Ring On their Fingers - And Anthony Hayward - Not An Overwhelming Hit...

Diane Keen as Sandy and Martin Jarvis as Oliver in "Rings On Their Fingers". Were there special circumstances surrounding its success?

Roz writes:

I've just read this by TV writer Anthony Hayward, regarding the sitcom "Rings On Their Fingers", starring Diane Keen and Martin Jarvis:

Feminists criticised the programme, written by Richard Waring, but failed to stop it becoming an overwhelming hit with viewers, attracting as many as 21 million during its three series.

Twenty-one million was a HUGE audience, even back then and I don't recall "Rings" being that big a deal. What goes on?

Anthony Hayward - silly-billy! First thing to do when writing about TV ratings covering 1979 is to check if the ITV Strike was on at that point! ITV was the only popular opposition to BBC 1 in those days, and with less than 5% of UK households having a video recorder, pretty much the only game in town.

So, when ITV disappeared during that long and torturous strike, most of us didn't switch to "posh", minority interest BBC 2, but good old Beeb 1 - and the results were spectacular. Even quite naff shows and repeats received mind boggling ratings, which is what happened with "Rings On Their Fingers", which suddenly sprouted an outrageous 21 million viewers in October 1979, the month the ITV Strike fortunately ended. "Rings" began in October 1978, but sadly didn't make the top twenty monthly ratings at all then.

Having said that, "Rings" was a success, scoring 15.6 million viewers in November 1980, probably helped by viewers who had become acquainted with the show during the ITV Strike.

Do check on the dates in future, Anthony Hayward, old bean - and BBC, take that advice too - see here.

Sheesh, and here's me, no training, no paid position in on-line or other journalism, running rings around some of those who have!

Thanks for querying this, Roz!

And stay tuned to The REAL 1970s for the facts as they actually happened!

The '70s - The Golden Age Of TV? I Think Not...

I find it fascinating that the 1970s are so widely vaunted as "The Golden Age Of Television". Can somebody please explain? For instance, the BBC's "I Love The 1970s" site places Monty Python in 1970.

It began in 1969.

"Ah," say '70s fans," but it was at its height in the early '70s!"

Oh, I see.

Not The Nine O'Clock News was "at its height", and indeed had the line-up we all remember, in the early 1980s.

But it appears on the BBC "I Love The 1970s" site on the 1979 page.

"Ah," say '70s fans, "But it BEGAN in 1979."

Um... er... does not compute.

Meanwhile, let's not forget the 1970s had its fair share of dross (Take The Wife or Rings On Their Fingers, anybody?).

And for every The Sweeney there was a few dozen flops.

And didn't the 1960s and 1980s also have lashings of memorable and innovative TV shows?

I think they did.

Do we reject the 1960s because the shows were largely in black and white?

Do we reject the 1980s because it was the era of Thatcher and Reagan?

The "Golden Age of Coronation Street" is also apparently the 1970s. But the show slipped catastrophically in the ratings in the early '70s! And I find many of those episodes unwatchable. Things perked up brilliantly when Bill Podmore became producer in 1976, but that hardly qualifies the WHOLE of the 1970s as being the "Golden Age" of Corrie, does it?

The '70s had some great TV.

It also had loads of trash.

Rather like the 1960s and 1980s.

So, people, please try and CONVINCE me otherwise, please! Try to make me see what you see.

And comments such as:

"70s woz great, wot are you talking about?" will not be published.

Views Of The '70s Part 2 - Klackers, Racism, The Cambridge Rapist, Frisbees, Digital Watches And Maxi Skirts...

No videos of TV series, but books based on them instead - Upstairs Downstairs, the '70s answer to the '60s Forsyte Saga, was hugely popular both on TV and in book form.

In the second part of our "Views Of The '70s" series, Christine, who is now fifty-one, looks at life in the decade for a young working class woman...

It's odd what's written about the '70s and I know a lot of it is not true. Firstly, the '70s were not a time of dazzling new technology, that was the '80s - and a lot of it was clunky and unaffordable even in the '80s!

The '70s, for me, was the last non-technological decade. We had the TV, of course, and although colour had come out in 1967, my family had black and white in the '70s. The licence was a lot cheaper, and we couldn't afford to buy or rent colour.

New technology in the 1970s was things like calculators and digital watches. I never had a calculator, I didn't know anybody who did, but digital watches from around the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s were objects of desire. There were several boys I knew flashing them around - it was hinted some of them had "fallen off the back of a lorry", and they weren't very reliable. I remember one lad showing me his digital watch, proud as punch, "Look at this!" and I looked, and the face was blank!

"Battery must've gone!" he said.

"But you've only just got it!" I laughed.

Nobody I knew could afford a video recorder - and we never dreamt of having one. They came home to roost in the 1980s.

TV games systems, computers, all that kind of thing did not get going until the 1980s.

But that's a reason why I have fond memories of the '70s - because we led much simpler lives. Mind you, I have fond memories of the '80s too, because technology from that decade now seems so funny.

I left school in 1974, and the sort of things I'd amused myself with as a kid were things like colouring books and Spirograph - a '60s game that was huge in the '70s. I loved it dearly.

And there were klackers - a huge craze in the early '70s. I don't know why now. As I say, simpler times!

Kids were not really innocent in the 1970s. I remember even little girls, under elevens, singing one of the favourite rhymes of the time: "Ooh, Ah, I Lost My Bra, I Left My Knickers In My Boyfriend's car!"

Innocent?

I didn't like pop groups like Led Zeppelin - they seemed a bit of a '60s hangover, and nobody round my way wanted to be thought a hippie. That was '60s - dead and gone, as far as we were concerned. We did wear flares, the bigger the better, but not because of their '60s hippie roots. They were just a great fashion. There was a lot of snobbery surrounding groups like Led Zeppelin. I knew a girl who was into them and she was really up herself - and lived in a nice, semi detached house in a nice avenue!

Listening to the charts on Radio 1 and watching Top Of The Pops were our weekly doses of the pop scene. And you could get pop magazines, Donny Osmond posters, etc. There was one magazine called 45 and it had all the words of the latest songs in it. I used to get that, because it was sometimes hard to hear what people were singing on our decrepit old record player and radio!

My favourite pop star was David Essex. He seemed gentle and had the most wonderful eyes. I also liked Gilbert O'Sullivan. I liked my pop to be fun and/or gentle. Noddy Holder had a mouth like a barn door, and seemed like an overgrown schoolboy. Little Willy won't go home! How I wished Noddy would bog off!

I think people were getting very cynical back then, they were hard times, and people talked about the '70s being a "hangover decade" - the '70s were paying for the '60s party. But, cynical or not, in the '70s, and in the '80s too, we'd still cry over schmaltzy rubbish. I wept buckets over Terry Jacks's Seasons In The Sun...

"It's hard to die when all the birds are singing in the sky..." Still makes me tearful!

There was well over a million unemployed, and when I left school I worried about getting work. My step-mother thought I should join up! She took me to the Army Centre in Cambridge - almost frog-marched me there! They had a chat, my step-mum was pretty determined, but I didn't want to go in and it didn't work out.

I had three crumby jobs - the first was making and packing hand-made jewelry - £10 a week - for a 40 hour week! You could not live on £10 a week even then, no way! I got laid off from there, and went to Cambridge to find work. It wasn't easy, even there. I went to the Citizens Advice Bureau, who gave me addresses to help find jobs and accommodation.

I finally got a job with Cambridge University in the Metallurgy Department. The pay wasn't great, but it was liveable. The Cambridge Rapist was on the loose... Terrifying! This man wore a black balaclava-type mask, with "RAPIST" written on it when he was on the prowl... and he was absolutely for real.

