The Spacehopper - 1960s Pop Culture First & Foremost... - UPDATED

The famous Mettoy space hopper first bounced into the UK in 1968...

Many thanks to Mark for this interesting e-mail:

I don't remember the 70s, but the Beeb made a groovy job of them in "The I Love 70s" progs. I'm surprised by things I read on here and on your Spacehopper blog that the spacehopper wasn't released in the 70s. You have a feature on "The Perishers" on Spacehopper and I have some old books of them with Baby Grumpling having a spacehopper around 1973.

I agree with you, Mark - the BBC DID make a groovy job of the 1970s - the only trouble was, a lot of it wasn't accurate.

The space hopper newspaper ad from 1969 on the "Space hopper" blog, and its labelling as a "Trend", indicates that the hopper was up and bouncing in Britain well before the end of the 1960s. We've since found many newspaper ads from April 1968 onwards, revealing that the space hopper was available and articles about spacehopper races from 1968 onwards - including one in Hyde Park, London, in 1968 as part of a huge charity effort.

1969 - space hopper races had been all the rage since 1968.

The BBC's I Love... series had a little tag in the opening titles informing the world that the hopper was released in 1968. But the I Love website states that the first hoppers arrived here in 1971 - or at least it did the last time I looked!

Check the date - May 1968!

The Toy Retailers Association (formerly the British Association of Toy Retailers) was listing Clackers as the "overwhelming toy mania of 1971" - until the I Love 1970s series, when the association joined the merry chorus, labelling the hopper a new arrival and "Craze of the Year" for 1971. This was done recently. The BATR had no "Craze of the Year" award in 1971. Nor any other year.

And as for Baby Grumpling - true he did get a hopper c. 1972 or 73, but Perishers writer Maurice Dodd wrote in the introduction to Omnibus No 3:

Some little time ago I introduced a space hopper, which is an inflatable toy, into the strip. That toy had been hopping around my house for about five years until, when my children had outgrown it, I gave it to my Godson. It was only when I saw him enjoying it I recognised it as a potential runner in the giggle stakes and gave one to Baby Grumpling.

So, the space hopper had been around Mr Dodd's house for about five years when he introduced one into The Perishers strip in 1972/3. Work it out.

An acquaintance of mine contributed some items to the I Love 1970s series. He was astounded that most of the researchers were too young to remember much, if any of the 70s, and suggested that, anyway, the 60s would be a better decade for the series. He was informed by one young researcher that they were too far back, and nobody remembered them!

So, instead, the researchers transplanted 60s pop culture into the 70s as new fads.

My acquaintance advised about an item lined up for the I Love The 1970s series:

"Er, I think you'll find that's 1980s pop culture. It was released in 1980."

"Too late now, it's scheduled," he was told.

So some 1980s pop culture tumbled into the 1970s black hole too. I think this had something to do with many BBC researchers' political stance. The organisation recruits largely in The Guardian newspaper, and is rather anti-80s - being the decade of Reagan and Thatcher. I'm a lefty myself, but I still have fond memories of the 1980s, an amazingly polarised time, and shifting likeable pop culture from that decade into the 1970s is simply childish and nonsensical.

I hope an image of the real 70s will emerge here on this blog, and space hoppers may well be part of it as they continued to be popular after the 60s, but the craze was really very much in its heyday from 1968 to about 1970 and the type of thing purveyed by the BBC or Toy Retailers Association about it is not accurate. As this blog is based on actual material from the 70s, the BBC stuff has no place here.

Having said that, Mark, you might find other reasons to love the 70s, not based on BBC fantasy! I hope that doesn't sound patronising. It's not meant to be.

I'm absolutely fascinated, as I wade through a mountain of magazines, newspapers and other bits and bobs, to recall my 70s childhood and to see a wider picture of the decade beginning to emerge.

Nostalgia based on accurate info is illuminating and fun!

I hope that you will enjoy the true picture.

The Liver Birds and the Mysterious Oppression of Women...

Nerys Hughes and Elizabeth Estensen as Sandra Hutchinson and Carol Boswell in the 'Liver Birds'. Carla Lane was one of the writers (later THE writer) of this comedy series, set in Liverpool. A revival in the 1990s made little sense - the plot was heavily retconned so that Carol blipped out of existence and her brother, Lucian, and mother became the family of Sandra's former flatmate, Beryl (Polly James).

