According to research reported this week, listening to In Da Club by 50 Cent before a job interview can increase your chances of success.

When the Silver Fox was offered the interview that would eventually lead to our move to Australia, music did play a part – although there was no rapping involved.

He had to drive to a venue on the other side of town to be interviewed via video-conference. I knew he’d be nervous and wanted to calm him down. And I also wanted him to get the job.

While we hadn’t actually agreed that we would move if he was offered it, we agreed it would be nice to have the choice.

So the night before, I sneaked out to the car and put a copy of Paul Kelly‘s album Gossip in the CD player. And when the Silver Fox started the engine the following morning, this is what he heard: Kelly’s love song to Melbourne, Leaps and Bounds.

True, we were headed to Perth, not Melbourne. And the job itself was in the Western Australian suburb of Kwinana, known in polite circles as a lower socio-economic area, famed for the industrial plants along its shoreline, rather than one of the world’s most liveable cities with world-class sporting facilities as name-checked in Kelly’s song.

But the sentiment was right, and it did the trick. Two months later we were in Australia, and we did finally make it to Melbourne – without any help from 50 Cent.