Welcome, one and all, to more highlights from The 350 Most Nostalgic Things EVER!, the list that sees that clumsily edited Back To The Future on ITV3 that actually ends up looking more racially dubious rather than less, and asks 'where's Nice Girls Don't Explode these days?'.
270. Gunge Tanks And/Or Booths
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An early example of Health And Safety Gone Mad, as the previously free-flowing gaudy unlikely-coloured artificial gloopy flingage so beloved of the likes of Tiswas and How Dare You! suddenly fell under the jurisdiction of stringent regulation imposed on us by those Eurocrats from Brussells, and was from henceforth only allowed to be deployed in controlled and concentrated bursts in an enclosed space, resulting in the installation of corresponding Gunge Tanks and Booths in any self-respecting (though curiously short on self-respect in themselves) television Light Entertainment show. For years thereafter you couldn't move for hapless quiz contestants who didn't know any answers, actors taking the most inappropriate course of action imaginable to promote their new heavyweight drama series, and indeed presenters moonlighting from their own gunge-heavy show, being given a very much ceremonial dunking or shower in the fluorescent custard-like stuff, especially if there was somehow some kind of charity angle to be mined. Then of course public tastes moved on and the Tanks and Booths shut up shop. How quickly they rose, and how quickly they fell. Usually onto the head of a self-proclaimed 'zany' personality where nobody could work out what they actually did. That said, with Michael Gove pushing for withdrawal from Europe with immediate effect, perhaps we could throw him in some gunge to celebrate when it happens. And then not let him back up again.
269. The Barron Knights
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Long-serving troupe of pop parodists essentially composed of the 'anarchic' one from The King's Singers' class at school replicated five times, or, if you will, The Black Abbotts if they actually knew any jokes. Began life as a struggling 'beat boom' combo but all that changed when they got annoyed by every single other struggling 'beat boom' combo having a hit except them, and vented their fury in a single in which they put different lyrics to some Rolling Stones songs about how everyone who was actually in the charts should be enlisted in the army with immediate effect. Thus began a lengthy career of putting irreverent new words to recent pop hits, though their Imperial Phase was undoubtedly the late seventies, when a combination of the infinite parody-friendly-ness of punk and disco, countless promo video hookups with the Tiswas crew, and the all-important presence of a 'Tim Brooke-Taylor one' within their ranks saw them score an unlikely run of top ten hits. Thus it was that The Smurf Song somehow became synonymous with escaped convicts, Day Trip To Bangor was puzzlingly relocated to an office party, and Wired For Sound would forever open with the youngster vote-courting couplet "I like tall teachers/I like small teachers/just as long as they're nailed to the ground", though more often than not the retooled lyrics tended to involve them eating Christmas Pudding or something. As the eighties arrived, they tried to 'refine' their approach, starring in their own Innes Book Of Records-plagiarising Channel 4 series wherein a song called Water saw The Tim Brooke-Taylor One get doused with a bucket of water whenever he tried to add high-pitched backing vocals, but to no avail, and by the end of the decade they were well and truly consigned to the variety circuit. The sort of thing, frankly, that gives Jo Whiley nightmares, and for that reason alone they need to be back on primetime ITV with immediate effect.
268. ‘Comedy’ T-Shirts With ‘Naughty’ Highway Code Signs, “I’m With Stupid!” Etc.
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Regrettable faux-taboo-busting trend for 'ha ha, we all get it!' nod and wink 'naughty' amusement, communicating to all and sundry through 'code' that the t-shirt wearer was a bit of a 'character' a la TV's Peter Kay. That said, they were more likely to be found being sported by 'tearaway' youngsters swinging from foot to foot in train stations 'late at night' (i.e. about 7pm), those who were so deeply and securely certain of their own inherent funniness that they had to repeat the joke they'd just made (and had invariably stolen from somebody else and got wrong anyway) three times until they were absolutely sure that everyone had heard it and had laughed out of politeness, and people who were obsessed with 'holiday romances' but seemed to spend all of their time sat on a sun lounger in conversation with the same three people. Reached its absolute nadir with the ludicrous 'The Real Mr. Men', whose gallery of inaccurately-rendered perverted Hargreaves-knock-offs didn't even work as parody. Now thankfully as outmoded as those 'Kiss Me Quick' hats that people insist existed at some point, though that said, they never quite scaled the same heights of pointlessness as those t-shirts with a surfing mouse saying 'Loadsamoney!'.