Rod writes:

I rather liked the BBC sitcom 'The Liver Birds', but I've been reading about it recently and the articles often rant on about women enjoying new freedoms at that time after centuries of oppression. Apart from the pill (from 1960 onwards) I can't see what new freedoms there were. After all, 'Coronation Street' had Sheila Birtles and Doreen Lostock sharing the Corner Shop flat in the early 1960s - and Doreen left to join the Army!

Yes... when you examine all the hoopla of 'Women's Lib' it often doesn't make sense. It doesn't have to, of course. It relies on good, old fashioned chivalry - we don't contradict the ladies, do we - no matter how misandrist and downright potty their rantings are?

Germaine Greer found that out with the Female Eunuch, which was published in 1970.

The complicated and highly nuanced relationship between the sexes was transformed into a Marxist style oppressed/oppressor model from the onset of First Wave Feminism, way back in the nineteenth century.

We're thoroughly red pilled here.

We too remember Sandra, Carol, Beryl and rabbit-loving Lucian fondly. And what about Molly Sugden as Sandra's mother, Mrs Hutchinson? 

We seem to recall the show got a little 'navel gazing' and not terribly funny in the last series or so. And please don't talk to us about Butterflies...

Wayne and Wanda - The Glorious Muppet Singing Duo, The Appendectomy And The Fever...

The Muppet Show! Jim Henson's lovely Muppet puppet concept had been around in one form or another since its very first manifestation in the 1950s. In 1976, this all-American phenomenon sprouted new characters and descended on a clapped-out old English music hall to become one of the fondest remembered kids' TV shows of all time - and it's still a thriving comicdom, fandom and filmdom today.

I loved the show, which ran from 1976 to 1981. Who could forget the Swedish Chef? Pigs In Space? The Great Gonzo? The horrifically scientific Dr Bunsen Honeydew? Poor, terrified Beaker? Fozzie Bear's bravery and optimism in the face of an indifferent or hostile audience? Sam the Eagle, battling (and failing) to keep things decent? The fabulous Great Gonzo? Or the strange success of Mah Na Na? This song, originally performed by the Muppets in 1969, took over UK pop culture like a rocket when it popped up on the Muppet Show a few years later. Suddenly, everybody was saying it. My cousin, opening the door to the insurance man: 'Ma nah ma nah'. Insurance man: 'Funny you should you say that - ma nah ma nah'.

Me, to a bus conductor: 'Ma nah ma nah!'

Bus conductor: 'Where do you want to go, you stupid XXXXXXX kid?'

Well, maybe not everybody.

My own personal favourite Muppet characters were Miss Piggy - that gorgeous purveyor of sweetness, glamour and violence - and the singing duo of the first series, Wayne and Wanda.

Wayne and Wanda? Yes. Kermit fired them after series one. They sang lovely old songs in Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy style. But things were not nearly as good. Wanda had a terrible voice (I liked Wayne's) and the props and other things always ensured they never got very far into their act.

Wayne and Wanda struck my own personal funny bone in a sketch which featured Wayne sawing Wanda in two while she warbled You Do Something To Me. This was the famous old magician's sketch, but it ended abruptly when Wanda suddenly began shrieking. Something had gone wrong.

I was, for some reason, in stitches. My adolescent humour was aroused and I guffawed and guffawed and guffawed. And so, Wayne and Wanda became favourites.

Not long afterwards, I was literally in stitches - in hospital.

I'd been ill for a while and finally ended up fearing for my life as I experienced pain which took my breath away. This was quickly traced to my appendix - perforated - and so into hospital I was rushed and the offending part removed.

It was September 1977, I was less than a month from my 12th birthday, and I was ill. I was ill for a few days after the operation - experiencing high temperatures and delusions. Into this unhappy state came a set of brand new annuals - bought by the neighbours who had collected for the poorly lad in hospital. The annuals were The Quest (now long forgotten Western series), The Sweeney (hated it) and The Muppet Show.

I perused the annuals during lucid times. In the Muppet annual, Wayne serenaded a Spanish woman: 'Lady of Spain I adore you!' Wanda responded by kicking him off the stage: 'Make another pass at her and I'll floor you!' This interested me. After all, the concept of making a pass at somebody seemed a little adult for a kids' annual. I also looked at The Quest. In my fevered states, the two worked together to create a strange world in which Wayne and Wanda were present at my bedside and I was, at the same time, a cowboy in the desert.

'Howdy!' I drawled to a nurse at one point.

'Where's Wanda gone?' I asked at another.

It was all highly embarrassing in retrospect because the nurse reported these fascinating facts, with great amusement, to my mother.

