Here's rising young alternative comedian Harry Enfield in 1988. In the picture above he's in character live on stage as one of his most popular creations - Loadsamoney!
Loadsa, waving his wonga: "What's that?"
Audience: "Loadsamoney!"
Loadsa: "What?"
Audience: "Loadsamoney!"
Loadsa: "No, it's loadsa FU**ING money - I ain't on telly now! Loadsa fu**ing money! Loadsa fu**ing money!
"Shut your mouths and look at my wad and worship it up! This is the wickedest wad in the world, it is the wad of wads and it is all fresh MONEY, 'cos one thing I cannot bear is a stale wad. My money's gotta be brand new or it can FU**K off !
"How come I've got so much money again? 'Cos I'm a plasterer, 'en I? And plasterers are great. Roofers? Scum! Scaffolders? Coarse and ignorant peasants..." Etc, etc, etc.
The Sun, 16 September, 1988. Cor! Harry lands a sponsorship deal with Holstein Pils for his stage show, worth £50,000. DOSH! DOSH! DOSH!
What was it with socially aware lefty comedians? We saw 'em all in the 1980s, these startling new alternative comedians, slagging off the Thatcher creature, railing against capitalism, and stuffing the wads of cash they earned from it in their high interest accounts quicker than you could blink. Here, Sun columnist Fiona Macdonald Hull sticks the boot into Harry Enfield: "How I loathe Yuppies!" But don't be too harsh. It was the same with the Peace and Love hippie trippie crowd on the pop scene in the 1960s. Do as we say - not as we do! And it's the same with the ultra priggish celebs of today. Shame! Whatever happened to the days of true idealism? Of people backing their words with their actions? And when exactly WERE those days?!
The Sun, October 21, 1988: £500,000 on the way!
Another of Enfield's popular creations:
Note: very broken English - no typing errors here - written as spoken:
"Hallo everybody peeps! Good evening and welc! My name is Stavros in case you don't know all red 'cos you blinkin' thick, and I'm got a little kebab house in Greece. Bethnal Greece, East Londos..."
The '80s Actual blog is designed to be an antidote to all those television shows and on-line articles of recent years which examine pop culture - and frequently get it hopelessly wrong!
If you sat watching the BBC's "I Love The 1970s" and exclaimed over items being shown "I could swear that was 1968!" or "Wasn't that 1981?" chances are you were right.
If you look at certain '70s fan sites and think a lot of the material written about is actually from the '80s, you are almost certainly correct.
If on-line encyclopedia articles which state that pop culture of 1983 is really 1977, or similar, have you wishing for reality, then '80s Actual is for you.
There is a huge drive in the media and on-line to negate the 1980s, to attribute that decade's innovations and fond memories to other decades, and basically to present it as a completely vapid ten years, not worthy of examination.
I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's just comforting to have a decade people can scapegoat and declare "HORRIBLE"?
This blog is based on actual memories, media footage (thank you, YouTube!) and snippets of newspaper and magazine articles from the 1980s. If you read it here, I think you can rest assured it's accurate, though I can take no responsibility for the newspaper reports from the decade!
The '80s Actual blog examines the decade's news stories - from the emergence of Lady Diana Spencer into the public eye in 1980, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Was it simply "The Greed Decade" as many like to claim? I think not - the '80s saw the emergence of yuppies, but also Red Wedge, the Greenham Common Peace Women, and increasing concern for the environment. It may be convenient to scapegoat the '80s as the cause of all known ills, but the reality of the decade was far different - absolute bedlam, as Right fought Left, idealism fought corporate ambition. The election ofRonald Reagan as American President in 1980, and his second victory in 1984, had a far more decisive effect on the international political landscape than the three successive general election victories of UK Prime MinisterMargaretThatcher in 1979, 1983 and 1987.
Musically, the 1980s saw the beginnings of House Music, the exciting and still evolving world of synths taking centre stage, the evolvement of Rap music into the fully-fledged Hip Hop scene, Band Aid and Live Aid, great Indie, startling Acid House, and Raves...
And there was so much more! The decade truly had something for everyone - and provided a welcome escape for a while from the long-running and boring saga of flared trousers as fashion, begun back in the 1960s!
It was a brilliant decade for telly - bringing us such wonders as A Very Peculiar Practice, Inspector Morse, Spitting Image, Hot Metal, The BeiderbeckeTrilogy and Edge of Darkness.
The 1980s also saw the creation ofThe Simpsons, Twin Peaks, and other wonderful (often groundbreaking) American TV showslike Kate & Allie, Cheers, The Golden Girls, Married... With Children, The Cosby Show, Roseanne, and Hill Street Blues.
The '80s gave us some wonderful UK TV ads. Remember Ted Moult advertising double glazing at the Tan Hall Inn with "Fit The Best - Everest"? Remember the Weetabix gang? Remember theScotch video tape skeleton ("Re-record, not fade away"?). Remember the romantic yuppie couple in the coffee ads? And what about "Lotta Bottle"?
In fact, the '80s totally transformed our telly viewing, bringing us Channel 4 and Sky TV.
There are also also '80s Actual sister blogs taking us back to the '70s and '60s - The Real 1970s and Spacehopper.
The view of the 1980s presented here is from an English perspective - much of the original '80s material used is from England, but I hope this blog will prove useful and enjoyable to people in the other nations of the UK and much further afield.
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