This Morning Spoof: Richard, Judy And The Hair You'll Be Wearing Next Year...

Spoof magazine interview found in a pub in December 1989...

3 October 1988 was a grand day in the history of television. Nope, it wasn't the launch of Channel 4, breakfast TV, or Sky TV - those events occurred in 1982, 1983 and 1989 respectively.

No, think, mateyboots, think...

Can't think?

Oh well - 1988 gave us THIS MORNING with husband and wife presenters Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, and it really was quite something. The 1980s saw UK television going all day and all night, something for everybody, but for years into the decade the mornings were so drop dead boring you could have wept. Picture it, you take a sickie, you're at home, luxuriating with an economy sized Wispa, and all you have to watch is schools programmes! I mean - PURLEASE!!!

All right, if you were lucky, you could slam in a video, but as we've already seen elsewhere on this site, the spread of VCRs was slow, so you probably didn't have the option.

Morning TV had been looking a little more hopeful since the launch of the BBC's daytime service in October 1986, but then, suddenly - BAM!! - the ITV schools programmes were accommodated on Channel 4 in 1987, and we got This Morning the following year, an all-sorts mix of human and celebrity stories, fashion, cookery, health - you name it!

The show was revolutionary - before that we'd had to wait until nearly lunchtime for even a glimmer of anything interesting, unless you counted the 10am repeat of yesterday's Neighbours.

And This Morning was also revolutionary in length. In the first instalment, Richard and Judy informed the audience that they were going to be on air for the next two hours!

This Morning was broadcast by Granada TV, live from the Albert Dock in Liverpool.

I liked it a lot... although maybe it seemed a little middle class, it wasn't as stuffy (or middle class) as some previous magazine-style shows, and I grew fond of Richard and Judy, cook Susan Brookes, weatherman Fred Talbot, agony aunt Denise Robertson, etc, etc, etc.

Richard and Judy, who had met back in the year of the Falklands and the deelyboppers - 1982 - soon became the darlings of daytime TV, so much so that many of us referred to the show as Richard & Judy.

By late 1989, This Morning was an institution.

And it was in December 1989, sitting, jaded after too much festive cheer, in a bar in Islington, that I found an alternative magazine staring up at me from the bar, and took a look.

And it contained a delicious spoof article on This Morning that made me chuckle. And still makes me chuckle to this day. It's a brilliant piece of tongue-in-cheek, razor sharp late 1980s humour, it struck a chord with me, and with apologies to Richard, Judy, and anybody else involved with This Morning back then, I reproduce it below.

And remember this is a SPOOF interview - Richard and Judy had nothing to do with it! Bless 'em!

GOOD MORNING

BREAKFAST TELEVISION

with RICHARD & JUDY

If you are a man between the ages of 20 and 70, or a woman between 18 and 35, you could be a morning television presenter.

JUDY: Believe me, it is hard work - introducing reports on knitting patterns, getting bread to rise properly, coffeetime interviews and soap debates.

RICHARD: But also true stories of love, humanity and courage that bring people closer together.

JUDY: That's right. It's taking the events of the day and presenting them nicely. It's knowing what to say when there is nothing to say, and wearing something nice.

RICHARD: No one ever said it would be easy.

JUDY: (LAUGHS) But seriously. The hard work has its advantages - your face is instantly recognisable, people let you go ahead of them in queues, and old men send you gifts in the mail. You and your public share a genuine warmth that is all too rare these days. I suppose more than anything, if you're a woman, is not to wiggle and pout when they point the camera at you.

RICHARD: That's right.

WHAT IS AN ITEM?

JUDY: It can be almost anything. Would you make some coffee, Richard? (RICHARD GETS UP AND MAKES EVERYONE COFFEE) An item can be almost anything! Like if a viewer suffers food poisoning from a poor quality tin of smoked salmon, that's news. If Margaret Thatcher gets a new hairstyle, that's news. If a soap star gets a divorce, that's news as well. The public has a right to know. Isn't that right, Richard?

RICHARD: Absolutely, Judy.

WHERE DO ITEMS COME FROM?

RICHARD: Most of the items come from the teletype machine...

JUDY: ... which is a neat black printing machine on our desk.

YOU BOTH USED TO BE REPORTERS, SO WHAT IS JOURNALISM?

RICHARD: Oh, errrr...

JUDY: We'll be right back after this break.

DO YOU GET TO TRAVEL?

