A 1970s Childhood

From Glam Rock to Happy Days

Derek Tait

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780752463445
• eBook ISBN: 9780752466422
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: History

Do you remember glam rock, flares, cheesecloth shirts and chopper bikes? Then it sounds like you were lucky enough to grow up during the 1970s. Who could forget all the glam rock bands of that era, like Slade, Wizard, Mud and Sweet, or singers like Alvin Stardust, Marc Bolan and David Bowie? What about those wonderful TV shows like Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, Kung Fu and Happy Days?

Fashion included platform shoes (we all had a pair), flared trousers, brightly patterned shirts with huge collars and colourful kipper ties. And everyone remembers preparing for power cuts and that long, hot summer of 1976?

So dust off your space hopper and join us on this fascinating journey through a childhood during the seventies, with hilarious illustrations and a nostalgic trip down memory lane for all those who grew up in this memorable decade.

Twelve

TELEVISION

There’s no doubt that I loved TV when I was a kid. In those days, we all had black and white sets that were always rented from a local store such as DER, Rumbelows or Granada. All the TVs had a dial tuner and you had to get up and turn it to find the next station. This was usually my job. There were only three channels: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV, which locally for us was Westward Television. Westward had its own evening programme called Westward Diary and things would often go wrong. I remember one show in which everything broke down, so the anchorman, Ken MacLeod, spent the whole programme talking to his co-presenter, Lawrie Quayle, about his holiday in Spain.

The TV programmes in the 1970s were some of the best. I remember running home from school and getting back before my mum, who was working in the shop. Alan would still be at school, so I’d turn the TV on and watch Paulus the Wood Gnome, which was a creepy Dutch puppet show. It always seemed to be on. Another show I enjoyed was Magpie (mainly for Jenny Hanley), although I was never a Blue Peter fan. But my favourite was Timeslip, which I never missed. I taped the episodes on my dad’s old reel-to-reel tape recorder, and would listen to them all later on. It wasn’t an easy process because everyone would have to be quiet when it was recording, and usually Alan would come in and make funny noises.

Another favourite show from 1970 was UFO. It was set in the far distant future of 1980 when it was predicted that we would all wear trouser suits, have our hair combed forward, drive snazzy cars and have a base on the moon. UFO had all the kids in my class looking skywards for flying saucers, and there were many books about UFOs, one of which was featured on Magpie. I also loved Catweazle, Ace of Wands, The Tomorrow People, Follyfoot and Black Beauty in the early 1970s.

Here is the TV guide that was featured in Look-in for a week during 1971:

Saturday
12.50 p.m.	World of Sport
5.15	Shane
6.45	It’s Tarbuck
Sunday
1.00 p.m.	Play Better Tennis
2.15	U.N.C.L.E.
3.10	The Big Match
4.05	Cartoon Time
4.40	The Golden Shot
5.35	Catweazle
Monday
3.55 p.m.	Once Upon A Time
4.05	Gus Honeybun
4.45	The Forest Rangers
5.10	Timeslip
6.45	David Nixon’s Magic Box
Tuesday
3.55 p.m.	The Enchanted House
4.05	Gus Honeybun
4.50	Junior Showtime
5.10	Magpie
7.00	Star Movie
Wednesday
3.55 p.m.	Rupert Bear
4.05	Gus Honeybun
4.50	The Sooty Show
5.15	Sexton Blake
7.00	Treasure Hunt
8.00	It Takes a Thief
Thursday
3.55 p.m.	Origami
4.05	Gus Honeybun
4.45	Skippy
5.10	Magpie
7.00 p.m.	Film
8.30	This is Your Life
Friday
3.55 p.m.	Zingalong
4.05	Gus Honeybun
4.15	The Ghost and Mrs Muir
4.50	Lost in Space
7.00	The Sky’s the Limit

Of course, Look-in, being the junior TV Times, only featured ITV programmes that they thought would be of interest to children. This selection comes from the Westward TV region, and there were variations up and down the country. Other shows shown elsewhere in the same week included Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Joe 90, The Saint, Robin Hood, Bonanza, Flipper, Stingray, Nanny and the Professor, The Champions, Captain Scarlet, Hogan’s Heroes, Man in a Suitcase, Felix the Cat, Department S, UFO, Thunderbirds, and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Many of these shows had been made in the 1960s, but were still very popular with kids in the 1970s.

