If Magpie was Blue Peter‘s trendy younger brother then Susan Stranks was the sexy art teacher to Valerie Singleton’s headmistress. She reminded me a lot of my Primary School art teacher Miss Paice who looked like a lanky Mary Quant and taught us how to make tie-dye t-shirts.
I thought Darts were pretty great and bought their first few singles. You could always count on them to liven up Top of The Pops.
When I first saw this I thought for a minute that it must be a parody of 1970s awfulness because every element — the song, the hair, the cap-sleeve t-shirts, the trousers, the starburst lighting — is so perfectly, dreadfully naff. But sadly it’s all too real. I remember New Edition dancing on Seaside Special but I must have blocked this from my memory for the sake of my sanity.
I was very surprised to find out that this lot were from Holland and not, you know, Mississippi, or somewhere in that general area. Were they the First Aid Kit of their day?
I once saw David Hamilton outside Fulham Football Club after a game back in the 70s and he was indeed very “Diddy” — something he was trying to disguise by wearing really high platform shoes and a big fur coat.
Why wasn’t this an Olympic sport? We’d have dominated the medals.
Thanks to Simon for pointing me in the direction of the terrific Scarfolk Council blog, the humour of which will be instantly familiar to anyone (un)lucky enough to have grown up in England in the 1970s.
I’ve added it to a new link category called “English Diseases” over on the right where you will find all that is rotten, depressing, lovely, and weird in old Blighty.
Scarfolk Council may be a parody but they don’t need to stretch the truth that much when it comes to the grim weirdness of the 1970s. For example, these are the opening titles to a children’s television program from back then. This used to terrify us while we ate our fish fingers and mash at teatime.
And records like this got to number one. How we got out of that decade alive is beyond me.
Download: Mouldy Old Dough – Lieutenant Pigeon (mp3)
Pay attention, children. The Faces are going to show you the correct way to play the rock music.