JUDY: I sometimes do reports.... like recently I visited a school for the severely brain damaged diabetic children and we made a film. At first I was so worried that it wouldn't come out right, but they all proved to be really photogenic.

RICHARD: And it looked really good. (PAUSE) And we just thank god the 'twins' are healthy and normal.

TELL US ABOUT 'WARMTH'

JUDY: Undoubtedly the key to warmth is not to think about what you're reading from your autocue. I always imagine my viewers. I picture them writing one of those wonderful letters and I see their bright smiling faces.

RICHARD: I never knew that, Judy.

JUDY: (GLARES AT RICHARD) An information booklet accompanies this series...

WHAT ABOUT AD-LIB?

RICHARD: (LAUGHS) Well, this is when the autocue is not working...

JUDY: Or has been turned off. (BOTH LAUGH)

RICHARD: It is, of course, the most challenging time for a presenter.

JUDY: Like the other day, there was this story about handicapped children participating in their first annual wheelchair marathon, and the autocue suddenly stopped working, so I said "If you spend time with the handicapped...

RICHARD: That's right, (CONTINUING FOR JUDY) 'I think, well, their hopes and dreams become part of you.'

JUDY: (LONG PAUSE. DEEP BREATH. RUBS FINGERS ON THE BRIDGE OF HER NOSE) Let's take a short commercial break, but we'll be back with the sort of hair you'll be wearing next year.

TELL US ABOUT THE WEATHER

RICHARD: Fortunately, we don't have to do the weather.

JUDY: But we do have to talk with the Weather Personality. Always keep an eye on him.

RICHARD: Yes, if he loses weight or his skin clears up - he could be your next replacement.

JUDY: And remember that the weather personality makes the final impact on your public, so if he talks bad weather, interrupt him - "Rain, rain, rain. Don't you have anything good for us?"

RICHARD: Or, "Surely it's going to improve for the weekend?"

JUDY: But you've got to get the timing right - make sure the closing signature tune leaves him no time to say anything clever.

1988: The End Of The Reagan Era...

On 9th November 1988, American Vice President George Bush beat Democrat Michael Dukakis to become President of the United States. Over here, Channel Four marked the end of the Reagan era by showing four of his films - Bedtime For Bonzo, Desperate Journey and Dark Victory.

Click on the TV Times listing above for more details.

From the Sun, November 18, 1988:

Ronald Reagan danced the last waltz with Mrs Thatcher at an emotional farewell at the Whitehouse.

The world leaders brought down the curtain on their eight-year partnership by sweeping around the ballroom to the sounds of "Hello Dolly".

Husband Denis followed with First Lady Nancy Reagan, applauded by a galaxy of political, literary and showbiz stars.

Mrs Thatcher was visibly moved as President Reagan paid her yet another tribute in the after-dinner toasts.

"We love her," he said.

Nancy confessed: "I was feeling very sentimental and nostalgic and got a little teary during Mrs Thatcher's toast to my husband."

Mrs Thatcher said afterwards: "It was a very emotional moment."

The President yesterday backed incoming President George Bush, who takes over in January, and urged America to give him time to slash the nation's £150 billion budget deficit.

The 1980s Mobile Phone As A Defensive Weapon!

The Sun, November 18, 1988.

Yuppie Richard De Vahl didn't hesitate when a mugger attacked him... he clocked him with his mobile phone. The thief collapsed stunned, then fled empty-handed.

Richard, 26, a property consultant, carries his £2,000 phone with him everywhere.

He said yesterday that the black mugger threatened to stab him if he didn't hand over his cash.

Richard, of Fulham, London, added: "I wasn't over-pleased at this, so I smashed my phone over his head.

He reported the incident to local police.

A spokesman said: "We are looking for a man complaining of bells ringing in his head..."

The arrival of the mobile phone in the 1980s was a boon to yuppies.

Fashion Trends Of The 1980s: Doorknocker Ear-Rings - Modelled Here By Neneh Cherry...

Here's Neneh Cherry giving us her BRILLIANT Buffalo Stance and sporting a pair of 1980s doorknocker ear- rings.

'80s ear-rings were often a nightmare - there was the putrid, coloured plastic variety; the axe head variety (looked very brutal indeed) and the studded doughnut (often black, but appeared to be studded with metal- went well with studded black lycra).

And then there was the doorknocker.

Who's looking good today?
Who's looking good in every way?

Er, Neneh, I hate to tell you...