Wayne and Wanda were kind enough to refrain from singing during their attendance at my bedside.

Anyway, I survived to see 1978 (blurgh) and Wayne and Wanda, now gone from The Muppet Show, were etched on my memory.

They returned in an episode shown in December 1979 in which they reproached Kermit the frog for firing them. Wayne was now fulfilling his 'life's ambition' as a manual labourer, and the pair were okay - thanks to help from Wanda's mother's pension money.

By then 14, I was dead chuffed to see them. Guilt-ridden Kermit rehired them, and then promptly refired them when they burst into a spirited rendition of that lovely 1930s number Sweet Mystery Of Life.

I never forgave Kermit.

Wayne and Wanda have cropped up a few times since, but there is a shocking lack of Muppet merchandise devoted to them. I want figurines of this legendary pair to pop on my mantelpiece. They will forever remind me of their out-of-this-world visit to my hospital bedside in 1977.

And I will smile.

Go to it, please, Disney.

Platform Shoes, Flared Trousers & Kipper Ties - So 1960s & 1970s? Er, Not Only...

Portuguese-Brazilian actress and samba singer Carmen Miranda helped to popularise the platform shoe in the 1930s and 1940s. The 1970s dragged them back as a "new" fashion.

You know, when me and my cousin Sue went round to see our dear grandmother in 1973, Sue wanted to shock. She was teetering on a pair of massive platform shoes and she thought they would stun Gran and draw growls of disapproval from her. But Gran was thrilled: "platform soles! How lovely! I used to wear them! The higher the better!"

Of course, Sue was not happy. "You can't have worn them, Nana, they're a new fashion!"

"I can assure you I did, my duck," said Gran serenely.

And, of course, hard though it was for arrogant youth to envisage, its "brand new fashion" had been around before!

And, in the case of platform shoes, worn by that generation's grandmothers.

Never mind.

'Ah, but we had huge flared trousers!' you 1960s/70s fans chortle.

Just as they did back in the 1930s, we chortle back. 

And kipper ties? Well, once again, one must gaze back towards the 1930s/40s...

It made us laugh a lot when, in the 1990s and early 2000s, numerous fashion pundits hailed '60s/'70s fashion as totally original. No such thing, I'm afraid.

We have two arms, two legs and fashion goes in cycles.

Lovely Carmen with just some of her platforms.

"Boom Boom Boom Boom - Esso Blue!" A Sign Of The Times

Unilluminated Esso Blue sign (left) and illuminated (right).

Dashing home from school on winter's evenings in the 1970s - eager for The Tomorrow People, The Kids From 47a, Robert's Robots or Josie and the Pussycats, I used to pass a sign like the one above. It was in the window of a local greengrocer, who also supplied Esso Blue paraffin for domestic heaters.

The little man with the bowler hat was Joe, from the Esso Blue TV commercials, and he'd been around since 1958, with the catchy "Boom Boom Boom Boom - Esso Blue!" jingle.

The sign was always illuminated during the dark evenings. When I was a little lad I thought the sign must have very sophisticated inner-workings. It never occurred to me until I was about eight that it was actually lit by a single 60W light bulb!

Joe disappeared from our TV screens around 1974/75, but the sign lived on for some time, and a metal sign outside another shop bearing the character's image survived for many years after that, ensuring that Joe was a presence in our neighbourhood long after his TV tenure had ended.

Our Favourite Review Of Back In Time For The Weekend...

Well, there's Rob Ashby Hawkins with his 1950s teddy boy haircut and home brew, Steph looking naff and the kids, Daisy and Seth (those names would not have gone down well in my neighbourhood in the 1970s) with the Frustration game. I had that game, circa 1974. I used to play it with my cousin Sue and once copped a serious strop because I lost. My parents did not look on with interest. They were glued to the telly and kept telling us to be quiet.

As regular readers will know, we didn't recognise the 1970s served up by Wall To Wall for the BBC in the series Back In Time For The Weekend. We would have loved to have recognised it, but it simply wasn't recognisable - a piece of rose-tinted nostalgia dedicated to a decade that actually did not exist in that form at all.

And we didn't warm to the Ashley Hawkins family, either. Why can't the BBC put some working class folk on these shows? And why do these BBC programmes always have an "I love the 1970s so much, I could pee myself!" agenda?

And as for Giles Coren - oh PLEASE RELEASE ME, LET ME GO! as somebody sang in some decade long ago.

