Mine's a pint

Christ, I'm not getting anything done at the moment. Why don't we just call it a day and go to the pub?

Download: Hurry Up Harry - Sham 69 (mp3)

Funny how this song has gone from being laughably moronic to quite charming 30 years later. But I guess you can say that about a lot of things, myself included probably.

You don't get many of them to the pound

About 18 seconds into this "Carry On" clip a bloke lets out the most almighty, lusty Phwooooaaaarrrrr!!!! I have ever heard, he surely deserved an Oscar for bringing such gusto to the line. And at the end as soon as you see the guy eating a pear you know exactly what joke is coming, but it doesn't stop you laughing like a drain anyway.

My Sister's Records

He was a good-looking bastard that David Essex, with his sparkly eyes and dimply grin, and in the mid-70s there probably wasn't a girl in England who didn't want him to be her boyfriend. He flirted shamelessly with that desire on his lovey-dovey ballad "If I Could" which painted a picture of romantic bliss in such humdrum, ordinary-bloke terms — going to the pictures, having tea, picnics in the park, riding the bus — that every "Jackie"-reading teenybopper who heard it was able to imagine what it would be like if David really was her boyfriend in real life. He'd meet her outside the school gates wearing a blazer like the one he had on in "That'll Be The Day" and make all her mates really jealous, they'd hold hands walking down the street, sit in the back row of the pictures, and maybe go to the Wimpy Bar for a Knickerbocker Glory afterwards. It's like a "My Guy" photo romance set to music, and for a picture of schoolgirl heaven you couldn't beat this verse:

Could you picture us
On a Number 9 bus
To Canning Town
We two

I always really liked that bit, back then pop lyrics were all about Jean Genies, Telegram Sams and Crazy Horses and I'd never heard a big pop star singing about something as ordinary as taking a bus — if Ray Davies had been a handsome teen idol he might have written something like it. So while the song is soppy as hell I did find David's Cockney barrow boy charm very appealing (even if he does lay it on thicker than marmalade sometimes) and could understand how all the girls could go so weak at the knees and moist in the knickers over it — and they really did, I saw him sing it live on the telly back then and when he got to the line "If I were a plumber would you love me?" you could hear the voices of a thousand swooning young ladies scream back "YES DAVID!!!!"

Hell, I think I wanted him to be my boyfriend too.

Download: If I Could - David Essex (mp3)

Wild In The Streets

I never had a bike when I was a kid, I always assumed it was because my mother couldn't afford to buy me one (get your violins out) but I asked her about it recently and she told me it was because she was worried about my safety and didn't want me racing around the London streets on one. Nice to know she cared, though I don't know what she thought I was doing in the summer holidays when she was out at work but I certainly wasn't safely at home playing Ker-Plunk.

I actually didn't need a bike of my own to risk life and limb on the road when I had plenty of mates who did and were only too willing to give me lift on theirs, either perched on the handlebars or the back seat. My mum would have had kittens if she'd seen me squeezed onto the back of my cousin Martin's Chopper bike, facing backwards and legs akimbo, while he peddled wobbly along major traffic death traps like Hammersmith Broadway and Fulham Palace Road, narrowly avoiding cars and buses left and right. Needless to say we didn't wear helmets or any kind of safety gear (had that stuff even been invented in the 1970s, and if it had would we have worn it?) but when you're a kid you think you're indestructible and just bounce from one scrape to another without a second thought with your elbows and knees permanently covered in grazes and scabs.


London was literally our playground back then and we'd go all over the city on our own, all we needed were some bikes or a 25p all-day Red Rover ticket for the bus. The idea of a gang of grubby little boys tearing around London all sounds a bit "Lord Of The Flies" compared to how children are raised these days when "responsible" parents aren't supposed to let their children out without an armour of protective padding and a grown-up to hold their hand (if they go anywhere at all that is) as the news would have you believe there's a bogeyman lurking around every corner and behind every hedge. Obviously my mum did care about our safety (or she would have bought me a bike!) but there was a level of trust that seems to have gone now, not just trust in us, but trust in the outside world not to do anything to us. Not that I didn't get into trouble, there was a fair bit of window-smashing and shoplifting mixed in with all our innocent tearaway fun, but nothing really serious — I never stabbed anyone for their mobile phone — and what's childhood without scabby knees and the occasional talking to from a Copper?

I do have a bike now, my wife bought me one a few years ago (one of the best presents I've ever got) and when I take it out now I'm too chicken to ride on busy roads and get nervous when a car goes by me, but I still don't wear a helmet and when I go fast on it I get the same sense of happy freedom I had when I was a scruffy young tyke bombing around London on the back of my cousin's bike. Only now I've finally got my own.

Download: Bike - Pink Floyd (mp3)
Download: My White Bicycle - Tomorrow (mp3)