But back in 1988 Neneh looked very, very trendy indeed.

1988 - Wicked! Gel 'N' Mousse, Designer Stubble, Ripped Jeans, Party People And Boxer Shorts...

Let's take a look elsewhere... Ah, here's Blue Jeans, April 1988. Imagine coming across this girly in an English country garden - or anywhere!! She looks mighty daft by today's standards. In 1988, she looked pretty OK.

More from Blue Jeans - and Star Trek - The Next Generation is available on video. And then there's 30 things you didn't know about Curiosity Killed The Cat. What are you waiting for?

Ooh, those clothes! As I recall, they were very much of the era, and would not have looked at all out of place, but nowadays those girlies would be far more likely to be laughed off the rink because of their clothes than for any lack of skating skills. Mind you, maybe not. I've seen a lot of '80s gear in the last ten years or so worn by the young and the trendy: foul ra ra skirt and black leggings combinations, lovely jackets with pushed up or turned back sleeves (the turned back sleeves having the inner striped or other patterned material), permed and scrunched hair, bulldog clips, blonde streaks/highlights, shutter shades, jelly shoes, colourful trainers, wonderful clothing colour schemes - and more... 

Makes me feel old to see it back again.

A glimpse of two fabulous Blue Jeans photo stories - one of them called I Should Be So Lucky. There's novel.

I loved the droll irony contained within '80s teen mags, probably started by Smash Hits earlier in the decade. There's a fine example in this 1988 Blue Jeans reader's letter and editor's reply featured on the page above:

-

In Carly Simon's song "Coming Around Again" what is Mummy doing when Daddy "breezes in" and also why did the baby sneeze?

-

Curious BJ Fan, Bucks.

-

"Baby sneezes, Mommy PLEASES, Daddy breezes in." I've really no idea why the baby sneezes, perhaps it was sitting in a draught or it had just had a very cold drink of Pepsi or it had been for a brisk walk in the bracing air. Just use your imagination. Please!

-

Magic. And don't miss Freeda The Frog declaring her undying love for Gordon the Gopher.

-

"Bright and cheery" nail varnishes tested by Blue Jeans...

Kylie squashed a 1988 silly season rumour: word was floating around that if you played her records at 33 RPM (vinyl was still pretty "in" in 1988, as were cassettes, CD players cost a packet) it revealed that Rick Astley was actually singing, not Kylie. SCANDAL! Not true, said tongue-in-cheek Kylie, SHE was actually the singer on her own AND Rick Astley's records.

And here IS Rick. What's to look forward to in the next 1988 edition of Blue Jeans? A feature on stars in suits? Hands To Heaven Breathe? A Phillip Schofield pin-up? Oh come on. Is this a joke? Have I been sold a spoof mag?

No?

Flamin' Nora...

I liked Sinitta's camp, hi-N-R-G pop. Here she is (with her toyboy?), revealing that sometimes he's a trendy boxer shorts man. What was all this with boxer shorts? Well, for years, medics had been fussing over we men's personal bits, claiming that they got a little too overcrowded and overheated in briefs and Y-fronts and that they really weren't good for our fertility.

Underwear had become very brief in the 1960s, but in the mid-to-late 1980s, made acceptable by the likes of Nick Kamen, boxers were on the rise again. A healthier, "stylish" alternative. Yes, probably, as regards the former, but as regards the latter - PURLEASE!! Compare this 1988 trend with skimpy 1982 - here.

Nick Berry - a Blue Jeans pin up in 1988, complete with designer stubble.

Were these "trusty 501's" ready for the dustbin? Are you kidding?

The label on that top recommended hand washing in luke warm water with Dreft. But would the girly listen? Would she heck - she was too busy moussing her hair up.

My mother was a "child of the '60s" and sported a huge beehive hairdo back then which took about eighteen cans of hair spray to create. Even in the 1970s, she would gas us with hair spray fumes, creating a more modest hair style, before going to the local Labour Club for bingo on Friday and Saturday nights.

-

In the 1980s, as concern for the ozone layer took hold, we youngsters gleefully grasped hold of new kind-to-ozone products like hair gel and mousse so that we could perform evil experiments on our own crowning glories.

Lovely.

Stars out and about in July 1988 - from the News of the World Sunday Magazine. Prince Charles shows off his chest, "Loadsamoney" Harry Enfield does his Stavros bit, being all caring and sharing over a kebab, Samantha Fox hitches a ride with Simon Climie of Climie Fisher and Ben Vol-au-Vent (as we always called him) of Curiosity Killed The Cat wears weird footwear with band mate Migi.