I got a ground floor bedsit with mice in it and an old sash window without a lock! I was so frightened because of the rapist. I imagined waking up to find him in my room. I screwed the window frames together, and got into trouble with the landlord about it for damaging his property - he didn't seem to give a damn about my safety!

I loved the arrival of Disco music, but didn't like Punk. A friend of mine said she thought Johnny Rotten was sweet. That was the '70s!

Toys for kids were still things like colouring books and Plasticine, and, around 1976, the Frisbee came over from America and was a huge craze.

The '70s were not a decade to be timid in, and I think I was timid! I wore glasses and was picked on at school, and I remember in Cambridge one day during the heatwave of 1976, I was in the town centre when a gang of youths started following me, shouting terrible obscenities, and jostling me. It was a busy area of the town, but nobody came to my aid. In the end, I ran into the police station. The boys disappeared faster than light!

I got married in 1977 and, although it didn't last (I was divorced in the late 1980s), I was happy for some years.

Fashion in the '70s was funny. We were very influenced by the 1960s and it was a bit garish and yucky early on, but there were some nice things. I remember smock tops - which were lovely retro garments, and long dresses with puffed sleeves came back. Denim jean skirts were also popular. The mini and the maxi were both introduced in the '60s, of course, but after a while the maxi saw off the mini in the 1970s and maxis with black tights were very popular.

We didn't go abroad on holidays. I've read that foreign holidays became increasingly popular from the '60s onwards, but we couldn't afford that, and neither could anybody else we socialised with. And yet we had lovely holidays in England - and I still favour the South Downs or Yorkshire over any foreign destination I've visited.

With three TV channels, the box was far more of a shared experience and in the '60s, '70s and '80s, there were many fads and catchphrases. There was one ad, I think it was for Playtex, and it may have been late '60s, but in it a very posh woman said: "My girdle's killing me!" and we all went around saying it for ages. And the ad for Cadbury's fruit and nut chocolate, in the early '70s, "Everyone's a fruit and nut case", ended with a secretary saying: "Full stop, Sir?" and we all went round saying that, too...

Then there was Anchor Butter... the ad went: "If you want a better butter, there's no other name you'll utter, because Britain's better butter bears the Anchor sign!" Great. But we all ate margarine, because it was so much cheaper.

I remember the ad for McVities digestive biscuits - with a Welsh man being offered a cup of tea and saying: "It's too wet!" A drink was, apparently, too wet without a McVities digestive!

And the Muppet Show with the song "Ma Na A Na". Everybody was saying it. I remember saying to my insurance man when I opened the front door to him: "Ma Na A Na?" to which he replied: "Funny you should say that - Ma Na A Na!"

I don't think the '70s were really a golden age for TV. There was a lot of trash on, and I found the '80s rather better. More subversive. But Upstairs Downstairs was magic. When Lady Marjorie went down on the Titanic, I remember reading that one village went into mourning - although the action was set in 1912! Within These Walls was another classic and I adored George & Mildred.

I didn't like Love Thy Neighbour, because I found it crude and I did find the racist language hard to take. I know it was supposed to be designed to take the heat out of things, but I think it largely failed.

But I have to say that I don't think that the vast majority of English people were racists in the 1970s. In those days "English", "British", "Scottish" and "Welsh" may have meant white because, traditionally, that's what they were. Nowadays the traditional UK nationalities are not a colour, which is absolutely how it should be, because things have changed.

On the council estate where I lived, there were several black families in the 1960s, well before the '70s, and they were our friends and neighbours. There was racism, usually the odd bigoted white Alf Garnett type, or bored trouble making white youths, and occasionally trouble would come from a black person (I remember a black man calling a local woman "white trash" - there was a big uproar about it, but nobody lambasted him louder than his own wife, who was also black!), but in the main we all adapted and got on together.

We were all ground down - it was a sink estate before the phrase was coined - and in the '60s and '70s (when there was an influx of "Boat People" on to the estate) we had to get along. I think we were all basically united in poverty. It was a great bringer-together. Far better than the ridiculous PC moralising of the modern day.

And a lot of stuff on the Internet is so untrue.

People seemed a lot more honest in the '70s - a lot less hypocritical than today. I think the 1990s witnessed a huge rise in hypocrisy and people became smug and basically fooled themselves into thinking they were "nice" and "caring". In the '70s (and '80s, too, I believe) we didn't fool ourselves.

Given a choice between the 1990s and early 2000s and the '70s and '80s, I'd say, "give me the '70s and '80s any day!"

I miss the honesty.

Views Of The '70s - Part 1 - "I Hated The '70s - Until Punk!"

"We're so pretty..."

Being a grotty working class kid in the 1970s, who has not many fond memories of the decade, I asked two older acquaintances of mine for their opinions. Here's the first, from Martin, now aged 54...

I hated the 1970s for a lot of their run. I suppose I resented missing the 1960s, because although I remembered them, I wasn't really part of them. I'd been a kid. But that was the decade, we '70s youths were told, where it was all happening. The '60s, oh, and the 1950s, too. Our elders chortled smugly about Teddy Boys and the Summer Of Love, and it almost felt like they were trying to destroy us. They had had it all. We had a heap of crap.

Employment wasn't that easy to come by in the 1970s, and I spent a couple of lengthy spells on the dole. People like Noele Gordon in Crossroads were wearing the funky, cutting edge late 1960s fashions... it was awful.

There was a sense of school playground anger and boisterousness in some early '70s mainstream pop, like Slade, or it was back to the '50s with Alvin and Showaddywaddy.

And then there were Pink Floyd, and Led Zep. Like the 1960s never left

It's Yesterday Once More, sang The Carpenters, and there was lots of nostalgia around.

Some male pop stars wore eyeliner, but made it absolutely plain they weren't queer.

Danny La Rue had done the cross-dressing bit far better years earlier.

Disco music was naff - a synthetic dance formula - and UK discos were mostly naff dives. Nothing like those you see on the telly. We called our local disco "the meat market" - because you went there to "pull", and many times it closed early for the night because of blood on the dance floor.

And discos were a 1960s innovation in the UK, we were often reminded by our self-obsessed elders.

And then came Punk. John Lydon later said that he put a stop to the 1970s, because somebody had to, but that wasn't the case. Abba were also king.

But Punk gave us something real, something actually from the heart of the '70s, something that was not vapid pop. 1950s guitar riffs may have been featured in some Punk stuff, we may have worn torn old clothes, but Punk actually said something about the 1970s, it said things were shit. Things were hopeless. There was nothing good. No future!! And even Punk itself was a rip-off. Worthless.

Punk was energy, Punk horrified the older people, they couldn't claim it as '50s or '60s.

Flares were everywhere in the 1970s. I'm surprised our houses weren't flared. But it was made plain by the smug elders that the fashion for flares began in the 1960s. And Punk said: "You take your flares, and you take your 1960s and shove 'em where the sun doesn't shine!"

God Save The Queen was artificially kept off the No 1 spot for the Silver Jubilee week in 1977. It was really No 1. We knew that.

Punk was the real legacy of the 1970s. The really happening thing. Every time I see a '70s TV show where everybody looks 1960s and talks '60s jargon ("Groovy"! Well out of fashion in the '70s - and in fact did anybody ever say it?) I want to throw up.

"I did it my way!" said Sid Vicious. And then in early 1979, he was dead, along with Nancy Spungen.

Punk's Not Dead! we screamed.

But it was. It had been dying since it was born. It came suddenly. It thrashed in, ranting, ripped, wild-eyed, sniffin' glue...

And suddenly it was dead.

You saw a lot of people in Punk gear from 1979 until about 1982. But it was just wearing the clobber. Empty.

In mid-1979, the mainstream music scene was focusing on a '60s Mods/Ska revival and what the 1980s were going to be like. Better get ready. Gary Numan started cranking up his synthesiser.

