By Princess Tightwad, the parsimonious eco-warrior

Princess Tightwad was bored with her in-car CDs. How many times had she listened to Moby, The Ministry of Sound Chill Out Sessions and Music of South Africa?

Unwilling to let Amazon play with my Flexible Friend, and with a musician pal's birthday looming, I thought I’d see what my local charity shops had to offer. I expected very little apart from scratched CDs of Tears For Fears, Val Doonican and Daniel O'Donnell Singalong –with-Mrs- Doyle.

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But how wrong I was. First CD: Spike Jones and The City Slickers: Musical Madness. My musician friend was thrilled with this, saying he’d always loved Spike Jones but had never got round to buying any. Next purchase had to be 'The Legend That Is Tony Christie', the cheesy cruise ship crooner just because Amarillo happened to be on it for the kids to sing along on the school run. However, my guilty pleasure, once the kids are at school is to drive home with Avenues and Alleyways and Tony's cover version of Berlin’s Take My Breath Away belting from the speakers. If only my gothic student-days friends could see what has become of me…

The next CD from unpromising beginnings turned out to be Find of The Year. Faced with an abundance of Latinesque music on the shelves of Marie Curie I picked the tackiest one going – ‘Hot Latin Nights’ by Edmundo Ros, who grinned out from the cover wearing a moustache and a Mexican frock. Edmundo was making music from 1941-1950 and was apparently a favourite hire of Princess Margaret for her louche parties. The whole album is an infectious, shoulder-shimmying, rhythmic celebration of Calypso and Latin beats, some tracks (such as Her Bathing Suit Never Got Wet) even verging on the Benny Hill.

The junior Tightwad Princesses are now almost word-perfect on such long-forgotten songs of the 1940s as I Got The Sun In The Morning and The Wedding Samba.

Further Colombian/Lebanese joy was purchased in the form of a scratched but playable Spanish edition of Shakira’s ‘Laundry Service’ with the thumpin’ Whenever, Wherever to make you belly dance in your driving seat.

The Sue Ryder Shop then gave up its treasures: jumping forward five decades from Edmondo, an original edition of ‘Divine Madness’. So few musicians have serial hits now that it’s astonishing that Madness had 31 between 1979 and 2008. ‘Divine Madness’ has all the faves: House of Fun, Night Boat to Cairo, One Step Beyond, Our House and the one that Junior Princess Tightwad no.1 calls ‘The Destruction of the School’: Baggy Trousers.
Clever lyrics: ‘I’m as honest as the day is long, the longer the daylight the less I do wrong’ and ska sunniness make ‘Divine Madness’ the perfect grey Monday morning companion.

There were many other curiosities to tempt Princess Tightwad to open her purse: ‘By The Noo – Scottish Military Band Music’, ‘Pan Pipes Joy’, Harry Secombe’s ‘Sacred Songs’, Climie Fisher (who?) ‘Songs of Praise volume 14’ and of course many, many albums by Daniel O’Donnell: ‘Daniel In Blue Jeans’ and ’Daniel’s Yesterday’s Memories’ to name two. But having spent the princely sum of £7.50, I felt as if I'd purchased enough in-car sunshine to take me through to January.