More from the great big list of The 350 Most Nostalgic Things EVER!, none of which Peter Kay remembers. And in any case, there's too many of them for him to do that counting-off-an-imaginary-list-on-his-fingers thing...
335. Your Mother’s ABBA/Neil Sedaka/Helen Reddy Albums
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Well, technically it was Pete Seeger, Bill Haley & The Comets and the pre-'weird' Beatles, but this is a bit of an odd one anyway. Once you'd graduated past those Music For Pleasure albums with carnivorous-looking puppets on the cover, the parental record collection was a source of great wonder, simultaneously horizon-expanding and archaically limited, and a thought-provoking glimpse into the reality behind all those protests about having been 'young once too you know', and a time before they would have considered doling out a 'talking-to' over The Queen Is Dead/We Call It Acieeed et al, and indeed before you yourself started pondering what the next family generation would make of Spirea X. But surely everyone's experience of this phenomenon would be stylistically and historically different? Not as 'most' nostalgic as all that, frankly.
334. Your Father’s Pipe Band Of The 9th Dragoons Album
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See above. And anyway, it was Peter Sellers.
335. Your Mother’s ABBA/Neil Sedaka/Helen Reddy Albums
Well, technically it was Pete Seeger, Bill Haley & The Comets and the pre-'weird' Beatles, but this is a bit of an odd one anyway. Once you'd graduated past those Music For Pleasure albums with carnivorous-looking puppets on the cover, the parental record collection was a source of great wonder, simultaneously horizon-expanding and archaically limited, and a thought-provoking glimpse into the reality behind all those protests about having been 'young once too you know', and a time before they would have considered doling out a 'talking-to' over The Queen Is Dead/We Call It Acieeed et al, and indeed before you yourself started pondering what the next family generation would make of Spirea X. But surely everyone's experience of this phenomenon would be stylistically and historically different? Not as 'most' nostalgic as all that, frankly.
334. Your Father’s Pipe Band Of The 9th Dragoons Album
See above. And anyway, it was Peter Sellers.
333. Pac-Land
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Presumably this refers specifically to the Pac-dynasty's arcade-thrilling ill-advised excursion into scrolling platform-bounding ill-suitedness. Though to be honest there's probably more esoterica value in the actual concept of Pac-Land, perhaps the ultimate indulgence of an era when any successful fictional thingy, from Rodge & Podge to Hamburglar, had to have a ridiculously involved and unnecessarily complicated backstory built around it. There was absolutely no requirement for a blocky yellow maze-traversing 8-bit ghost-scoffing circular mouth thing to inspire a cast of friends and family or a place of residence - not least because the entire phenomenon was perfectly marketable enough as it was - but by 1983 he'd acquired a wife, a child, and a Chief Scientist (no, really), whilst 'Pac-Land' was elevated to fictional cityscape status to accomodate them. This then inspired all manner of aimed-at-nobody-in-particular nonsense ranging from Hanna-Barbera's baffling animated series - rarely sighted now, presumably on account of an unfortunate but constantly-deployed contraction of the title character's name - to a genuinely bewildering Christmas album set in the tenuously-canonical environs of 'Pacville', which you can hear myself and Ben Baker puzzling over here. Wonder how far that kid who got a letter from Ronald Reagan congratulating him on finishing Pac-Man got with Rock Star Ate My Hamster?
332. Water Bombs
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Successive generations seem to have had differing definitions of what actually constitutes a 'water bomb', but it's safe to say that here we're probably talking about those mini-balloon thingymajigs that would invariably explode anywhere but within splashing vicinity of their actual intended target. The least effective weapon in the playground artillery, and only ever wielded by that pillock who was in theory too wet to hang around with the 'tearaways' but maintained an overcompensating court jesterish illusion for fear of being rumbled. And to think this was only a couple of years after Grange Hill's attempted wheel-reinvention of classroom projectiles with the fork-mounted sausage.