We cited our reasons for disliking the show previously. Where was the rampant inflation, three day week, Winter of Discontent, etc, and who played indoor golf? And as for going camping... well, that wasn't invented in the 1970s, and it was so middle class, darling!

"Wall To Wall gave us such lovely things to do," trilled Mumsy Steph. Yes, they may have done, but ground down by the real 1970s you might not have been in the mood, dear.

And what about the 1950s Back In Time For The Weekend? Women didn't work? My great-great grandmother was born in 1860 and went into service in 1873. My great-grandmother was born in 1888 and went into service in the early 1900s. My grandmother was born in 1910 and went to work in a factory in 1924. My mother was born in 1945 and went to work in a laundrette in 1960.

And as for most not having 'top' jobs, most still don't want 'bottom' jobs, do they? 95% of workplace deaths are still male, due to the fact that the vast majority of dangerous jobs are done by men. That's not equality - and neither are all women short lists, chivalry and many female doctors with children being hard to contact during school holiday times - leaving practices in a bit of a tizzy. That's partly why the GP service has gone to the dogs.

Anyway, a review by John Woodhouse on the 1970s show has caught our eye. It says so much. And we reproduce it here. Thanks, John. We're glad we're not the only ones who remember the real 1970s.

The Sozzled Seventies

THIS week on BBC2's time-travelling social documentary they were heading back to the 1970s – or 'now' as it's known in Birmingham.

"It was," we heard, "a decade with something for everyone." The gravediggers' strike, for instance, was perfect for bodysnatchers.

"The Seventies," claimed the programme, "was the first decade where people spent a significant proportion of their income on fun." Although whether Swingball really counts as fun is open to question.

 "One survey," it added, "revealed Brits as among the happiest in the world." The majority of those surveyed were the criminally insane.

Kids, for instance, had far greater freedom to play and roam, "often in conditions that would be considered downright dangerous now." That's for sure. You'd be safer playing three-and-in at Windscale than you would on the average glass-strewn tarmacked playground.

This, we were reminded, was the decade when making your own beer really took off. "Home brewing required plenty of patience," stated presenter Giles Coren. "Fermentation lasted about three weeks." Roughly the same amount of time as the hangover.

"Over the course of the Seventies," Coren added, "alcohol consumption rose by more than 40 per cent." Most of the increase happened when Margaret Thatcher appeared in 1975.

Family of four the Ashby Hawkins had been despatched to a recreated Seventies to see what the decade was all about. "Did people actually think that moustaches were attractive and sexy?" pondered the daughter. It wasn't so much that – it was more they were insulation during a power cut.

As the Ashby Hawkins settled in for some family time, there was a knock at the door. It was Eric Bristow. Either he wanted a game of darts or he'd heard the home brew was ready.

"In the mid-70s," we heard, "darts was phenomenally popular." And indeed most football fans took a set to a local derby.

"Three times as many adults played darts as football," Coren continued. That's because football's quite difficult after 15 pints of lager.

"We played darts when you could have a pint and a smoke on TV," Eric recalled. Happy days - they used to cough up phlegm on the front row.

Soon the calendar had moved round to the heatwave of 1976. "Water was in such short supply," the programme reminded us, "we were encouraged to bath with a friend." Or on a friend if it was Giant Haystacks.

As the Ashby Hawkins danced to the sounds on the music centre, some party food arrived. "Paté in aspic with tinned mandarin segments in it," noted mum.

Suddenly fondue doesn't sound so bad.

See the review in its originl form here -  http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/8203-sozzled-Seventies-John-Woodhouse-reviews/story-28750690-detail/story.html

Back In Time For The Weekend With The Ashby Hawkins - History Without Tears - Stretching A Concept...

The Ashby Hawkins family travel back to the 1970s (that looks like our lounge in the late 1960s - it's fabulous!), and do things like playing golf by candle light to show what fun power cuts were. We didn't. Nobody we knew did. This is sick! The BBC and Ma and Pa Ashby Hawkins want to hector us about how nasty modern gadgetry is when it comes to being together as a family. And, once again, the real 1970s vanishes into fiction. Heavens, isn't that Clint Eastwood in his heyday being macho man in the photograph there? Oh, no, sorry - it's only Giles Coren - old Mr "I Love Myself, Who Do You Love?" as we used to say about people like him back in the 1970s. All is well then. The show must be perfectly accurate. NOT. As we said in the 1980s. And what is that woman doing stood there with the hoover? It's the old, old story of playing the old soldier - 'POOR WOMEN!' Doesn't wash, luv. Don't tell me you didn't spend most weekday afternoons with your feet up watching 'Marked Personal'.