-

Meanwhile, Linda Gray takes a break from Sue Ellen, Jim Davidson's still about, and Arnold Schwarzeneggar takes a stroll with Danny DeVito.

In youth terminology, "wicked" was suddenly a very excellent thing to be. But what was "gnarly"?

Er...

"Tubular"?

Double er... 

By 1988 I was getting a mite raddled, and wasn't as "with it" as I once had been... Oh for the days of Toto Coelo!

Technology 1988!

A couple of pages from the Comet stores "programme", which appeared in some magazines from 2/11/1988 onwards. Fascinating to look at the trends of the day. Since the early 1980s, a plethora of new phone designs had arrived - including the Binatone Hotline 2 MP200 - a one-piece telephone with 10 number memory. One-piece phones never really took off in this country, but this particular model was a snip at £12.99 - a saving of £2.00 on the recommended price at Comet in 1988. 

Pictured is a clunking great cordless telephone - the GEEMARC 2000, with full two-way intercom at £99.99. Not cheap.

Fancy a cellular phone? The car telephone featured would set you back £399 and a Motorola 8000s hand-held would cost you £599. The latter is described as "lightweight, stylish and compact".

Lightweight, stylish and compact?! It was, of course, by today's standards, a brick. 

Remember Only Fools And Horses and Del Boy Trotter's failed flirtation with yuppiedom and mobile phones in the late 1980s? 

Pictured is the Amstrad CPC6128 computer with 128K RAM and built in disk drive.

Wow.

Technology 1988 style was a whole different world...

Edwina Currie - Or Should That Be "Eggwina"?!

From the "Sun", 18/11/1988: junior health minister Edwina Currie was famous for opening her mouth and not engaging her brain. Here, she avoids a parking ticket, but there is more than a touch of "let them eat cake" in her advice to a humble traffic warden to buy silk long johns, £26 a pair from Harrods! Somehow, I grew to like Edwina. I don't really know why. The 1980s were far more varied than simply "greedy". By 1988, the decade had gone from being a poor, recession hit deelybopper wearing, Rubik's Cube twirling geezer, to being a garish, big haired, big shoulder-padded, extragavantly fund raising yuppie, to being an absolutely off-its-rocker old weirdo, playing host to the likes of acid house and Edwina...

One of the big political scandals of the late 1980s involved Junior Health Minister Edwina Currie and her assertion that most of Britain's egg production was infected with salmonella. Cue hasty resignation and lasting fame.

I blamed all the fancy food we commoners were able to scoff in the 1980s. We were getting dead posh as the decade progressed, eating grub we'd never had before, some of which involved undercooked or even uncooked eggs. Before the 80s, your best chance of getting egg-related quilly-quobbles was if you took Fanny Cradock's advice and made an omelette that was "wet in the middle", as she insisted: 

"Then it's really delicious!" 

My word for it was "poison". 

But in the 1980s we, the great unwashed, ate things like fresh mayonnaise, soufflé, Oriental soup with uncooked egg dropped in it, and all kinds of other strange and wonderful eggy things.

I personally believed there was little wonder we were having problems.

Was there something to what Mrs C said about salmonella? Some readers of the Sun, 22/12/1988, certainly thought so... 

The arrogance of farmers is unbelievable. They pollute the water, the food-stuffs, the atmosphere and now chickens.

Because they are too mercenary to feed unfortunate battery hens with anything other than the ground-up bodies of slaughtered birds they have created a salmonella crisis.

They even have the gall to ask for compensation because Edwina Currie told a few home truths... 

Battery hens had been a controversial issue long before the 1980s... 

Why this sudden hysteria about eggs causing salmonella? It is simply because Edwina Currie talked about it.

In the Sixties people like myself warned that eggs could be a health risk.

At last the hen may be getting her revenge. The problem will not go away until these poor caged birds are kept in a more humane way, where they are not able to peck at sick or dead hens... 

UGH! 

I cannot understand why, after poisoning a number of people, the egg industry should see fit to sue Edwina Currie. She acted in a responsible fashion by exposing the industry for what it is, and those who have issued writs are contemptible. 

Still, not everybody was convinced that the eggs woz bad... 

I am 90 years old and have eaten an egg every day of my life. I have only had to see my doctor once in the last 20 years, and that was with flu. Not much wrong with eating eggs, I'd say...