Oh, God, no!! I screamed.

Lyrics you'd need a psychiatrist to work out, and a monotonous sound which took us into the next decade.

There'll never be anything as real as Punk again, ever. The posturing hippies of the '60s were not as real as Punk (Peace and Love? Drugs and shagging, more like!). The terrible '80s posers with their god-awful dress-sense and hair-dos were never as real as Punk (although they were real, just vapid).

Punk was so real it hurt.

Three years of the 1970s amounted to something as far as I was concerned. The rest was tedium. And that's now been rewritten for today's kids so it's not real.

But Punk was real.

And I'm so glad I was there.

It was worth the waiting.

People need to stop pretending the '70s were the '60s.

Punk's worth more than fantasy.

But then people are so pathetic nowadays. And John Lydon's been advertising Country Life English butter.

Pretty vacant...

1972 - Donny Osmond: "Help Me, Help Me Please!"

"Someone help me, help me, please!" was the impassioned plea from Donny Osmond in his teenybopper hit Puppy Love. And that just about summed up my feelings whenever I heard it. The worst times were rainy Sunday afternoons, when I sat in my older cousin Sue's bedroom and was forced to listen to this drivel, which she played on her Mum's '60s box record player. Over and over again.

We were two grotty early '70s primary school kids, but Sue had been bitten by the pop bug early. And, as we spent lots of time together (my mum was always visiting her sister, Sue's mum, and dragged me along) I suffered a lot.

In those days, there were two camps amongst pop-obsessed schoolgirls: either you liked Donny Osmond, or you liked David Cassidy - not both. Kids enjoyed (and still do enjoy) being in opposing camps - it's all part of human nature.

And whenever Donny and his brothers appeared in public, it was like '60s Beatlemania all over again - with hordes of screeching girlies turning out to... er... screech and faint and things.

From the Daily Mirror, November 14, 1972:

The Osmonds bowed out of Britain yesterday with the screams of 500 frenzied fans ringing in their ears.

It was a remarkable farewell for the pop world's newest heart-throbs.

For many of the young girls lining the roof of the Queen's Building at London Heathrow Airport should really have been at school.

The truants began arriving before dawn, and when The Osmonds waved goodbye the screams of the girls drowned the noise of revving aircraft engines.

The Osmonds, whose ages range from nine to twenty-three, signed autographs. And the fans waved banners proclaiming: "Come back soon, we love you."

Fourteen-year-old Donny Osmond, currently the family's star turn, stared at the crowd and said: "It's fantastic! The British fans are wonderful."

The girls clearly felt the same way about their idols.

One eleven-year-old admitted: "I'm really meant to be at school today. But I'm only missing history and maths - and they aren't nearly as good as The Osmonds."

Another, from Hertfordshire, said: "My parents think I'm at school. I arrived at the airport very early to get a good place. It has been well worth it."

So there you have it. Yuck I said, Yuck I still say. Mind you, there were worse Osmonds than Donny. Remember little Jimmy being a Long Haired Lover From Liverpool?

Useless information: did you know that Donny's Puppy Love was a cover version of a 1960s Paul Anka song?

Happy Days - Back To The 50s - America Went Retro, Too!

A 1977 UK Happy Days novel.

So, as the '70s flopped, overshadowed by the '60s, pummelled by financial angst, anger and violence, the UK was not the only nation to seek refuge in the 1950s. Yep, the USA was well and truly in there - putting out Happy Days from 1974 until 1984.

And of course those glorious Happy Days weren't long in coming to England. We already had '50s nostalgia aplenty, of course - remember Wizzard, Showaddywaddy, Alvin Stardust, etc? But now we had the American angle and we found Fonzie just so great.

Fonzie's '50s style became much imitated - and this became even more pronounced with the release of Grease in 1978 - in which John Travolta played a be-quiffed Fonzie-style dude.

The absolute star of Happy Days was Henry Winkler as one Arthur Fonzarelli - AKA "The Fonz" - the coolest '50s dude in Milwaukee. He "hung out" with the likes of Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) - who was not very cool really. So that made Fonzie seem even cooler.

Only Richie's mother, Marion (Marion Ross) called "The Fonz" any thing other than "The Fonz" or "Fonzie": she called him Arthur.

Which did not seem terribly cool at all.

I remember that, back in the '70s and '80s, if the word "cool" was used as slang it was always used derisively - we regarded it as outdated '50s/'60s nonsense. "Oh, that's so cool," we'd sneer - meaning that whatever it was was actually fogey - out of date.

Now, when I hear twitty young things using the "cool" tag in all seriousness, I often snigger. Particularly as they often look like they've just stepped out of the '60s or the '70s or the '80s. So fogey.

Give The Old Western Format A Tweak And You Get "Grasshopper"!

From the Sun, November 15, 1973:

"Kung Fu" and its star, David Carradine, have already proved a big hit with TV viewers - showing there is life in the old Western format if you give it an Eastern twist.

"Ah, Grasshopper!" we rasped in playgrounds across the land.

Unusual Ways Of Trying To Make Money Part 1

From the Sun, 1973. The '70s were a cash strapped time. My family had never been wealthy but in the '70s we really felt the pinch. And it wasn't that we were selfless, loving individuals - no, we dismissed all that hippie stuff spouted about the '70s nowadays as "'60s trash" back then, and even in the '60s you needed dosh to drop out. In the '70s, we wanted money, we lusted after money. But we never had any.

The ad above is one of my favourite '70s artificates. "Hair rental. You Know It Makes Sense". You could have comprehensive regular service, no costly repair bills and a free replacement service. Rent your hair! Wot a spiffing gimmick.

Wonder if "Ambassador" made money on it? Doubt it. Still, nice to see some people were trying...

Rewriting And Hyping The 70s Wasteland...

I was talking to a friend of mine last night, and we spoke about the subject of "70s hype" - the way the decade has been rewritten by everything from the BBC to Wikipedia, pinching 60s and 80s pop culture to make it a very different beast from the often grey drudge of a decade so many of us remember.

My friend pointed me in the direction of this YouTube goody - I've already covered this subject on the blog here, but it's good to know I'm not alone in spotting some of the 70s loving nonsense going on!

1979 - A "Watershed Year"?

We're going back to 1979. Not the BBC's I Love 1979, bolstered with early 1980s pop culture, but the real thing. And we start with Margaret Hilda Thatcher. The 3rd of May 1979 saw her becoming Britain's first female Prime Minister. All right she was a Tory, and my family were vehemently anti-Tory, but would a woman be different? More sensitive? I remember seeing footage of her washing up and saying how she understood the concerns of the everyday housewife. Hmm. And then there was the fact that Labour Isn't Working. Double hmm.

Did the big booming 1980s start prematurely as soon as Maggie was in place? I can honestly say NO. The big booming bit of the 1980s did not get started until c. 1983 - and Maggie was not the only cause.

Much is written about 1979 being a "watershed year" - with the election of Mrs Thatcher being a decisive vote by the electorate for a long-term free market economy. Actually, at the time, it seemed more like a "The Tories can't possibly be worse than this current lot," vote. And our fate was not sealed. It was events of the 1980s which had Thatcher re-elected twice. The election of Ronald Reagan in America in 1980 had great impact (more about that here) - as did the "Falklands Factor".

Thatcher's long reign was far too turbulent and far too influenced by outside events to be called "cut and dried" in 1979!

Reports about the Yorkshire Ripper make horrific reading...

There is no doubt the quietly spoken Yorkshireman hated streetwalkers, probably stemming from an incident when he was ripped off by one in Bradford's notorious Manningham Lane red light district. He began attacking women in the summer of 1975: two in Keighley and one in Halifax. All three survived and police did not notice the similarities between the attacks.

The first fatality ...