Back In Time For Dinner was something we enjoyed. Back In Time For Christmas was... well... OK... but Back In Time For The Weekend is stretching a thin concept until it snaps.

A middle class London family, the Ashby Hawkins, have just spent their fake 1970s doing things that nobody in my neighbourhood ever did - going camping, playing golf indoors in a power cut, having space hopper races (from 1968 onwards in reality)... um, just how prevalent were these things to your average family? And what seems "such fun" in the hi-tec 21st Century often seemed very naff and a way of simply being less bored even back in the 1970s.

1969 - space hopper races were all the rage from just after their release in early 1968. There was even a huge charity event in Hyde Park, London, featuring a children's space hopper race that year. But 'Back In Time' shifted the hopper forward in time to its fake 1970s. We realise controversies can rage (usually driven by obsessive 1970s revisionists), but this is straightforward - check any UK newspaper archive.

Roller discos? They were a 1980s UK fad, dearies. They didn't even peak in their native America until the early 1980s.

And where was the misery of rampant inflation, spiralling unemployment and industrial strife? The IRA threat, increasing hooliganism and the continuing Cold War threat?

Apparently, the programme makers gave them "such enjoyable" things to do. But that's not to say real people were doing those things - or if they were, in any great numbers - back then. It's all out of context. You cannot judge a decade on a series of bits and bobs fished up by 21st Century TV luvvies.

And all "underpinned" by some survey or other from way back.

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Rob Ashby Hawkins states that many surveys have proved that the 1970s were the best time to live in. Really, Rob? Various surveys say various things, and who was answering those surveys? People who were there in the 1970s, or people brought up on early 21st Century skewed 1970s "nostalgia"? And where are those surveys?

Personally, I wouldn't swap my sh*t rough 1970s childhood and early teens for anything. But that's because they taught me what it's like to live through hard times and to appreciate the good.

And prevented me from being smug and totally 21st Century - like the Ashby Hawkins tribe.

After all, we don't even have a car or a washing machine, let alone an ipod or ipad. And because we were short on so much in the 1970s, we don't miss 'em.

Sorry, Back In Time For The Weekend, but "what a load of rubbish!" - as we so often chorused in my 1970s school playground. Next week, we get the Cold War threat with the 1980s, apparently. The decade when the Cold War ice melted good and proper. Whatever happened to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962?

Why is the 1980s the only decade to feature news-related fears?

As for us in the 1970s, my own (thoroughly working class) family that is - do you know what our main shared activity was during that decade?

Watching the telly. In  fact, my grandmother and many older people I knew back in the 1970s said that television had killed family life, "we used to make our own amusement," they said.

But me, my parents and siblings and our friends and neighbours still spent most of our leisure hours in front of the "goggle box". When there wasn't a power cut.

And then my parents lit candles and sat and smoked fags and moaned ("I'm missing Crossroads!", etc, etc) and I sat and read. Of course, Mr and Mrs Ashby Hawkins would never light up a ciggie. Back in the real 1970s, many kids as young as ten or eleven were doing it. A taste of the real 1970s for little Ms and Master Ashby Hawkins? My goodness, what an awful thought.

However, the Ashby Hawkins apparently think the 1970s lovely.

So, send 'em back. Let 'em experience the real thing.

If only we could.

But back to telly: the theme tune to Crossroads is etched on my mind forever thanks to my childhood and early teens.

As are so many other naff TV theme tunes and advert jingles.

Thank you, 1970s.

Top Of The Pops - An Audience Of 19 Million In 1979 - But Only Because Of The ITV Strike

I was reading the other day about how wonderful TOTP must have been in 1979 because it reached ratings of 19 million viewers. Oh yes, but only because the ITV Strike was on. The infamous strike which wiped ITV from our screens for so long, and left us with only BBC1 and "highbrow" BBC2. And as the video age had not kicked in, we were a bit stuck. Not that 1979 was a bad year for music, but it contained more than its fair share of turkeys - Lena Martell and Matchbox to name but two. So, don't be fooled!

Follyfoot and the Dreaded Sunday Afternoons...