267. American Football Being Popular
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In addition to 'actually making programmes that were any good', part of Channel 4's long-abandoned remit for serving minority audiences was buying in suitably unsuitable-for-the-other-channels programming from around the world; not just dramas like Chateauvallon, Brides Of Christ and Empress Wu, or indeed sitcoms like Xerxes and that Israeli thing about the orchestra, but also sport. Yes, actual proper sport, and not that Jerome Flynn's Shoe-Polishing Xtreem sort of thing they palm viewers off with now. The surprise hit was American Football, flung out in a teatime slot to an eager audience of young males fuelled by a combination of disillusion with the not that really joke-about-able 'Whither Soccer?' mid-eighties popularity dip, and Bratpack-instigated fawning over all things 'soda'-quaffing and letterman jacket-sporting. Thus it was that Linebackers, John Madden, Vin Scully and William 'The Refrigerator' Perry came within the Neutral Zone of becoming household names, though this proved to be a short-lived tenure in the national consciousness; by the end of the eighties, 'proper' football had got its act together, and was back at the top of the league of tedious conversations you feel obliged to have with people who ignore the fact that you're personally more interested in Michael Caine films.
266. Hi-Tec Trainers
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Never quite scaling the fashion-adherent heights of Nike or Adidas, though certainly more widely favoured than the likes of Ascis Tiger and New Balance, Hi-Tec and their Pi-meets-'The-Symbol'-off-Heroes horizontally jagged emblem were the trainer of choice for many a youngster who wanted to combine sensible footwear, sensible price tags, and sensible avoidance of an unsolicited playground critique from aspirant Trinny Woodalls. Still available, of course, though long since relegated to the status of straight-ahead 'leisurewear', which once again places us in the 'difficult to reminisce about' quandry. Still, this has been a pretty good entry on the whole, at least compared to the recent ones, and like Iain Duncan Smith, I have a belief that I am right about this. I also have a belief that I am right about Iain Duncan Smith's face being able to withstand anvils.
270. Gunge Tanks And/Or Booths
An early example of Health And Safety Gone Mad, as the previously free-flowing gaudy unlikely-coloured artificial gloopy flingage so beloved of the likes of Tiswas and How Dare You! suddenly fell under the jurisdiction of stringent regulation imposed on us by those Eurocrats from Brussells, and was from henceforth only allowed to be deployed in controlled and concentrated bursts in an enclosed space, resulting in the installation of corresponding Gunge Tanks and Booths in any self-respecting (though curiously short on self-respect in themselves) television Light Entertainment show. For years thereafter you couldn't move for hapless quiz contestants who didn't know any answers, actors taking the most inappropriate course of action imaginable to promote their new heavyweight drama series, and indeed presenters moonlighting from their own gunge-heavy show, being given a very much ceremonial dunking or shower in the fluorescent custard-like stuff, especially if there was somehow some kind of charity angle to be mined. Then of course public tastes moved on and the Tanks and Booths shut up shop. How quickly they rose, and how quickly they fell. Usually onto the head of a self-proclaimed 'zany' personality where nobody could work out what they actually did. That said, with Michael Gove pushing for withdrawal from Europe with immediate effect, perhaps we could throw him in some gunge to celebrate when it happens. And then not let him back up again.