The New Man

The Eighties Man: Day Two of a fascinating Sun series.

FELLAS DON'T FEEL A NINNY IN A PINNY!

They'll chip in on the chores.

The Sun, January, 1983.

Today's man does not mind a bit if he is left holding the baby - in fact he quite enjoys it.

He sees nothing odd in pushing a trolley around the supermarket, running around with the vacuum cleaner, or cooking the supper.

He believes - and his wife agrees - that looking after the children and doing the household chores should be shared equally between men and women.

When it comes to getting up to feed the baby 65 per cent of men and 71 per cent of women think that, where possible, they should take turns.

Almost as many men - 62 per cent - think shopping for groceries is a task that should be shared. And more than half - 58 per cent - say that the burden of housework should be split.

Yet a decade ago a real man would not have been caught dead with a dirty nappy and would never be seen with his hands in the sink, let alone flitting around with a duster.

What has caused this major shift of attitudes?

Partly the fact that more and more women have jobs outside the home.

In our survey almost half the women - 43 per cent - worked and four per cent were the main wage earners.

Housework HAS to be shared if it is to get done at all.

But Women's Lib was, in some ways, People's Lib. Men who felt they were missing something by leaving child-care to their wives were encouraged to lend a hand.

Yet there is still some way to go before everyone rejects the old idea that a man's place is at work and a woman's place is in the home.

And the men and women who do not believe that housework and childcare should be shared equally stick to the old patterns.

Of these, 46 per cent believe that cooking the meals is woman's work.

Forty-one per cent think the same about housework and one in three say women should do the food shopping.

But 48 per cent of all men say that painting and decorating are their work and 40 per cent feel the same about gardening.

The American "Eighties Man"/"New Man" - was a similar concept, which rose into the public consciousness c. 1982, although with more emphasis on men being allowed to develop and display emotional sensitivity then is illustrated in the article above.

20th Century Words by John Ayto (Oxford, 1999), traces the "New Man" to 1982 -

"a man who aims to be sensitive, caring, and non-aggressive and to take a substantial role in his household's domestic routine..."

Apparently, as the decade went on, the New Man began to be regarded as a bit of a wimp in some quarters:

1985, Chicago Tribune:

Does the New Woman really want the New Man?... The answer, as you might guess, is a frustrated no.

Sadly, the 1990s regressed, giving us the "New Lad".

I thought the 1980s were great from a male viewpoint. In my neighbourhood, back in the 70s/early 80s, boys who liked soap operas were considered... well... strange. But in the 80s, with the arrival of trendy soaps like Brookside and teenage soaps like Home and Away, it was OK for us to join in.

And to get emotional.

As a kid in the '70s, I always felt as though I was in an emotional straitjacket.

Also, grooming. No man in my family ever owned a hairdryer before the 1980s. It would have been unthinkable. In 1984, I became the first!

The "old Man" was often not very keen on the "New Man", as this comic strip from the Sun newspaper's women's section, September 15 1988, shows!

Acid House

One of the big "things" in 1988 and 1989 - the smiley face! Created in the 1960s and long associated by us plebs with kids' badges and jolly tea mugs, the face was suddenly the symbol of a rather frantic and frankly rather naughty progression from the House Music scene called Acid House. I was confused. House music had been created in Chicago - 1983 was 'Year Zero' for House - and the sound had not begun to go wide until midway through the decade.

And now we had ACID House. Say what?!

The smiley face was soon cropping up on T-shirts everywhere, accompanied by the slogan "Right On One Matey!" The elders got themselves into a right old stew about it all, whilst many youngsters, bored with being garishly posh, gothy, Indie or synthy, eagerly embraced the chance to get sweaty under strobe lights, and move about to weird electronic noises and samples.

And if you had to break into somebody else's warehouse or barn to do it, all the better!

Some newspapers seemed alarmed. A new drug culture, and the kids acting up again. Oh dear! Where had Acid House sprung from?

The Observer observed in 1988:

Drugs Fear as the 'acid house' cult revives a Sixties spectre

"Acid house" started in four London clubs... In the past month it has "taken off", spreading to other clubs around the country.

1988 and 1989 were wild. Absolutely evil according to some! The elders were definitely rattled!

From the Sun, August 28, 1989:

More than 25,000 youngsters - some aged only ELEVEN - went wild at a huge acid house party yesterday as the police watched helplessly.