The "Follyfoot "annual 1977. The series ended in 1973, but lived on in repeats and through the "Look-In" comic strip for some years afterwards. The cover shows Arthur English as Slugger, Christian Rodska as Stryker, Steve Hodson as Steve and Gillian Blake as Dora. A branch of the lightning tree can be seen. The tree was actually dead and planted there for effect. The cast and crew were apparently amazed when it sprouted leaves, but a gardener friend of mine tells me this is nothing unusual in a tree only recently judged to be dead and even when transplanted (legend has it the fake lightning tree was set in several tons of cement!) the 'dead' tree can go on showing signs of life for some time.

Oh crikey! I've been asked to write a blog post about Follyfoot, that much-loved TV series of the early 1970s, broadcast from 1971 to 1973 and in repeats from 1974-1975. And... oh dear... I didn't really like the show and haven't been able to face it since!

The show was repeated again about thirteen years later, but I still couldn't face it.

In the 1970s, morning children's TV in the school holidays abounded with glorious creaky old wonders like Champion The Wonder Horse and Casey Jones. They were in black and white, but that didn't matter because many of us were watching in black and white. In the 1980s, more repeats were wheeled out for morning viewing, and I was horrified when, circa 1988, I was settled in front of the box (with a throbbing hangover) one Sunday morning and the announcer told me the next programme was going to be Follyfoot.

"Not in this house it ain't!" I hissed, and switched off hastily.

What a git, you cry, Follyfoot was marvellous! It's what Sunday afternoons were made for, it's so beautiful, even in retrospect...

Well, let me rush to my own (and possibly Follyfoot's) defence.

Back in the early 1970s I was impossibly young (oh yes I was!) and it's since been widely circulated that Follyfoot was aimed at an early teens audience. Golly, Steve! Gosh, Dora! I don't recall that being widely circulated or acknowledged at the time! That case for the show's defence isn't helped by the fact that my wife, who was an early teenager at the time and adored horses, hated Follyfoot, and two girls in my class at primary school loved it. I find the "early teens" audience tag even stranger as Steve and Dora looked to be in their early twenties anyway and none of the stories seemed particularly sophisticated - or even remotely resembled teen life in my neighbourhood. 

I was a precocious child, my sharp-end, lower-working-class early '70s childhood was seeing to that, and I don't think the show ever "went over my head", but I never liked the way Dora kept crying and thought it sad and boring. And I didn't like the Lightning Tree song either. I mean "dub-a-dah, ba-dub-a-dub-a-dah"? Oh, please! And as for "down in the meadow where the wind blows free"... well, certain coarse types, like wot I was, twisted the meaning of that and guffawed loudly. And the pigging tree wasn't even in a meadow anyway.

Apparently the lightning tree was a "symbol of hope", but the atmosphere of the series seemed so miserable it thoroughly chilled me. And the tree looked so grim!

Bah, humbug!

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, the show was featured as a comic strip for years in my favourite children's weekly comic, Look-In, but I never read that particular strip.

Having said that, I watched Follyfoot. It used to come on at Sunday teatimes and we always had the telly on then. I remember Dora and Steve and Slugger and the Colonel and Stryker and the lightening tree so well. In fact, like so many things seen in my impressionable childhood years, the show almost feels like a part of me to this day.

 The "Look-In" "Follyfoot" comic strip ran for years.

Curiously, during the mid-1970s, I read the 1963 novel Cobbler's Dream, by Monica Dickens (great-granddaughter of the great English author Charles Dickens), which inspired the Follyfoot TV series, but although Dora, Slugger, Stryker and the Colonel (then called the Captain) were all present as in a way was Steve (then called Paul), I enjoyed the book far more than I did Follyfoot. It was grittier, far less tearful and far less "arty-farty".

"Arty-farty"? Well, I think that the TV series was afflicted by a slight case of post-1960s "arty-fartiness" (as we called it round my way) - little tweaks and twiddlings - and the fanciful "symbolic" lightning tree, the name Follyfoot, the general wimpishness of Dora, and the notion that some romance might develop between her and Steve (all absent from the book) were perhaps at least partly responsible for my negative response to the show. The plot of the book which provided the inspiration was based at a rest home for horses, dealt with their often sad histories and the people who lived and worked there, but the sentimentality and what I thought of as the "girly" romantic crap of Follyfoot was missing.

The characters in Cobbler's Dream were so much more compelling. And so much less posh in some cases. Dora, for instance, was not the daughter of a bigwig ambassador, her father was a grammar school teacher, she was not the niece of the Colonel (Captain in the book) and the farm was a very poor place, founded by a horse lover years before and run by a committee. Stryker was a bit shadier than in the TV series, and his heart of gold far less evident. And Slugger was also different, and his wife a former all-in wrestler. Beats having a lightning tree around the place any day.

