Carry On Films

The Carry On team worked at Pinewood Studios and consisted of the same core actors over a huge series of films (26 according to Wikipedia, with several more unmade). They were the filmic equivalent of those cheeky seaside postcards you get with the fat women showing their cleavage and red-nosed randy skinny blokes dropping their [...]

Isle of Wight Festival 1970

Kim P Moody
I must be the only person never to have been to an Isle of Wight Festival, and the one I should’ve gone to was the 1970 festival held at Afton Down, near Freshwater Bay on the western end of the Island. I was 17 and single.
The Festival ran for three consecutive years, [...]

Red Squirrels

In the mid-seventies, when I was about four or five, I went to Canon Hill Park in Birmingham with my Gran to feed the squirrels. My Gran lived in Edgbaston so we were quite near and it was only a short bus ride on the blue and cream bus which I loved travelling on when [...]

Blue Peter

Blue Peter was the best program to watch if you were a family as it catered for most tastes. It was like a variety show with presenters who would go off on adventures or meet people in the studio, or demonstrate how to do something. I loved the craft part. You could make everything out [...]

Poem – Silver Jubilee Partying

The first Pop&Crisps poem by Shirley Elmokadem
The Queen’s Silver Jubilee. June 7th 1977
Everyone went mad that day
I’ve never seen the like since.
Granddad put on his best suit
And Gran had a nice blue rinse.
Streets were decked with bunting,
In the car park a huge marquee,
People made sandwiches and cakes,
And there were endless cups of tea.
We danced [...]

The Cream Suit

Another fashion disaster of the Seventies – the cream or white disco suit. Flared trousers (of course), waistcoat and jacket which looked like a suit you might wear to the office except that it was white not grey.
Why was it a disaster? Well because it would get dirty so easily what with the sweat from [...]

The Two-and-a-half Pence Piece

It seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? I mean what can you get for 2.5p today?! But I do remember clutching my two-and-a-half pence piece in my tiny hand and going into the Co-op near the infant school to buy a pack of sherbet which was exactly 2.5p. The coin was usually referred to as a sixpence [...]

Screen Test

One of the earliest gameshows for children, Screen Test involved showing a film clip to a panel and asking questions. It was presented by Michael Rodd and was the first kids’ program I saw that wasn’t patronising (even Blue Peter could be patronising sometimes). There was no running around amok or talking down to the [...]

Blondie

Blondie was the name of the band, but the lead singer Debbie Harry was also referred to as ‘Blondie’. According to Wikipedia, the original band name was Angel and the Snake and it was renamed Blondie in 1975 when Debbie used to get passing truckers calling out ‘hey Blondie’ from their cabs, nice. It was [...]

Seventies Solstice

Happy Solstice everyone. Have some pics of the hippies at Stonehenge in the Seventies. 1974 saw the first free festival at Stonehenge (in the modern era, who knows what the ancients did?). Up to then there had been much appropriating from various movements.
By 1984 this had become a major event, with 70,000 people attending it [...]