In the early hours of 30 October 1975 Sutcliffe's attacks turned fatal. Wilma McCann, a 28-year-old prostitute from the run-down Chapeltown district of Leeds, kissed her four young children goodnight and went out for a night on the town. She spent the night drinking in various Leeds pubs and clubs and by 1 am was touting for business not far from her Chapeltown home.

Sutcliffe picked her up in his lime green Ford Capri and took her to the nearby Prince Phillip playing fields. He suggested they have sex on the grass. Sutcliffe stated in his confession that she got out, unfastened her trousers and snapped: "Come on, get it over with." "Don't worry, I will," Sutcliffe mumbled as he reached for his hidden hammer...

The poster above refers to leads that the police were following in 1979 - involving somebody they had dubbed "Wearside Jack". This man had sent anonymous letters and an audio tape to the police.

But "Wearside Jack" was not the Yorkshire Ripper. The hoaxer's identity was finally discovered in 2005. He was one John Humble, a former builder.

Humble's hoaxes had great impact on the police back in 1979. Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield believed that the letters and tape were from the Ripper. Dial-the-Ripper phonelines were set up so that the public could ring in and listen to the tape. It was drilled into detectives that they could discount suspects if they did not have a Wearside accent.

The real Ripper had been interviewed by the police several times. From October 1975 to September 1979 he killed eleven women. As we headed into the 1980s, he remained at large...

Portslade, Dorset, in February 1979: storms caused great damage in many places.

A few headlines from early 1979:

----------------------------------------

FOOD ROTS ON QUAYSIDE - LORRY DRIVERS' STRIKE TO BE MADE OFFICIAL

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GRAVE-DIGGERS STRIKE IN LIVERPOOL

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RAIL STRIKE TO GO AHEAD

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HOSPITALS UNDER SIEGE

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PETROL CRISIS WORSENS

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WORST WEATHER FOR SIXTEEN YEARS

And from August...


More from 1979 soon...

"I Know What I Like And I Like What I Know..."

"I know what I like and I like what I know..."

Was that phrase originally coined by Genesis on their 1973 album Selling England By The Pound?

No.

My old Uncle Ern used to come out with it on a regular basis way before the '70s to defend his "stick-in-the-mud" ways to my go-ahead Auntie Vera and soap characters like Amos Brearly in Emmerdale Farm (not exactly a pop person) were sometimes heard to utter it.

And a mate of mine had a granny who regularly used it to describe "stick-in-the-mud" types she encountered.

It seems to have been in fairly widespread circulation.

Why has this come up? Well, basically, me and a few of the lads were talking about it last night in the pub...

Moving on, and in a packed post tonight we'll take a look at Rex King's Teletopics from the Weekly News, October 19, 1974...

Too many birthdays on the Golden Shot, Hughie Green on the Morecombe & Wise Show, the wonderful Sykes (the Bogsea episode was another brilliant retelling of a story from the original 1960s run of the series), Warship and a brand new series, Sweeney, being filmed in London. But would it challenge Kojak?

Meanwhile, big change for afternoon telly, with Marked Personal being replaced by new serial Rooms...

I remember both, particularly Marked Personal, which featured Stephanie Beacham. MP revolved around a company called "The BYA". But does anybody remember what those initials stood for? And what the company actually did? If so, please drop me a line!

I'd certainly sleep a lot easier...

1970s Food: Bread 'N' Dripping, Cereal Sausages, White Bread and Meaty Margarine...

Michael Barratt, BBC "Nationwide" presenter from 1969 to 1977, wonders how youngsters will survive without dripping in his "Weekly News" column, October 1974.

What did we eat in the '70s? Well, me and my very working class family tucked into such delicious delights as white bread, crispy pancakes, and cereal sausages...

Cereal sausages? Yes, this is what we now call the type of sausage my financially hard-pressed mother used to buy in the '70s. They were chipolatas, thin, tasted of nothing much except a hint of salt, and were quite dry. They weren't made of cereal officially. It was probably sawdust. They were horrible. Once on the plate, they'd quickly go all wrinkled - like fingers that had been submerged in water for a length of time.

Other treats included savoury pancakes. These really were a treat. When we could afford them, it was a sign of a financially sound period in that worrying era of galloping inflation.

We didn't eat pasta (apart from tinned spaghetti), courgettes, peppers, aubergines, nothing like that. In fact, I don't even recall seeing such things in the supermarket.

The only dried pasta available at the supermarkets was of the long, spaghetti variety.

We ate spuds - boiled, fried, chipped or mashed. We ate baked beans. We ate tinned processed peas. We ate lettuce, spring onions, cucumber and tomato as salad - and never had mayonnaise or salad dressing. It was always salad cream.

There was what "posh" people ate and what we ate in the '70s. And the two were very different things. And to be honest we didn't know much about how the other half ate.

Back then, I remember our margarine sometimes tasted meaty. I can't explain why, but it was sometimes quite strong. "You're bonkers!" children of the '80s and '90s tell me. But it's true. "It's whale," my mother used to say.

Bread was white. Cake was shop-bought for Sunday tea. Usually a Soreen malt loaf or dry madeira, but occasionally an artic roll! Real treat, that. The Sunday tea "savoury" was usually sandwiches. Paste. Or spam. Or corned beef.

We ate SO MUCH paste!

People try to make out now that we were all eating prawn cocktails and Black Forest Gateau in the '70s. I'm not quite sure when the prawn cocktail actually arrived. As far back as 1962, posh Annie Walker was talking about them in Coronation Street and Fanny Cradock wrote about the "ubiquitous prawn cocktail" in 1967 (more here). "Ubiquitous" in some circles. The Black Forest Gateau was a 1960s incomer. But my family had never heard of them in the '70s as far as I remember. Both were rampant in the 1980s when there was a bit of dosh around.

Soup was never tinned, it was too expensive unless you were ill, when tinned soup (particularly chicken) was considered to have great restorative powers. We had powdered packet soup, which was like dish water. However long you cooked and stirred, the bits of "pea" and "carrot" (ahem!) were hard and sometimes powdery inside.

Foreign food? Curry was a great fave round our way. The local takeaway served up awesome curries, swimming in yellow fat and in the case of chicken, containing nasty flabby pieces of chicken skin.

Mum fried in lard. We'd heard of cooking oil, but it was "dear" and an unknown quantity. Stick with what's cheap. Stick with what you know. A great favourite family filler was the traditional bread 'n'dripping. Actually, it had been falling out of favour for a decade or two and had always been a peasant food anyway. In the 1970s, it was still common amongst us commonest-of-the-common-commoners. When my step-granny used to bring round a pudding bowl containing cold meat juices and fat with the jelly on top, it was a tremendous culinary treat.

Spread it on your bread - LUVLEY! Fry the sausages in lard - LUVLEY!

Until around 1981, when I suddenly turned to my mother and said: "'Ere, Mum, don't you think..."

But that was around 1981.

Back to 1974...

It was a funny year. Except it wasn't, if you see what I mean. We had "streaking" coming across from America and hitting the pop charts ("Here he comes! There he goes! And he ain't wearin' no clothes!"). What was it all about? Search me. It probably came about because of all that 1960s “Be free, Man!” stuff - although people had run amok in public naked for kicks before that. 20th Century Words by John Ayto (Oxford, 1999) records this quote from a 1974 American Runner’s World magazine: “During the winter of 1958-9 a group of us ‘streaked’ all over Berkeley.”

So perhaps it was the rockin’ rollin’ 50s that set the trend in motion?

In 1982, we got our best remembered streaker - remember Erika here.

In April the shopping centre of Armagh was devastated in a fire bomb attack.

Clearing up after the bomb explosions in two Guildford pubs in October which killed five and injured sixty people.

