Rubik’s Cube

The Rubik’s Cube shot to worldwide obsession in the early 1980’s. I think I was about eleven or twelve when I first had a go on one. However, it warrants a popandcrisps moment because it came out of the Seventies. Invented in 1974, it was repackaged worldwide in 1979 for a 1980 launch, according to [...]

Suzi Quatro

Suzi Quatro was my absolute heartthrob! I loved her for the way she looked, the way she sang, the fact that she did whatever she wanted and didn’t care.
I so wanted to be her when I grew up, probably the only woman during in my childhood I wanted to be like, all my other heroes [...]

Wagon Wheels

A Wagon Wheel is a circular biscuit with marshmallow filling and chocolate coating. It has been the subject of debate due to the apparent shrinkage in size.
Some people suggest that the phenomena is perception rather than physical shrinkage, just as anything else that used to be used as a child but hasn’t been seen for [...]

Village Hall Disco

In the village where I grew up there is a hall which can be hired out for events. It was known as the memorial hall, though I don’t remember what it was a memorial to.
When I was a child, I used to spend a fair amount of time at the memorial hall. My mum was [...]

Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night

This article appeared in the New York Magazine in 1976 and is the inspiration of the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever.
The article was an exposé of the disco scene. However, according to Wikipedia, it was pure fiction, the author Nik Cohn not having done any research on the disco scene.
This is not just wikipedia being notoriously [...]

Taxi on TV

The main character in the American Seventies sit-com Taxi was someone quite nondescript.
The characters who stood out were those around him, such as Louie the boss played by Danny DeVito and the Reverend Jim played by Christopher Lloyd, who was a complete nutter, or Latka the grease monkey with a funny accent.
I loved Taxi. Initially I think [...]

Bohemian Rhapsody

The late, great Freddie Mercury wrote the Bohemian Rhapsody and recorded it with his band, Queen in 1975.
I will no doubt write a popandcrisps post for Queen, but this song requires its own post, given the profound influence it had on me and thousands of others from the Seventies to the modern day.
I still sing [...]

Goblins in the Bedroom

Kim P Moody brews a cuppa
I used to have a Goblin next to my bed. It would wake me and make a cup of tea to welcome me to the new day.
No! Not a little man with pointy ears, silly! A Goblin Teasmade. The idea was that it would turn on a small electric kettle [...]

Wrangler

Wrangler can refer to a whole host of things. Check out the Wikipedia disambiguation page. But no, I’m not referring to a Tenth Century Bavarian duke in this post, I’m talking about jeans.
Denim didn’t arrive in our village until the Seventies, or perhaps it was just my mother refusing to allow me to dress like [...]

The Barron Knights

Specialising in parodies of current chart hits, The Barron Knights became my favourite group just as the Seventies were disintegrating.
They’d been around throughout the Sixties and Seventies, but came to my notice with Get Down Shep in 1978, a song about the Blue Peter dog who I loved.
The other dog song they did was The [...]