Monkey Magic

Born from an egg on a mountain top, Monkey was an expert martial artist and travelled with Sandy, Pigsy and the delicious young priest Tripitaka on a major quest. Monkey had a magic wand that was as tiny as a pin but would grow (with some excellent sound effects) into a fighting pole. The series [...]

The War of the Worlds Musical – Jeff Wayne

My mum bought this album in 1978 and I listened to it loads over the following years. It was my first experience of science fiction and established a lifelong interest in this genre. I read the inside cover and studied the pictures intensely while listening to the music. I was fascinated by the ideas this [...]

Waltons’ Mountain of Film Reel

The Waltons was a TV show that ran throughout the Seventies and can still be seen in repeats today. It was set in the depression era in Virginia, America, but was very Seventies in style, from the floppy haircuts to the soppy storylines. Presumably at the time it was seen as authentic, but in retrospect [...]

Stephen King

Some might say the Seventies were good to Stephen King, as it was the decade in which he got married, saw Carrie, his first book, published and gained increasing popularity with subsequent books such as Salem’s Lot, The Shining and The Stand. However, it was also the decade in which his mother died and he [...]

The Strange Case of Alice Cooper

Kim P Moody Alice Cooper was, and still is, something a bit different. School’s Out, with its dark chords and and heavy rhythm was a contrast to the old hippy, peace and love stuff of the sixties and the glittery campness of glam rock, which was just making an appearance. Vincent Furnier’s rock career started [...]

Lucozade Aids Recovery

In the Seventies, Lucozade was a sickness recovery drink. I remember it being sold in chemists with a netting or cellophane covering to make it look like a medicine. The TV adverts were all about children in bed looking grotty and drinking Lucozade to give them energy and recover from whatever lurgy they had. According [...]

Rod Hull and Emu

Rod Hull was this nutty bloke who had an emu as a hand puppet. He wasn’t exactly a ventriloquist because the emu didn’t speak but it had a huge personality – much bigger than Rod’s. It used to curl its beak and attack people. A few times Rod got into trouble because the emu (which [...]

Grunwick Dispute

Kim P Moody Described as ‘One of the greatest Labour struggles in the UK’, Grunwick was a landmark dispute for the trade union movement. At this time many companies were ‘closed shops’, places of work where you had to belong to a trade union. The Grunwick photo processing laboratories, on the other hand, would not [...]

Seventies Special Food

Didn’t we all think we were in the Haute Cuisine, with our three course meal of prawn cocktail, duck a l’orange and black forest gateaux? Pull out the hostess trolley and deliver your pre-dinner martinis, people, because we’re on a roll! Apparently celebrity chefs are bringing back the ‘good old British’ seventies menu (fnar, since when was [...]

Sweet Memories

Guest Blog from Judith Gray I think you need to be under 10 and living in the 1970’s to fully enjoy brightly coloured food.  Every decade since the 70’s has been imbued with an acute awareness of the detrimental effects of additives and colorants in food. The 1970’s, for me, were summer holidays spent cross-legged [...]