Dozens of evil pushers raked in a fortune openly selling the mind-bending drug Ecstacy at £10 a time - with a bottle of mineral water to wash it down.

A police superintendent and WPC moved through throngs of spaced-out teenagers as dealers chanted "E, hash, weed" to the beat of the music.

School-age children rolled their own reefers.

But the officers were only there to make sure there was no trouble while notices about the noise were served on the organisers.

The 15-hour bash started on Saturday night when hordes of acid house fans converged on the village of Effingham, Surrey.

Cars, coaches and vans poured into Newmarsh Farm for the £30-a-head "Energy Summer Festival".

Youngsters from as far way as Leeds, Swindon and Ipswich screamed "Mental, mental" as lasers lit the sky.

Headlines from the Sun CONDEMMING the drug craze flashed on a huge video screen.

Party organisers made an estimated £500,000 from the bash - which cost about £50,000 to stage.
Police, who only heard of the party hours before, at first stopped youngsters entering the site.
But as thousands joined the crush, senior officers decided it was safer to let them in.

About 70 police were on duty, but there were only seven arrests - two for alleged drug offences.
Police will quiz the organisers and those responsible for the land.

A spokesman said:

* An acid house bash, tagged The Heat, was smashed at the weekend because it was a FIRE RISK.

* Around 10,000 revellers were expected to head for a disused factory at West Bromwich, West Midlands.

* But the local council won an injunction to ban the party after fire experts declared the building unsafe.

* Only 30 youngsters, mainly from London, arrived at the factory, but were promptly turned away by the police.

"There could be criminal charges."

Michael Grylls, MP for North West Surrey, said: "It is a massive indictment of parents that they allow their children to attend this sort of thing."

Fellow Tory Terry Dicks said: "These parents should be fined, if not sent to prison."
Monks at a silent order at West Kingsdown, Kent, were disturbed by 3,000 at a nearby acid house party.

Master of a little-known DJ skill called Transformer Scratching (making a record sound like a robot's voice), James Dorrell was hailed as a pioneer of "English hip-hop". Dorrell, who was also in M/A/R/R/S (Pump Up The Volume), was interviewed in 1988 and said of Acid House:

"It's really crazy, psychedelic music. There's no real tune, just lots of studio technology. You can also scratch other bits of records over the top of the beat and add to the effect. The other day I found an amazing old record by Brian Clough of all people! I used this bit where he says, "He's got a good left foot that lad!" over a serious Chicago House groove. It sounded brilliant!"
Mind you, imagination and originality were needed. Dorrell again:

"If I hear another James Brown yelp or This is a journey into sound again I'll scream!"

Despite the '60s psychedelic references (particularly the return of the lava lamp, which became HUGE in the 1990s, reaching its highest ever sales), the new drug culture (just what was this ecstacy?!) and so on, followers of Acid House were not hippies. From what I saw, they were harder, more streetwise, more working class - "On One Matey!" rather than "Peace Man!" The music too was very different. 20th Century Words by John Ayto, describes it thus:

Acid House n (1988) a type of house music with a very fast beat, a spare, mesmeric, synthesised sound, and usually a distinctive gurgling bass noise. Also applied to the youth cult associated with this kind of music, characterised by a vogue for warehouse parties, a revival of psychedelia, and the taking of hallucinogenic drugs. "Acid" may well be the slang word for LSD, although many cultists claim that it comes from the record "Acid Trax" by Phuture (in the slang of Chicago, where this music originated in 1986, "acid burning" means "stealing", and the music relies heavily on "sampling" a polite word for stealing musical extracts).

Did you join in or want to put an end to the "menace"? From the "Sun", November 18, 1988.

Searching For A 1980s Wall Clock...

Simon has written:

I remember back in the late 1980s having a very excellent wall clock: It was plastic, shaped like an alarm clock, and in very 80s colours. There was an 80s motif on the face. Do you know anything about these? I threw mine out years ago, and I'd like another now but I haven't seen any on eBay at all.

I think the photograph above shows one of the clocks you are referring to, Simon. I've had it since about 1987/1988 and it hangs in my hall - together with my Adam Ant mirror!

It still keeps good time (the clock, not the mirror!).

Keep an eye on eBay - I'm sure one will turn up. They were terrific novelty clocks - cheap and cheerful. You could have mine, but we've been through a lot together and I'm very fond of it!

Boardroom Blinds At Home...