Enoch Powell (of all people!) won South Down for the United Ulster Unionists.

Princess Anne was almost kidnapped on Wednesday, 20 March 1974. She and her husband, Captain Mark Phillips, were being driven to Buckingham Palace. In the Mall, a white car swerved in front of theirs and forced it to stop. 26-year-old Ian Ball, the driver of the white car, shot Inspector Jim Beaton, the Princess' personal detective, in the shoulder. The wounded Beaton managed to fire back, but missed. Then his gun jammed.

Ian Ball tried to drag the Princess from her car, whilst Mark Phillips held her around the waist to prevent it. A police constable happening upon the scene was shot in the stomach, but managed to alert other officers via his personal radio.

Ian Ball was finally apprehended by the police. In court, the man was described as "potentially suicidal and homicidal" and in need of treatment. He had sought to gain a ransome of £3 million, and to draw attention to the "lack of facilities for treating mental illness under the National Health Service".

In the photograph above, Anne is visiting her injured personal detective, Inspector Jim Beaton, in hospital.

Two General Elections this year. Ted Heath, he of the "jolly" laugh and accompanying bouncing shoulders so beloved of impressionist Mike Yarwood, stood down amidst a declared State of Emergency, which included a three day week. The results of the first General Election, held on 28 February, returned no overall majority - Labour 301, Conservatives 296, Liberals 14, and others 24. Mr Heath resigned on Monday, 4 March and Harold Wilson became Prime Minister again. Labour were back in No 10.

The country had its second General Election on 10th October - and this time Labour was returned with a majority of three. The photograph above shows election night in Trafalgar Square, with thousands watching the BBC's coverage on a giant screen.

Rising soccer hooliganism and violence amongst supporters saw clubs like Manchester United penning in their fans.

Here's Uncle Bulgaria meeting fans in 1974. The first Wombles book by Elizabeth Beresford was published in 1968, and the TV series and pop group which it inspired were major successes. The TV series began in 1973 after the book had been read on Jackanory and proved to be highly popular with viewers.

Remember key rubbing, spoon rubbing, and the weird and wonderful world of Uri Gellar? He had us all rubbing away and absolutely delighted if we managed to bend a Yale key or a spoon. Silly sods.

The photographs for this post come from Britain In The Seventies, by Ronald Allison (1980). As far as books go, it's pretty darned good. No '60s or '80s pop culture being shoe-horned in. Just the '70s. You know, the real ones!

Keep an eye on eBay for it...

The Bleak 1970s - But Not For MPs!

From the Sun, November 5, 1975. The Sun and the Mirror were respectively supporters of the Right (Conservative Party) and the Left (Labour Party) of the political spectrum. The old Liberal Party seemed nowhere as far as the tabloids or my family was concerned. "Tories in disguise!" was all my mother would say about them.

Here, the Sun was taking great pleasure from three facts:

1) The Labour Government had been informed by a treasury consultant that spending was out of control.

2) The National Union of Teachers had warned that there wasn't enough money to buy sufficient books for the nation's schoolchildren.

3) Spending was looking rather extravagant as far as our MPs were concerned.

Click on article for readable view.

The '70s Love Retro!

As if it wasn't enough to be overshadowed by the 1960s, the dear old '70s sought out retro style at every opportunity. Think Laura Ashley. Think smock tops. Think of those revolting, to the floor dresses with puffed sleeves. Think of the '50s look. Think of the '60s look. Think of the '40s look. Think of those 1930s platform shoes.

But it wasn't enough to buy new clothes made in a retro style - the adorable '70s also decided that genuine old clothes were a WOW, as this newspaper article from April 1976 shows.

Not keen on the pearly king, but the Pre-Raphaelite maiden looks like a bit of all right.

Pan's People

Pan's People - did they borrow those hats from "Upstairs, Downstairs"?

"Phwoar" was the barely suppressed word on my stepfather's lips whenever Pan's People flitted across our TV screen. He never actually uttered the word because my mother's gimlet eyes would be fixed on him. Don't get me wrong, Pan's People weren't always "indecently dressed", but they were enough of the time for my mum's exclamation "Look at that! They might as well be naked!" to be etched on my memory.

Pan's People had been making men go "Phwoar!" since their Top Of The Pops debut back in the late 1960s.

When I was a little lad, they didn't interest me. But when I reached the age of ten or eleven I started feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed when they were on. I didn't want to be watching this sort of thing with my parents, and back then neither I nor anybody I knew had a telly in their bedroom. And we had to watch Top Of The Pops. It was the MTV/VH1 of its day! That half-an-hour per week was absolute required viewing.

Ah, you say, couldn't you have video recorded it for viewing at another time, when the terrible "olds" were out of the way? The short answer is "We should have been so lucky!" Although video technology had been around for yonks, home VCRs hadn't and they were wildly expensive - and those were hard times financially. As I'm always pointing out on here and on the '80s blogs, only 5% of UK households had a VCR in 1980!

The mid-'70s Pan's line-up included Dee Dee Wilde, Babs Lord, Ruth Pearson, Susan Menhenick and Cherry Gillespie. The choreographer was Flick Colby.

"It's very hard work being one of Pan's People," said Susan Menhenick in 1975. "A lot of people think we only work one night a week, when we do the TV show. This isn't so, of course.

It was reported in the 1976 Top Of The Pops annual that Pan's People worked a six day week.
The day after their onscreen performance, rehearsals began for the following week.

Babs Lord said: "Sunday is usually our only day off. Then we usually just flop down, almost dead, and try to catch up on some sleep."

The Sun, 5/11/1975 - the Pan's People "PHWOAR!" factor gets an innocent young lad into bother.

Jilted John Meets Gail Potter...

Simply one of the best pop records. Not just of 1978. Not even just of the '70s. But EVER.

Jilted John hit the charts just as I was on the very brink of teenagehood in August 1978 and it fitted my mood exactly. My hormones hadn't waited for the magic "13", due in October, and my body and moods were already undergoing thoroughly grotty changes. And had been since I was eleven.

So John's rantings suited me perfectly. John was really one Graham Fellows, and this record was a spoof of the Punk/New Wave songs around at the time - a tremendously clever one which had enormous appeal to us comp school kids. John was a bit of a retard, and, it seemed, also a bit of a "girly" (fancy crying all the way to the chip shop!) but somehow he struck a chord with me and a lot of "der lads" I knew back then.

As was the fashion in the Punk era, the song had a great 1950s guitar riff, and the "in" way to dance to it was with a 1950s hand jive. But you had to wear a thoroughly bored, pissed off expression whilst you did it. "Postmodern irony" some call it. Back in 1978, I had no idea what "postmodern" meant (it was just something the likes of Melvin Bragg liked to waffle about) and, despite studying theories of post modernity in the '90s, I remain unconvinced that it's not just a load of written and verbal diarrhoea, fresh from the bowels of academia.

Whenever I hear Jilted John, I'm instantly reminded of the grotty, greasy, zit-ridden little geezer I was back in 1978. Miserable little sod I was. And I had a hair cut just like Terry Wogan's.

I'm also reminded of the mates I had, some of whom are still mates of mine today. And standing in the local shopping centre during the evenings with said mates, "gobbing off" at passers by. And picking my zits. And being bored a lot of the time. And hating everything.

They were good days.

And by the way: Gordon is a moron.

Coronation Street, New Year's Day 1979, and Gail Potter (Helen Worth) is waiting for Brian Tilsley at the pictures. But who is the dashing fellow beside her?

Yep, it's Graham Fellows, AKA Jilted John, making a cameo appearance in The Street as a young lad who, like Gail, has been "stood up". He offered to go into the flicks with her, but Gail was not impressed. She never did know what was good for her that girl - remember how her life turned out with Brian, and think just how different things could have been had she settled down with Jilted John...

