People's Republic of Rockall".

In music, Irish rebel music band the Wolfe Tones released a track called "Rock on Rockall" that argues against the supposed British ownership of the rock and supports an Irish claim. English post-punk band Gang of Four reference the rock in the 1979 song "Ether" (from the album Entertainment!), in the line "There may be oil ... under Rockall," possibly a reference to the disputed exploitation rights. Icelandic jazz-funk band Mezzoforte in 1983 released a piece of music entitled Rockall. The House Band named their 1996 album after the island.

In Part Seven of his novel, The Cruel Sea, author Nicolas Monsarrat has the fictitious British naval corvette Saltash receive a message ordering it to "Remain on patrol in vicinity of Rockall" as the end of the Second World War approaches.

Comedian Tony Hancock recited a list of the dwindling British colonial possessions, ending with the words, "... and sweet Rockall."