Snippets from an article on window blinds, Bella magazine, January 1988.

I remember a lot of very attractive window blinds in the mid-to-late 1980s. I favoured some really snazzy red ones for the kitchen of the flat I shared with some friends, but never got round to buying them.

I like this look!

The most famous vertical louvres of the 1980s were those featured on the opening titles of the revamped ITV soap opera Crossroads in 1985.

I recall a rather posh friend of mine replacing her old horizontal blinds with vertical ones c. 1987. If my neighbourhood is anything to go by, there has been a revival of this fashion in recent years.

"Jenny Lives With Eric And Martin", Clause 28 and Militant Lesbians Invade The BBC News Studio...

"20,000 people, of all sexualities, marching through the streets of Manchester on a cold February afternoon is not something we are going to forget easily. Nor can we forget the close relationship which was forged between the Campaign and the gay scene. 1988 made us all finally realise that very powerful forces were out to get us."

Gay Life, January, 1989.

So what was Clause 28? How did it happen?

Many people will have you believe that the era before the 1980s was totally liberal, totally free of discrimination or malice. Then the 1980s arrived, slammed on the shoulder pads, stuck the cigarette in the holder, narrowed their eyes and went to work to undo everything and set the clock back.

Of course, that's not true. Some 1960s teenagers, mourning the loss of that decade and their youth since the start of 1970, have been very vocal (for such a kind, sharing and caring generation) in proclaiming just how superior they are to the generations that have followed. Meanwhile, the 1970s have been rewritten as a continuation of the "wonderful 60s". So heavily have the 70s been tweaked and repackaged, I hardly recognise them.

Let's look at the UK reality. In 1967, the decriminalisation of homosexual acts between consenting men in private was passed in England and Wales. Homosexual acts between women had never been illegal.

Although many gay men rejoiced at the news, there were sombre warnings that their new rights should not be "abused". Lord Arran, one of the major advocates for law reform, made the following speech in the House of Lords in 1967:

"I ask those who have, as it were, been in bondage and for whom the prison doors are now open, to show thanks by comporting themselves quietly and with dignity. This is no occasion for jubilations, certainly not for celebration. Any form of ostentatious behaviour now or in the future, any form of public flaunting, would be utterly distasteful and would, I believe, make the sponsors of the bill regret what they have done."

Fast forward to the late 1970s, and queer bashing was as much a sport as ever and gay men on TV were the traditional stereotypes. Accusations were made that much of the momentum behind the American "Disco Sucks" campaign came from racism and homophobia.

The decriminalisation of homosexual acts between men in Scotland took place in February 1981, and the London Weekend Television (LWT) series Gay Life was broadcast that year - although it was not networked.

The decriminalisation of homosexual acts between men in Northern Ireland took place in 1982.

In 1983, the 1981 book Jenny Lives With Eric & Martin, by Danish author Susanne Bosche, was published in England. The book was intended for primary school children and told the story of Jenny, a little girl who lived with her father and his male lover.

It was quickly banned from schools after protests from parents and politicians who feared that it might encourage children to "experiment with homosexuality". And yet parents were allowing their children to display posters of openly gay pop stars like Boy George on their bedroom walls, and indeed buying their children Boy George dollies! It really was an era of contrasts!

Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin is widely accepted as a major milestone on the road to Section (or Clause) 28, which came into effect on 24 May 1988. The emergence of AIDS as a growing epidemic, with gay men as a "high risk" group, was another.

Being well grotty, the "Clause" contained such gems as: A local authority shall not:

(a) Intentionally promote or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality.

(b) Promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality in a pretended family relationship.

The "Clause" has now gone. But have books like Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin come back, I wonder, and if so what has been the reaction of the "wonderfully liberal" people of the early 21st Century?

Published in England by the Gay Men's Press, December 1983.

Jenny has a strop. .

I was very interested in the launch of Jenny Lives With Eric & Martin and bought a copy of the book. It may seem trite, but a memory that remains with me to this day is how shocked some older members of my family were with the suggested nudity in a couple of photographs in the book. We can be terribly smug, superior and "21st Century" about that now (it happens a lot), but it's worth noting that this country was a very different place in 1983!

Grumpy Mrs Jones sticks her beak in.

23rd May 1988 - and militant lesbians, protesting about Clause 28, invade the BBC newsroom. 

Gay men attempting to gain admission to protest at various times were, of course, roughly expelled/blocked.

Equality!