Mind you, she was a funny lass even back then. I mean, just LOOK at the gloves she's wearing...

1977: The Jam, In The City - Back To The '60s To Go Forward?

My older cousin went to see The Jam when they appeared at our local music venue in June 1977.

Our local newspaper, the Cambridge Evening News, got very excited about the event - mainly, it seemed, because of the band's '60s retro influences.

Jammy Treat In Store

Cambridge pop fans are getting a rare treat this Friday with the opportunity to see one of the best “new wave” groups yet spawned by the black generation - The Jam. They are appearing at the Corn Exchange, which is guaranteed to be jam-packed for the occasion.

The concert coincides with the release of their first album, “In The City”, and comes at a time when the single of the same name is making rapid chart progress.

The Jam are, to say the least, an unusual group. While they are very definitely “new wave”, they are not, never have been, and say they never will be “punk” rockers. No safety pins for these lads, they can actually play good music.

They sound so much like The Who of 1965 - and dress in a similar fashion with Mod black mohair suits and spiky hair-dos - they may well achieve the same impact as Pete Townshend’s gang have.

The Jam are: 18-year-old Paul Weller, lead guitarist, vocalist and song writer; 21-year-old Rick Buckler, drummer, and 21-year-old Bruce Foxton, bass guitar.

That first album, incidentally, is excellent. If The Jam go along the same path as The Who, purchasing a copy now would be an exceedingly good investment.

The main difference between The Jam and The Who is that The Jam don’t have a front man to belt out the songs in the way Roger Daltrey leads The Who. But The Jam put their music over with such ferocious energy that it doesn’t seem to matter…

So what did I make of the Mods and Rockers revival thingy? I liked The Jam a lot, but I was not terribly impressed with the retro scene. Said my mate Pete at school one day:

"'Ere, Andy, wot are you - a Mod or a Rocker?"

"Neither!" I snapped. "This is supposed to be the 1970s, not the 1960s!"

Throughout the '70s, we'd had the '50s Teddy Boy thing, which I rather liked. And the decade had been rather overshadowed by the '60s in many ways. But surely a '60s revival wasn't due yet?!

1975 Small Ads: 1950s Style Pencil Skirt? Man About The House Apron? Lock For The 'Phone?

From the Sunday People, 23 November, 1975. I love the telephone dial lock. Sadly, only one family had a phone in my street in 1975...

All That Glitters...

Said Paul Gadd, aka Gary Glitter, in 1975: "My appeal is something different. My appeal, I think, comes from the fact that I am the first of my type to hit the rock 'n' roll business for a long time. I'm not saying I'm the first ever....

"I got my new name after watching Rock Around The Clock on TV with a group of people. We were all joking around afterwards and recalling the days of rock 'n' rollers in the '50s. People like Billy Fury and Vince Eager. And we all started making up funny names. Someone suggested he'd like to be called Vicky Vomit, another Terry Tinsel. And I suddenly said I wanted to be Gary Glitter. Somehow, the name stuck more as a nickname. Then, when I wrote Rock 'n' Roll Parts One And Two, it was my manager Mike Leander's idea to actually change my stage name. And he said suddenly, 'That's it - you must keep that name, Gary Glitter. It sounds just right."

I never liked Gary Glitter, never liked all the gobby rantings of the early-to-mid-'70s "Glam" scene. Things were grim enough at home financially without glittery stage yobs rampant in the pop chart.

"That Glitter chap looks like a cross between Elvis Presley and Danny La Rue!" said a very forthright auntie of mine at the time. "The man's nothing but a pervert!"

We didn't know the half of it...

The Tomorrow People

The Tomorrow People, apparently the next stage of human evolution, seen here on the front of an early '70s novel, were great heroes of mine. And Carol, the blonde girl, made my little heart beat faster when I was about seven.

The Tomorrow People had special powers - they could communicate telepathically and get from place to place simply by thinking about it - "jaunting" they called it. Special belts were used to co-ordinate "jaunts" over long distances.

Here's another TP novel -the bulby '60s lava lamp effect thingy over the Tomorrow People's heads in their secret underground lab was TIM - a "biotronic" computer.

Roger Price was the man behind the Tomorrow People, which was a tremendously enjoyable piece of sci-fi for us '70s kiddies. I loved it dearly, but it did have its faults. There were faintly priggish echoes of the Famous Five at times, especially the way the Tomorrow People used to call ordinary mortals "Saps". It was short for homo-sapiens, and was, according to Mr Price, meant to have been an affectionate nickname, but it didn't exactly come across as one.

"I've just been dealing with a Sap," the extremely homo-superior Stephen or John would say, and I wanted to punch their lights out. Mind you, we Saps were supposed to be aggressive.

Stephen in his "AE suit" - ideal for quick jaunts around hyperspace...

I well remember my own time as a Tomorrow Person back in the '70s...

It all began when Desi, a rather... well, the '70s weren't exactly PC or sensitive times so I'll call him fik, mate of mine found a plastic attachment belonging to my mother's hair drier on the kitchen worktop. "Wot's dis?" he asked.

Instinctively, I milked the situation: "Oh my God! Put it down! You weren't meant to see that!"

Desi hastily discarded it, then asked nervously: "Wot is it?"

I took a deep breath: "Desi, you weren't supposed to know this, but that is a highly sensitive piece of biotronic equipment which could blow the world to smithereens in five micro seconds. Now that you do know, I'd better tell you the rest: I am a Tomorrow Person."

Desi backed away, wide eyed: "Are yoo?"

I nodded gravely. "Yes. It must remain a secret between us two forever. If not, you'll have to be sent to the Galactic Trig."

"I won't say nothin'!" said Desi.

"Good, " I said. "You'd better not, Desi, because the Galactic Trig is not a great place for Saps."

Over the coming days, I enlisted the help of my cousin Sue - who announced to Desi that she was also a Tomorrow Person.

"Can you jaunt?" asked Desi.

"Of course," I replied, trying to sound like John, the main priggish geezer in the TV show. "But our jaunts are always accompanied by a blinding flash. It would render a Sap sightless."

Desi really was a Sap, it seemed. He fell for it, hook-line-and-sinker and over the next week or two me and my cousin Sue had great fun: Jedekiah had manifested himself in the garden shed; the Krotons had just entered our solar system; Sue had got stuck in hyperspace...

Desi appeared to believe everything we said, and our fun went on and on until finally his mother said that Desi wasn't to play with us anymore: we were giving him nightmares and he'd started wetting the bed.

From Look-In, our weekly magazine treat, which featured a Tomorrow People picture strip.

Comment From Sky Clearbrook

I do think there is a distinction to be made between invention and association.

On the one hand I completely agree with you (and Maria) about "nostalgia" shows/articles innacurately banging on about the 1970s being the decade of inventions such as flares, spacehoppers and Raleigh Choppers. There is no excuse for lazy researching - researchers should actually... er... do some research!

On the other hand, those who were born in the very early 1970s will forever associate that decade with such things because they are old enough to remember the flares they really did wear and spacehoppers/Choppers they really did play on.

What I enjoy about your blogs, Andy, is the way you bring these decades to life by sourcing those wonderful adverts and articles from journals of the time. I also like the new layouts of your '60s and '70s blogs

Thanks, Sky. I do take your point, but my own findings indicate that things are rather more complicated than simply "poor research". It seems that the likes of the BBC and Wikipedia are playing "heroes and villains" with past decades - hence '60s and '80s pop culture turns up in the '70s and the '70s are made out to be wonderful, while the '80s are made out to be the absolute pits.

The '80s were a far more complex decade than Greed Unlimited!

I feel concerned that the '80s are used as a scapegoat and that all these smug chortlings about the pretend '70s are rather worrying. People now seem happier to live in a fantasy past rather than examine the issues of NOW.