269. The Barron Knights
Long-serving troupe of pop parodists essentially composed of the 'anarchic' one from The King's Singers' class at school replicated five times, or, if you will, The Black Abbotts if they actually knew any jokes. Began life as a struggling 'beat boom' combo but all that changed when they got annoyed by every single other struggling 'beat boom' combo having a hit except them, and vented their fury in a single in which they put different lyrics to some Rolling Stones songs about how everyone who was actually in the charts should be enlisted in the army with immediate effect. Thus began a lengthy career of putting irreverent new words to recent pop hits, though their Imperial Phase was undoubtedly the late seventies, when a combination of the infinite parody-friendly-ness of punk and disco, countless promo video hookups with the Tiswas crew, and the all-important presence of a 'Tim Brooke-Taylor one' within their ranks saw them score an unlikely run of top ten hits. Thus it was that The Smurf Song somehow became synonymous with escaped convicts, Day Trip To Bangor was puzzlingly relocated to an office party, and Wired For Sound would forever open with the youngster vote-courting couplet "I like tall teachers/I like small teachers/just as long as they're nailed to the ground", though more often than not the retooled lyrics tended to involve them eating Christmas Pudding or something. As the eighties arrived, they tried to 'refine' their approach, starring in their own Innes Book Of Records-plagiarising Channel 4 series wherein a song called Water saw The Tim Brooke-Taylor One get doused with a bucket of water whenever he tried to add high-pitched backing vocals, but to no avail, and by the end of the decade they were well and truly consigned to the variety circuit. The sort of thing, frankly, that gives Jo Whiley nightmares, and for that reason alone they need to be back on primetime ITV with immediate effect.
268. ‘Comedy’ T-Shirts With ‘Naughty’ Highway Code Signs, “I’m With Stupid!” Etc.
Regrettable faux-taboo-busting trend for 'ha ha, we all get it!' nod and wink 'naughty' amusement, communicating to all and sundry through 'code' that the t-shirt wearer was a bit of a 'character' a la TV's Peter Kay. That said, they were more likely to be found being sported by 'tearaway' youngsters swinging from foot to foot in train stations 'late at night' (i.e. about 7pm), those who were so deeply and securely certain of their own inherent funniness that they had to repeat the joke they'd just made (and had invariably stolen from somebody else and got wrong anyway) three times until they were absolutely sure that everyone had heard it and had laughed out of politeness, and people who were obsessed with 'holiday romances' but seemed to spend all of their time sat on a sun lounger in conversation with the same three people. Reached its absolute nadir with the ludicrous 'The Real Mr. Men', whose gallery of inaccurately-rendered perverted Hargreaves-knock-offs didn't even work as parody. Now thankfully as outmoded as those 'Kiss Me Quick' hats that people insist existed at some point, though that said, they never quite scaled the same heights of pointlessness as those t-shirts with a surfing mouse saying 'Loadsamoney!'.
267. American Football Being Popular
In addition to 'actually making programmes that were any good', part of Channel 4's long-abandoned remit for serving minority audiences was buying in suitably unsuitable-for-the-other-channels programming from around the world; not just dramas like Chateauvallon, Brides Of Christ and Empress Wu, or indeed sitcoms like Xerxes and that Israeli thing about the orchestra, but also sport. Yes, actual proper sport, and not that Jerome Flynn's Shoe-Polishing Xtreem sort of thing they palm viewers off with now. The surprise hit was American Football, flung out in a teatime slot to an eager audience of young males fuelled by a combination of disillusion with the not that really joke-about-able 'Whither Soccer?' mid-eighties popularity dip, and Bratpack-instigated fawning over all things 'soda'-quaffing and letterman jacket-sporting. Thus it was that Linebackers, John Madden, Vin Scully and William 'The Refrigerator' Perry came within the Neutral Zone of becoming household names, though this proved to be a short-lived tenure in the national consciousness; by the end of the eighties, 'proper' football had got its act together, and was back at the top of the league of tedious conversations you feel obliged to have with people who ignore the fact that you're personally more interested in Michael Caine films.
266. Hi-Tec Trainers
Never quite scaling the fashion-adherent heights of Nike or Adidas, though certainly more widely favoured than the likes of Ascis Tiger and New Balance, Hi-Tec and their Pi-meets-'The-Symbol'-off-Heroes horizontally jagged emblem were the trainer of choice for many a youngster who wanted to combine sensible footwear, sensible price tags, and sensible avoidance of an unsolicited playground critique from aspirant Trinny Woodalls. Still available, of course, though long since relegated to the status of straight-ahead 'leisurewear', which once again places us in the 'difficult to reminisce about' quandry. Still, this has been a pretty good entry on the whole, at least compared to the recent ones, and like Iain Duncan Smith, I have a belief that I am right about this. I also have a belief that I am right about Iain Duncan Smith's face being able to withstand anvils.