What is the meaning to this song lyric?

Cafe Society
1

I was listening to one of my favorite albums from the 80’s today, Adam Ants "Friend or Foe".

There is a song on the album called “Crackpot History and the Right to Lie”.
The song generally is about his feelings about fame and how in Britain people love to knock you down when you’re on top. But there is a line in the song I just don’t get.

That line in the song is:
Pumping is a splendid gift, I hope that you will catch my drift
Some like pumping in the lift, just like the Scottish tongs

My first guess is it’s talking about having sex in an elevator.
But what/who the hell are the Scottish Tongs?
The only thing I could come up with is a street gang named Real Calton Tongs in Glasgow, Scotland. But what do they have to do with pumping in a lift?

WTH?

2

Gee whiz. There must be someone on these boards from Great Britain that can enlighten me.

3

I’m not a Brit, but pumping in the lift translates to farting in the elevator.

Can’t help you with what that has to do with Scottish tongs.

4

I Googled this:

" Tongland is a local nickname for the area of Calton, Glasgow controlled in the 1960s by a violent Scottish teenage gang called the Real Calton Tongs. The Tongs financed themselves using a protection racket, levying money on shops within their territory, and they marked that territory out in graffiti with their slogan “Tongs Ya Bass”."

So I’m guessing that those thugs like farting on elevators just to torture whatever unfortunates happen to be riding with them.

5

I’m British but don’t recognise the expression Scottish Tongs.

However, as a guess, ‘pumping’ can mean farting and Adam Ant was from London where they like rhyming slang. So possibly ‘Scottish Tongs’ is being used as slang for pongs?

Hence in a song criticising some people (in the music business) as being simply nasty people he’s observing: Some people like farting in a confined space because some people like the smell.

But that’s just my guess.

TCMF-2L

6

Isn’t pumping slang for fucking, just like the OP initially suspected? I’ve certainly seen Frankie Boyle use it that way.

7

But why would pumping be a “splendid gift”? The entire meaning of this lyric is quit obscure.

8

I suspect that, like most song lyrics, it means nothing.
Just a bunch of random words put together to rhyme and scan and sound
pretentious.
But that’s just imho.

9

Nah. The entire album (except for the cover of a Doors song) is peppered with lyrics geared towards people he was pissed at for disrespecting himself and his former bandmates, including industry insiders and even the general public at large. The lyrics on this song mean something. I just don’t know what. It’s been bugging me for over 40 years.

10

FWIW, Songfact says

In his autobiography, Adam Ant said this song “covers my feelings about fame and how in Britain people love to knock you down when you’re on top”.

11

The entire album minus one song is commentary of like topics. “Goody Two Shoes” was about how people turned on him because he left the Ants because they were doing drugs. “Here Comes the Grump” was about fame being fleeting, “Friend or Foe” was about how he found out who his real friends were when he got famous, and so on. Every song had a real life meaning that was personal and specific to him. It was quite clever.

Which compounds the mystery of the Scottish Tongs lyrics.

12

Very immature males will often vie with one another to make the longest and loudest ones. "“Splendid gift” may be a sarcastic reference who to those who are very adept at doing so.