As you note, the blog is based on actual articles and ads from the decade, and with the title "REAL 1970s", it was my aim from the beginning not to write a subjective retrospective.

Thanks for taking the time to comment - I thoroughly enjoy Avenues And Alleyways, and it is good to have feedback!

1975: Chuck Out Your Flares!

I find the way that the 1970s have been rewritten during the last ten-to-fifteen years very amusing. Many of the things we attributed to the '60s in the '70s and beyond are now celebrated as "'70s innovations" and the 1980s are also raided for pop culture and fashion to call "'70s".

Reliving the '70s through the newspapers of the decade brings back many memories of just how grim and stagnant the decade really was style-wise. Flared trousers, the hippie uniform of the late 1960s, had begun to enter the mainstream before that decade ended, but in the '70s, in the absence of new ideas, flares got rather stuck.

Even though I was only a kid, flares were a grim, militant uniform for me and my peer group and the same was true of teenagers on the council estate where I lived. You wore them or got picked on. There was nothing hippie or "loving" about the trend. And they lingered on and on.

'70s fashion designers did seek to shake off the outdated '60s fashions. They never quite managed it, but they did try. And in this article from the Sunday People, November 23, 1975, we see an attempt to call "time" on flares and revive drainpipe trousers:

FLARED - BOTTOMED

From now on, trousers are straight-legged, even drainpipe slim. If you have flared trousers too good to throw away, it's worth a try to narrow the bottoms and wear them rolled up to just below the calf.

Of course, people had neither the time or money to step out of flares immediately. But it's good to see from actual material of the time that the tide was turning. It is also highly instructive to those writers, Wikipedia types, TV people and fashion reviewers who try to pretend that the '60s happened in the '70s and that the '70s were a great era for fashion.

They were not. The advent of both flares and psychedelic clothing took place in the mid-to-late 1960s and the so-called Summer of Love was in 1967/68.

To all those who pretend otherwise - haven't you got lives? Is rewriting the past a good thing? Does it give your lives in the present day some sense of meaning? Does it make you feel good about yourselves? Don't you think it makes you look rather silly?

Because anybody who takes a few minutes to study the facts can see you're writing/talking a load of nonsense.

Take a look at some 1969 fashion stuff here.

International Women's Year - 1975

Looking back at the '70s from a 21st Century perspective, things like International Women's Year in 1975 are proclaimed "Wonderful, darling!" and much is made of the Women's Lib movement back in that decade.

The odd thing is that quite a lot of what happened seems to have been as a result of the 1960s and, as a nasty little schoolboy back in the 1970s, I don't recall much "hooraying" going on.

The Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Bills seem to have been campaigned for and planned long before they became law, and those adults around me who could be bothered to mention the subject of sexual equality when I was a kid in the 1970s referred to the 1960s as the time of inspiration, battle and bra burning. The final implementation of the legislation seemed to pass without much thrill at all.

But surely International Women's Year really was a landmark? Surely this was a beautiful, nay glorious, moment in the history of the women's movement? I was ten at the time and, although horribly precocious, nose into everything, don't recall hearing anything about it. My wife, who was seventeen at the time, doesn't either!

My (very) youthful impressions of the time are backed up by a Sun newspaper article published on 3/12/1975...

Eleven months down and one to go. International Women's Year is all over, bar the shouting. But has it been anything but shouting?

Five of the Sun's women writers were asked their opinions of International Women's Year. None were impressed with it. Extracts from the views of three of them can be found below...

Hilary Bonner:

I wish the Women's Lib groups had taken action. Any kind of action.

Telling the woman in the street what her rights are.

Instead, I will remember an unhappy flock of Women's Lib groups standing on orange boxes and shouting at other Women's Lib groups.

Claire Rayner:

It was a dead duck the day it was hatched!

The very name International Women's Year made it do the opposite of what was so fondly planned.

Labelling anything as specifically for women is daft.

I'd like to suggest a better sort of year for 1976 - International People's Year.

The year when men and women will work together as well as love together. Will demand real equality for women by providing real equality for men.

We'll spend this International People's Year organising men's working hours so that they can get away early from work to collect the kids from school.

We'll use it to insist on paternity leave for every new dad, so that he can share the pleasure as well as the work of parenthood.

We'll use it to scotch for good the idea that men and women are different kinds of being, involved in an eternal and pointless war.

We'll discover we belong to the same species. And we'll start to enjoy it.

Phillipa Kennedy:

It was a nice idea, but it fizzled out before it ever got off the ground.

The trouble was that nobody knew what they were supposed to be doing about it.

As a milestone on the road to equality, it was fine - and 1976 will see the Sex Discrimination Bill become law.

We had our achievements of course. Like Maggie Thatcher and the Japanese housewife who climbed Everest.

What International Women's Year really needed was the services of a good public relations firm.

They could have organised eye-catching ads and printed leaflets with lists of aims and ideals...

As it was, only a small percentage of women were aware that it was going on. Even Princess Margaret hadn't heard about it until a few months ago.

Women aren't any better or worse off as a result of Women's Year. It left most people rather indifferent.

I couldn't get upset over it. Maybe, if I had, it would have meant something.

Fascinating.

So, International Women's Year - apparently rather more of a damp squib than many remember it today...

Amazing how rosy and distorted the past can become...

1975 - Dr Who: The Frail Tardis!

November 22, 1975, and Dr Who celebrated its 12th birthday, still going strong with Tom Baker at the helm. But if the show was in fine fettle for its age, the Tardis was not. Said producer Phillip Hinchcliffe: "The Tardis is supposed to disguise itself as some everyday object. This one disguised itself as a police box - and stuck like that. But blue police boxes are being got rid of. So I'm worried that some younger viewers will not know what it is supposed to be...

"Also, Tardis is getting very frail now. Whenever we take it to a new location, it falls to pieces. So we are having to decide whether to make a new one the same shape, or maybe find some reason for changing it."

Design a new Tardis! Could you invent a new time-travel machine to take over from the poor, battered old Tardis? asked the Sun in its Dr Who competition for 14s and under. Top prize was a "date with Dr Who at the BBC television studios in London" and a Dr Who board game from Denys Fisher Toys. 20 runners up were awarded board games.

The Dr Who production team, of course, decided to stick with tradition and the Tardis retained its familiar police box guise.

Quite right too!

Coronation Street In The 1970s - Lifestyle Puzzles & Combating The Fear Of Nuclear War...

I loved Coronation Street in the early Bill Podmore era. When I was a very little boy, Coronation Street had seemed an absolute bore, full of moans and groans and Ken Barlow in a retro cravat, but in the mid-'70s two dramatic storylines attracted my attention: one was the murder of a battered wife in Len Fairclough's back room, the other the fire at the warehouse in 1975. The latter event occurred around the time of my tenth birthday. After the repercussions of the fire had been thoroughly explored, the Street seemed to be settling down into "nag, nag, moan, groan, moan" mode, when Bill Podmore arrived as producer and kapow - a wondrous new era of Elsie Tanner, "muriels" at the Ogdens' and lashings of drama and fun was suddenly upon us.

Sometimes, it seemed that the writers of the Street had certain characters living outside of their class and incomes. Coronation Street was situated in a rundown, slummy district and yet the Corner Shop was stocking bramble jelly, lobster bisque soup and olives (our real-life local shopkeeper was often heard to comment on the Corner Shop's at times absurdly up-market stock), Elsie was scoffing prawn salads (not cheap) and Deirdre Langton, in 1978, was trying to get husband Ray to buy her a microwave oven. Microwave ovens had been around since the '60s, but they were terribly expensive for the average pocket in the 1970s (and indeed early 1980s) and Ray's business was just emerging from great difficulties at the time. Deirdre didn't get her microwave oven - she and Ray split up instead, but my mother firmly believed back then that a real working class mother of the era, even one whose husband was in business in a small way, would not have dreamt of such a thing.