Sue Lawley struggled on with the news, whilst Nicholas Witchell sat on one of the protesters. Sue said: "...I do apologise if you're hearing quite a lot of noise in the studio at the moment. I'm afraid that, um, we have been rather invaded by some people who we hope to be removing shortly."

Sue Lawley battles on with the news, as the studio technology goes rather wonky...

1988 - Environmentally Friendly, Red Nose Day, Clause 28, Lesbians Invade BBC News, Acid House, Roger Rabbit, Eggwina, Political Correctness,

In the June 1988 European elections, the Greens won an unprecedented number of votes. The Green Consumer Guide was published, soon becoming a bestseller, and we were worried. There was global warming, rising sea levels, a hole in the ozone layer... something must be done. It was around 1988/1989 that I noticed the new environmentally friendly products in the shops. They were all completely bio-degradable, no harm to anything. I, in common with many others, bought LOADS. Great - the only trouble was, they didn't clean things. My sink cleaner left a chalky deposit all over it and had the bog cleaner really got the bog hygienically clean? I had my doubts.

Still, something had to be done. When our mothers had gassed us with excessive amounts of hairspray in the 60s and 70s, we'd thought nothing of it, but now we did. "It's all your fault, Mum!"

Thank heavens for mousse and hair gel!
 
Acid House enthralled the kids and worried the grown-ups.

Militant lesbians, protesting at the introduction of Clause 28, burst into the BBC News studio on 23rd May 1988. Having evaded BBC security, they arrived as Sue Lawley and Nicholas Witchell began the bulletin. Nicholas battled with them off-screen, famously sitting on one of them, whilst Sue struggled on with the news. Read all about it here.
 
Political Correctness seemed a bonkers thing in 1988. The trend for being sensitive about whatever you said seems to have started with that poor excuse for misandry, the feminist movement. Around 1987, we began to hear of Political Correctness. A few examples: prostitutes were suddenly sex workers, which was perhaps fair enough, but pets were now animal companions; mentally and physically handicapped/disabled people were to be referred to as physically or mentally challenged and woe betide you if you were sizeist or fattist. 
 
It didn't do to offend anybody at all after the horrible Bernard Manning years of the 1970s and early 1980s, so a bald person should now be called follicularly challenged. Actually, this was usually said tongue in cheek, but I did come across several social workers at work in the late 1980s who used it perfectly seriously.

Some devotees of Politically Correct language I've met since then are honestly intent on not offending anybody. Others are prigs, pure and simple. 
 
Nowadays the PC scene is far more confusing, corrupt, and much further removed from logic. It started off as a commendable concept, in theory, but like so many things put to use by people has become warped and distorted.

It's almost like a form of mental illness, with 'in' words being 'out' at the drop of a hat. Trying to negotiate it is a nightmare.

Somebody apt to put her foot in it in the late 1980s was Junior Health Minister Edwina Currie, who briefly became known as EGGwina Currie over the salmonella in eggs scandal. Read more here. 


On the telly, the genius of Cosgrove Hall brought us a new hero - vegetarian vampire duck Duckula - more here.
 
In the ads, we were fascinated by Texas Tom, of the Texas DIY superstores chain, somebody who quite definitely was not what he seemed! Meet him here.

Wicked!

In youth terminology "wicked" was a good thing to be!


These Betacom telephones featured in the autumn and winter 1988 Index catalogue are great - I particularly like the look of the piano - though I wouldn't say "no" to the car and the Pepsi!

Rowan Atkinson and Nokia Cityman Star in TV Ad

This ad for Eagle Star investment plans dates from 1988 and starred Rowan Atkinson - old Blackadder himself, as Captain Kidd, the pirate. It also starred that technological marvel of 1987 - the Nokia Cityman mobile phone!

The voice-over explained:

This man made a lot of money, travelled the world...

... became a huge success by persuading complete strangers to give him their valuables.

Unfortunately for Captain Kidd, Eagle Star weren't around at the time, so he put his money into an obscure off-shore tax haven. And when he came back, he found he'd lost the lot.

[Andy explains: Captain Kidd's men buried it on this beach, and when Captain Kidd later came back for it, he couldn't find it!].

Take care of your treasure - ask your financial advisor about Eagle Star's investment plans. Because with Eagle Star you can face the future with confidence.

And here's the Nokia Cityman - with skull and crossbones flag for an aerial.

How outlandish mobile phones seemed back then...

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