Rant Alert!!Howard Blake in The Guardian - glossed for beginners.

[french frank]

You can't have your cake and eat it here you know.

Not against the House Rules, you know . More to the point, why the 'comic insouciance' only in the footnote relating to classical music? The presence of the footnotes might be taken as comic pedantry, perhaps; or sort of pseudo-intellectualism. But the actual content of the footnotes (rather than their presence) presents a slightly different angle. There's nothing inherently funny about nos 1-3. No 4 sounds a bit like Dead Ringers making fun of a Radio 3 presenter explaining a Schubert song. I merely speculate on intention.

(1) The late American composer, best known for his spooky Hitchcock soundtracks, including the one for Psycho. He insisted on creative control, saying that if a sountrack was left to directors, "the music would be awful".

(2) Cult 1960s British spy-fi series that starred Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman.

(3) A stage version of The Snowman, which originated at Birmingham Rep and has been showing at London's Peacock since 2000.

(4) A two-minute solo piece, full of sadness but with hints of happiness, that was written in the mid-19th century but not published until over 100 years later in 1955.