Although there was much talk in the programme about the hard times we lived in, my parents often felt that some of the characters were rather more moneyed/middle class than they ought to be. We lived in a pretty slummy district ourselves, although not quite as down-at-heel as Coronation Street, and there wasn't even a mention of microwaves or prawn salads round our way, so my parents felt qualified to judge.

The general consensus of opinion in my family was that the lifestyles of the well-off script writers were sometimes, just sometimes, filtering through and impairing the reality of the Street.

Despite this (and I knew my elders had a point), I thought that the show was GREAT and it did, on one occasion, help me to get over a very bad time.

The 1970s were in the thick of the Cold War years. As a kid, I was terrified that America and Russia would go to war and that would be the end for all of us. I had nightmares about it, sweated about it, cringed at the (I thought) scary-sounding theme tunes of World In Action and News At Ten. I closed my ears as narrators and newscasters on these two programmes began to speak, convinced that the end was nigh.

I wasn't alone. My mate Pete and I often discussed the prospect of nuclear war, and we knew many other kids who shared our worries. An adult neighbour of my mine had stocked up a load of pills, which she showed us. She said she would take them when nuclear war was imminent.

I used to feel sick with fear at times. Then, for me at least, Coronation Street stepped in!

It was August 1978 and Gail Potter (Helen Worth) and Suzie Birchall (Cheryl Murray) were making a salad in the kitchen at No. 11...

Gail: "Do you think there'll be another war?"

Suzie (flatly - in a what is the silly moo wittering about now? tone of voice) "Do I think there'll be another war?"

Gail: "Do yer?"

Suzie: "How should I know?"

Gail: "They're talkin' about it, aren't they?"

Suzie: "Are they? Who?!"

Gail: "The Americans and the Russians."

Suzie: "Is that right?"

Gail: "Don't you even listen when there's News At Ten on?"

Suzie: "Only the interestin' bits..."

Gail: "Sometimes I get quite worried about it, honest I do."

Suzie (continuing her own train of thought): "... a divorce or someone dyin' and leavin' a load of money."

Gail: "Don't you care if there's another war?"

Suzie: "I don't think about it much - it don't bother me."

Gail: "Yeah, but if they do."

Suzie: "Well, if they do they wouldn't ask me anyway, would they?"

Gail: "That's the whole point, innit, they wouldn't bother askin' you, they'd just blow us all up."

Suzie: "Well, if they do ask me, I'll tell them not to bother, all right? I'll say they need their heads bangin', they should kiss an' make up."

Gail: "I think it's quite scary if you think about it."

Suzie: "Then DON'T. Is there any salad cream?"

Gail's fears continued throughout the episode, but cynical Suzie and worldly Elsie Tanner, both more concerned with getting on with living than worrying themselves to a standstill over something that might not happen, and they couldn't stop if it did, had a great effect on me.

For the first time I began to realise that I shouldn't spend time paralysed with fear over the nuclear threat. I was too young to join protest marches, I wanted to do OK in my O' Levels and basically my screwing my life up was not going to help anything.

The other day, I saw the 1978 episode of Coronation Street again and gasped as my feelings from way back then came flooding back. I remembered how terrified I was back in the 1970s, and how this episode of a soap opera helped me to get on with living.

Nowadays, other things are there to worry us and the Cold War ice, which thawed rapidly in the mid-to-late 1980s, is just a memory. But I haven't forgotten the terrible fear I felt, and no matter how daft I find Corrie in the modern day, I still have feelings of gratitude for that one episode back in 1978...

Buzby: "Make Someone Happy..."

Buzby - the talking cartoon bird, voiced by Bernard Cribbins, was launched c. 1977 and was around well into the 1980s. Buzby's catchphrase was: "Make someone happy with a phone call."

Round where I lived, few people had telephones at home in the 1970s and making phone calls involved a trek to the local call box, which, unfortunately, doubled as a public loo.

So we were not impressed with jolly little Buzby, boinging around on his telephone wire.

"Make someone happy - wring Buzby's neck," was one of the major catchphrases of the late 1970s and early 1980s round my way.

Wimbledon 1979 data available on the blower!

Good idea.

Note: "Post Office Telecommunications". The telecommunications section of the Post Office was renamed British Telecom in 1980 and became a totally separate public corporation on 1 October 1981. See a 1980 British Telecom Buzby newspaper ad here.

"Yes, Mrs Walker!" The Rovers Return, 1970-1979

Signed photograph showing Doris Speed as Annie Walker, Mayoress of Weatherfield.

Inscription on the back of the photograph.

The Rovers Return Inn, Coronation Street, underwent several changes in the 1970s, not to mention copping its fair share of everyday comedy and drama.

In 1970, Arthur Leslie, who played landlord Jack Walker, died. Much loved as the kindly and long suffering husband of snobbish Annie, there was no chance of the role being recast. And so Jack died too - on a visit to his daughter Joan.

Annie remained and the decade contained a mixed bag of fortunes for her.

She disapproved when son Billy appointed “common” Bet Lynch as barmaid in 1970.

She became mayoress of Weatherfield to Alf Roberts’ mayor, and took elocution lessons in 1973.

She was terrorised by two hooligans who hid in the Rovers loos at closing time and emerged after the rest of the staff had gone home in 1975.

She fought against Renee Bradshaw’s plans to open an off-licence at the Corner Shop, and lost in 1976.

She learned to drive and bought a Rover 2000 car - also in 1976. Of course, having learned to drive, being Annie, she rarely did. She much preferred being chauffeured by Rovers potman Fred Gee!

She suffered a terrible trauma when a lorry crashed into the front of the Rovers in March 1979 after the driver had a heart attack at the wheel.

Doris Speed was a true original, basing her characterisation of Mrs Walker on her Aunt Bessie, who used to lead the family at charades at Christmas and had a withering look to bestow on those who mocked.

Unlike Mrs Walker, Doris was a staunch socialist and possessed of a splendid sense of humour, telling endless hilarious anecdotes, often against herself.

Annie, the snob supreme of the Street, could have been hated by viewers, but the excellent acting of Doris Speed, and some terrific scripts, prevented it. There were times when we could have cheerfully throttled her, but other times when we were deeply concerned for the character.

I remember me and my family, all sitting around the telly with lumps in our throats, feeling terribly sorry for Mrs Walker after her son Billy had laid into her over her interference in his relationship with Deirdre Hunt. Annie had interfered because she truly believed that Dierdre was not good enough for her son. Once she had been found out, nobody could fail to be affected by Doris Speed’s performance as Billy told Annie that he never wanted to see her again.

What was clear about Annie was that she never acted out of “cartoon baddie” motives. She sincerely believed that what she was doing was for the best.

When Bet upbraided Annie for opposing Renee Bradshaw’s application for an off-licence, accusing her of doing so out of grandiose pretentiousness and a selfish determination to keep the Rovers as top dog for drinkers in the neighbourhood, Annie was shocked and hurt that Bet and many of her regulars believed this to be true. She explained, with obvious sincerity, that she had simply acted out of love for the Rovers.

I don’t watch Coronation Street now, but I recall episodes some years ago when Maureen Lipman played an Annie Walker-style bar manageress. Rita Sullivan commented that the Rovers was no place for a snob like her.

Oh, Rita, I thought, what a short memory you have!

It was a snob that gave the Rovers its highly distinctive atmosphere and many of its finest storylines, from December 1960 to October 1983.

Cheers, Annie!

-

Two sides of a Rovers Return Newton and Ridley beermat, sent to me by Granada Televsion, c. 1978. These were in use in the programme in the late 1970s and early 1980s.