A CUNNING scheme to prevent groups of boy racers plaguing a residential area by blasting them with Barry Manilow songs has met with a mixed response. The local council in Rockdale, near Sydney, has hailed the plan as a success. The residents, however, who are forced to endure the crooner’s greatest hits from 9pm until midnight every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, are less enthusiastic.

Up to a hundred hooligans had been gathering in the streets of the town and the council was concerned that their roaring engines and loud car stereos were giving its citizens sleepless nights and damaging trade for local restaurants. The council responded by erecting loudspeakers in the worst-affected streets. Bill Saravinovski, deputy mayor of Rockdale, said: “Barry’s our secret weapon. He does seem to be working.”

But the strategy angered the residents whom the council was trying to help. “I just can’t sleep when it’s on — and to think there is going to be another six months of this,” Moya Dunn said. Another couple, who gave their names only as Peter and Ann, said that they were unable to sleep until the music stopped. “It’s far too loud and it’s not doing it’s job, ” Ann said.

Mr Saravinovski said that only the residents who lived closest to the loudspeakers were badly affected. But he admitted: “I am not disputing what the residents are saying. I myself can’t swallow some of Manilow’s songs, like Mandy.”

He disputed the residents’ claims that the scheme had failed to deter the boy racers.

The Manilow playlist relies on the classics such as Copacabana, Mandy, I Write the Songs, Can’t Smile Without You and Looks Like We Made It. Research said to have been conducted in the United States for the FBI in the early 1990s suggested that the extended playing of Manilow’s songs could force people to flee. The FBI reportedly threatened to play Manilow at loud volume outside the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas, in 1993. However, the siege ended before the plan could go ahead.

The Blacktown council in West Sydney, on the other hand, claimed success when it used Manilow’s music to prevent youths from loitering around a railway station.

Manilow has been less than impressed with Rockdale council’s use of his music to annoy listeners. He told Who magazine in Australia: “Frankly, I think if you played anyone’s music for that long you’d drive any rationally minded human out of their mind. But have they thought that these hoodlums might like my music? What if some of them began to sing along to Can't Smile Without You? Or lit candles when I Write the Songs was played?

“Or, heaven forbid, danced around to the infectious beat of Copacabana? What if this actually attracts more hoodlums? What if it puts smiles on their faces?”

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