331. Closedown (With The National Anthem)
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TV. It's always there. Spewing out unfiltered output twenty four hours a day, unavoidable, inescapable, forcing behind-the-scenes spinoffs of reality shows that barely justified in-front-of-the-scenes in the first place, eight million episodes of American Dad with fifty percent of a joke between them, and daytime Babestation presenters having to keep their clothes on and chat about recycling collection times into your consciousness unbidden, and all of it virtually interchangeable at any hour of the day. An entire generation has grown up without ever knowing the joy of cult-inspiring afternoon gameshow oddities, pastorally transcendental early Sunday Morning programming, small hours equipment-testing tape-spooling scariness, and indeed those occasions when there wasn't actually any TV on at all. Time was when the BBC would sign off for the night with a last outing for the globe, a blast of the National Anthem, a dry topical witticism from the continuity announcer and, if you were lucky, an equally topical and witty photo montage. Since the launch of News 24, however, we've just had a largely wit-free untopical 'handover', and that's not quite the same thing. On the other hand, though, telly - whenever you want it! Wonder if The Grimleys is on...?
Presumably this refers specifically to the Pac-dynasty's arcade-thrilling ill-advised excursion into scrolling platform-bounding ill-suitedness. Though to be honest there's probably more esoterica value in the actual concept of Pac-Land, perhaps the ultimate indulgence of an era when any successful fictional thingy, from Rodge & Podge to Hamburglar, had to have a ridiculously involved and unnecessarily complicated backstory built around it. There was absolutely no requirement for a blocky yellow maze-traversing 8-bit ghost-scoffing circular mouth thing to inspire a cast of friends and family or a place of residence - not least because the entire phenomenon was perfectly marketable enough as it was - but by 1983 he'd acquired a wife, a child, and a Chief Scientist (no, really), whilst 'Pac-Land' was elevated to fictional cityscape status to accomodate them. This then inspired all manner of aimed-at-nobody-in-particular nonsense ranging from Hanna-Barbera's baffling animated series - rarely sighted now, presumably on account of an unfortunate but constantly-deployed contraction of the title character's name - to a genuinely bewildering Christmas album set in the tenuously-canonical environs of 'Pacville', which you can hear myself and Ben Baker puzzling over here. Wonder how far that kid who got a letter from Ronald Reagan congratulating him on finishing Pac-Man got with Rock Star Ate My Hamster?
332. Water Bombs
Successive generations seem to have had differing definitions of what actually constitutes a 'water bomb', but it's safe to say that here we're probably talking about those mini-balloon thingymajigs that would invariably explode anywhere but within splashing vicinity of their actual intended target. The least effective weapon in the playground artillery, and only ever wielded by that pillock who was in theory too wet to hang around with the 'tearaways' but maintained an overcompensating court jesterish illusion for fear of being rumbled. And to think this was only a couple of years after Grange Hill's attempted wheel-reinvention of classroom projectiles with the fork-mounted sausage.
331. Closedown (With The National Anthem)
TV. It's always there. Spewing out unfiltered output twenty four hours a day, unavoidable, inescapable, forcing behind-the-scenes spinoffs of reality shows that barely justified in-front-of-the-scenes in the first place, eight million episodes of American Dad with fifty percent of a joke between them, and daytime Babestation presenters having to keep their clothes on and chat about recycling collection times into your consciousness unbidden, and all of it virtually interchangeable at any hour of the day. An entire generation has grown up without ever knowing the joy of cult-inspiring afternoon gameshow oddities, pastorally transcendental early Sunday Morning programming, small hours equipment-testing tape-spooling scariness, and indeed those occasions when there wasn't actually any TV on at all. Time was when the BBC would sign off for the night with a last outing for the globe, a blast of the National Anthem, a dry topical witticism from the continuity announcer and, if you were lucky, an equally topical and witty photo montage. Since the launch of News 24, however, we've just had a largely wit-free untopical 'handover', and that's not quite the same thing. On the other hand, though, telly - whenever you want it! Wonder if The Grimleys is on...?