I thoroughly enjoyed Cobbler's Dream, finding it truly to be a dream of a read, and I've re-read it several times since and still have it. Cobbler's Dream is one of my all time favourite books in fact. Follyfoot, despite it sharing the commendable pro-animal stance of the book, I found to be cobblers in comparison. 

Having said all that, there was nothing wrong with the acting in the show. Gillian Blake was superb as Dora - her misery was so real, it reached out from the screen and added to my own.

Our memories of past pop culture are usually coloured by the situations we were in at the time, and I have to say that when Follyfoot was broadcast I was not happy. I was living on a sink estate years before the term was coined, and life was very harsh indeed. That's probably another reason why Follyfoot didn't gel with me. Although upper-middle-class Dora's misery seemed very real, I could find no sympathy for her, shedding copious tears over some horse that had been mistreated or was heading for the knacker's yard. Just getting by from day-to-day was a struggle in my little world.

And Sunday tea times were particularly horrible occasions, with school looming the next day, and family tensions at their worst, especially if my dreadful step-granny was visiting.

As I wrote earlier, the memory of Follyfoot lives within me, so one day I might revisit the lightning tree. But don't hold your breath.

You're Only Young Twice - The Adventures of Flora, Cissie, Mildred, Dolly, Katy, Miss Milton, Finchy and Roger

A scene from the opening titles of 'You're Only Young Twice' - Flora Petty enjoyed her 'True Romances' in the Residents' Lounge at the Paradise Lodge Home For Retired Gentlefolk, collected elephant ornaments, loved reminiscing about the late Mr Petty and her through-lounge in Chingford, and often wreaked havoc from September 1977 to August 1981.

I had an interesting e-mail last week:

Was the ITV sitcom You're Only Young Twice anything like Waiting For God?

Good heavens, apart from the setting, it was not! You're Only Young Twice, written by Pam Valentine and Michael Ashton and produced by Yorkshire TV, was a lovely old-style sitcom which ran from September 1977 to August 1981, with two Christmas specials (1979 and 1980). Waiting For God was screened in the early 1990s, and by then a great sea change had occurred in the world of TV sitcoms. They had moved on and matured, often mixing drama and issues with comedy in a way that was just not thought of in the 1970s and early 1980s. 

That's not to say '70s sitcoms couldn't be daring for their time - for instance, late in the decade we had Mixed Blessings, a show about a white man and a black woman getting married. That was pretty controversial at the time (although not as controversial as many might think today), but it was a show that I (and most of my friends) found lecturing and boring. The depth and drama incorporated into later efforts in the 1980s and 1990s was quite missing from Mixed Blessings.

Watching Waiting For God, I was deeply moved by leading character Diana's sadness about her infertility. Watching You're Only Young Twice, I laughed like a drain as Flora Petty wept over the latest issue of True Romances, Mildred Fanshaw thought her son had dumped a baby on her, and Cissie Lupin fed her green jelly babies to the birdies. Flora and co gave us first-class lighthearted fun.

I think a clue to the tremendous difference between the two series can be found in their respective titles: You're Only Young Twice - old age as fun, a second childhood; Waiting For God - well, it speaks for itself. 

The residents of Paradise Lodge lived in a nice, cosy world. Even poor, all-alone-in-the-world Mrs Willis, who is unseen and leaves after an operation in the first episode, has a second cousin in Penge who steps up to help her in her time of need.

Big Chief Flora Petty turns Cissie Lupin into a Red Indian.

You're Only Young Twice is a huge favourite of mine. I think Peggy Mount, who had been playing TV battleaxes since The Larkins in the late 1950s, was absolutely wonderful as fiercesome dragon Flora Petty, Pat Coombs as the gloriously dippy vicar's daughter Cissie Lupin, was terrific, and I loved the... I was going to write 'supporting characters', but they were more than that. They all made excellent contributions to the Paradise Lodge brew.

Let's canter through them...

Mildred Fanshaw (Diana King), widow of Colonel Roderick Fanshaw, was beautifully vinegary. She had a 'pretty' purple Honda and her unseen son Damien was a cause for concern; then there was past-it actress Dolly Love (Lally Bowers) - who lived on memories of former glories and a little too much alcohol at times; Katy O'Rourke (Peggy Ledger), she of the bizarre Quick Knit creations, was endearingly dotty in the first two series; Miss Milton (Charmian May), who owned the Paradise Lodge Superior Residence For Retired Gentlefolk, was terribly posh, well meaning and endlessly harassed by Mrs Petty; and the lovely Miss 'Finchy' Finch (Georgina Moon) and poor old kindly-but-put-upon Roger (Johnny Wade) assisted at the home and provided those all-so-necessary sniggers about "slap and tickle" - usually present in any late '60s to early '80s sitcom.