Adult comedies in the 1970s included The Benny Hill Show, Love Thy Neighbour, Bless This House, Man about the House, On the Buses and Doctor at Large. We enjoyed every one!

The Comedians featured comics of the day, including Ken Goodwin (‘Settle down now!’), Frank Carson (‘It’s the way I tell ’em!’), Bernard Manning, Colin Crompton, Stan Boardman, Jim Bowen, George Roper, Duggie Brown, Jimmy Marshall, Tom O’Connor, Mike Reid (‘Wallopp!’) and Charlie Williams. Comic shows were very popular then and other well-viewed shows included Dave Allen at Large, Freddie Starr and The Les Dawson Show. Les Dawson would tell jokes about his mother-in-law, take part in sketches and appeared as his own superhero, ‘Super Flop’. This led to kids in the playground jumping on other kids’ backs, shouting the catchphrase, ‘SuperFlop!’ Like Benny Hill, Les Dawson had his own comic strip in the popular boys’ magazine, Look-in. The Look-in comedy annual of 1974 revealed the most popular acts of the time. Included within its pages were Benny Hill, Charlie Drake, Doctor at Sea (with Robin Nedwell, Geoffrey Davies and Ernest Clark), Jimmy Tarbuck, Bless This House, The Comedians, Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em (with Michael Crawford), Please Sir! (with John Alderton and Deryck Guyler), Morecambe and Wise, Jokers Wild (which featured Michael Aspel, Les Dawson, Alfred Marks, Clive Dunn, Norman Vaughan, Jack Douglas and Barry Cryer), Les Dawson (whose show ‘Sez Les’ was very popular at the time), Man About the House (with Richard O’Sullivan, Paula Wilcox and Sally Thomsett), Tommy Cooper, Bob Monkhouse (with his cartoon show Quick on the Draw which featured Spike Milligan and Leslie Crowther), Freddie Starr, The Goodies, Dick Emery, The Two Ronnies, Billy Liar (which starred Jeff Rawle), Father Dear Father (with Patrick Cargill, Ann Holloway and Natasha Pyne), Mike and Bernie Winters and Stanley Baxter.

Who Do You Do? featured impressionists, many long forgotten, such as Dailey and Wayne, Roger Kitter, Janet Brown, Clive Lea, Peter Goodwright and Paul Melba.

Catchphrases were at their best in the 1970s, and nearly all came from TV programmes. Bruce Forsythe’s was ‘Good game, good game’ or ‘Nice to see you, to see you nice’. Larry Grayson’s were ‘What a gay day!’ and ‘Look at the muck in here’, and the very popular Some Mother’s Do ’Ave ’Em led to the catchphrase ‘Ooh, Betty!’ All were repeated in the playground the day after the shows were shown. Others included ‘Stupid boy!’ (from Dad’s Army), ‘Just like that!’ (Tommy Cooper), ‘It’s the way I tell ’em’ (Frank Carson), ‘I’m free!’ (Are You Being Served?), ‘Shut up!’ and ‘Lah de dah, Gunner Graham’ (from It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum!) and many more. Love Thy Neighbour spawned many catchphrases that couldn’t be repeated nowadays, but one that everyone remembers is ‘I’ll have half’, spoken by the character Jacko Robinson in reference to his half-pint of beer.

Everyone loved Sid James from the Carry On films, and when he got his own show, Bless This House, which also starred Diana Coupland, Robin Stewart and Sally Geeson, it became an instant hit. Sid James played Sidney Abbott and the show revolved around his home life and everything that went with it. I remember an episode where he and his neighbour, Trevor, made an illicit still in the shed and ended up blowing everything to pieces.

Other popular 1970s comedies included Rising Damp and The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin. All featured excellent comedians and it’s sad today that most of them are no longer around.

Ronnie Barker was not only excellent in The Two Ronnies, but also in Porridge where he played ‘Fletch’. The show is still shown today and is still as funny as it was back then. Like many of the popular TV programmes of the 1970s, it led to a film being made which was shown at the cinema. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• One - At Home
• Two - School
• Three - Friends
• Four - Cars, Buses and Petrol
• Five - Holidays
• Six - Activities
• Seven - Music
• Eight - Fashions
• Nine - Sweets and Chocolate
• Ten - Household Shopping
• Eleven - Comics
• Twelve - Television
• Thirteen - Adverts
• Fourteen - Movies
• Fifteen - Toys and Games
• Sixteen - Memorable 1970s Events
• Seventeen - Whatever Happened To?
• Copyright