She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge. She studied sculpture at St Martins College. But who the hell was she? Well, the wise druids at music website the Quietus might just have found out who the Pulp song Common People is actually about, and the answer will amaze and astonish you. Or at least, it amazed and astonished us, because the rumoured muse is none other than artist Danae Stratou, wife of the controversial Syriza politician Yanis Varoufakis. Which means the only sexually attractive finance minister in the known universe might now share an unlikely bond with Jarvis Cocker, and this mental image pleases us here at Lost in Showbiz greatly. Not because of anything inappropriate, you understand, but because we are interested in ties, and the pop star most likely to wear a tie will now forever be bound in romantic pop triangles with the politician least likely to wear one.
Anyway, here is the evidence: Stratou did indeed study art at St Martins, in the late 1980s, as did Cocker – indeed, she has since made art her career, and her mother is a famous artist too. Her father, Phaedon Stratos, meanwhile, is from a family of leading industrialists, who run one of the biggest textile firms in the country, meaning there would indeed have been money to get roaches off walls, should roaches have climbed them. Greek headlines about the Syriza couple say things such as, “The financier of the proletariat and his rich artistic wife,” making a rather spooky fit with Common People’s general theme of a privileged woman taking an interest in how the other half live.
But we don’t even know if Stratou actually ever met the future pop star, let alone enjoyed the sort of relationship with him that could have inspired a song. Jarvis himself, when asked about his greatest hit, has always refused to name his fellow student, only previously muttering things such as: “Maybe she wasn’t Greek. Maybe I misheard her.” Could he have been watching her rise to fame with a wry smile all this time? More to the point, was it Pulp and their take on class war who actually inspired Syriza? Ah, so many questions, and so few answers, unless Jarvis would care to get in touch and reveal the truth about this new Greek myth. Until then, the answer is a tiebreaker.
