The Seventies BBC 2 9pm Produced and Directed by Todd McCarthy presented by historian Dominic Sandbrook. ‘Goodbye Great Britain 75-77’.

As usual I’ve come to this series late, just as Bernard Manning’s shouting last orders in the Wheeltappers and Shunter’s Club, the third out of four episodes, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ll tell you a secret—I was there. My younger self looks over my shoulder as I write and whispers ‘you plonker, it wasn’t like that, it was like this?’ So what if there was a monetary crisis and Britain had to obtain a $2 billion dollar bailout from the IMF, that’s what banks are for surely? So what if there was militancy in the workforce and people went on strike because it was the wrong kind of [fill in your own blank here]? So what if football supporters were too busy fighting with each other to watch the game? Punk was new. Debbie Harry was hot. Pogoing was pretty straightforward and punk girls were easy, or so I was told, having never been that bold. Shame really, but I’m a seventies survivor! Lookout for a clip of a young hottie on The Parkinson Show called Helen Mirren and didn’t the old smoothie of a chatshow host try and bring up the subject of her new-fangled breasts. Oh dear Helen Mirren was easy and punk girls were all the gobby fat girls that dyed their hair purple, rubber and zips that went the wrong way and it  used to be easier when they hung around with the thin girls and spoke for them like a ventriloquist. Dammit I knew I should have went to Wembley in 1976 and shagged Helen Mirren.  It’s not fair. I want another shot. The seventies were shite.  

Comments

I left Wembley in 1976 - I'm from Wembley Park and my mum and dad still live there. In the summer of 1977 I did voluntary youth work in Chapeltown in Leeds. Reggae boomed from the hot streets though my feet and upwards.I went to a gig at Leeds College to see what punk was all about. Lots of 16 year old scrawny lads pogoing up and down and spitting at the band. At 20 I felt too old for it. The horrible bit of Leeds  that year was the Yorkshire Ripper the rest was good memories although I fell ill with depression for no good reason.

Keep blogging it's good       Elsie