And what about Gladys Smallwick? Don't mention that woman to Flora!

The cast were absolutely excellent.

The ladies of Paradise Lodge. Who will meet the Queen? Vote for Flora!

As for the stories in You're Only Young Twice... well, there was that dreadful time when Cissie won a car in a competition (it wasn't what it seemed) and Mr Chatterbox interviewed her for the local paper; the awful situation when everybody got stuck to a draught excluder on Christmas Day; and who could forget the dinner in Mr Petty's memory - when Cissie put mislabelled laxative in the peas instead of salt - and everybody ended up queuing for the loo? Mildred's 'Wall of Death' stunt at the local church fete simply doesn't bear thinking about - in fact the whole day was a disaster, particularly as Cissie put Flora's winning raffle ticket in a teacup and Flora drank it. Moving on, there was the enlightening occasion when Flora explained to Cissie how conceiving a baby was like getting your library book stamped. And what about the dark day when Dolly sang I Am Sixteen Going On Seventeen? Furthermore, to end this catalogue of unfortunate incidents at Paradise Lodge, do you recall Katy's baby rompers turning out a little unusually? Flora coming back from the dead with a bag of chips? And dear Dolly nearly getting to star in a TV commercial, but being upstaged by Flora, who was then upstaged by a bulrush, slicing a sliced loaf?

I do.

'TV Times', September, 1977. The series begins. Writers Pam Valentine and Michael Ashton compare Peggy Mount and Pat Coombs's comic pairing to Laurel and Hardy. In the pic, Flora soaks her feet. Well, fake sleep walking through a goldfish pond in the dead of night can make that a great pleasure. 

'It's like talking to The Magic Roundabout!' Flora once said of Cissie.

Cissie's Uncle Bert did something highly unusual in his shed...

Mildred... did she really have puffy ankles? 'Where's my Wincarnis?!'

Dear Dolly... once fell downstairs singing 'Lover Come Back To Me' in a Father Christmas outfit...

Lovely Katy... what WAS she knitting?!

Finchy and Roger were popular staff members with the residents. But requests for pay rises were met with a stern 'NO!' by Miss Milton.

Early on, several of the characters had catchphrases: Dolly Love's was: 'Just a minute! Just a cotton picking minute!'; Mildred Fanshaw was oft-heard to squawk: 'Hang on! Hang on!'; and a perplexed Miss Milton often demanded: 'What are you telling me? What are you saying to me?' Once the characters were established, the catchphrases were dropped - although Mildred did occasionally give us hers. Well, 'Hang on! Hang on!' suited her so well. Roger the handyman was often driven to say, 'Dunno why I stick this job!' Poor geezer.

Miss Milton joins the ladies in the Residents' Lounge.

It could be said that Flora bullied Cissie. But Cissie sometimes got her own back when Flora was incapacitated, and Flora cared about her. Indeed, Flora even turned down a proposal of marriage because her fiancé didn't like Cissie and did not want her living with them after they were wed. 

A signed photograph of Cissie Lupin! When she bought jelly babies, Cissie always ate the arms first. But she soon found out that the local bird population did not like jelly babies.

Poor Miss Milton - permanently well-meaning and permanently harassed. Usually by Flora.

Do watch it! If you love comic greats like Peggy Mount and Pat Coombs and the traditional English sitcom you will not be disappointed, I promise you. You're Only Young Twice is a thing of great beauty. But don't expect an early version of Waiting For God. Flora and company give us something very different, despite the similar setting. But just as good.

I Like 'Lectric Motors

Loved this. Late 1979, kind of cusping 1980. At this point, we were all wondering what the 1980s were going to be like and eagerly looking out for clues to emerging trends. This wasn't quite how the '80s were to be, but I think it's brilliant, although it had no commercial success and was tucked away on John Peel. I think I first came across it there around February 1980.

I never saw the promo. Love the retro elements (especially those '60s style babes!) and I think this is horribly underrated, although the electric guitar is a teensy bit overdone.

But then it was 1979!

Patrick D. Martin, I salute you!

"Listen here, you great big t*at, don't you use a wrench on that..."

Rings 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.