80s Actual: July 2019

10 July 2019

Enquiries... Suzy Lamplugh, Anglia Weatherman, World Wide Web...

I'm not getting to write on here as much I want, but I've had a few enquiries relating to the 1980s, so I'll do my best to answer. The first enquiry is regarding the London estate agent Suzy Lamplugh, who disappeared in July 1986, having apparently gone to meet a client called 'Mr Kipper':

David wrote:

Hi there! Great fan of your blog. I read your piece on Suzy Lamplugh and your own memories of the summer of 1986 with fascination as I was actually born in the July of that year! Regarding Suzy, it says on Wikipedia that her name was Susanna Lamplugh, minus the 'H' which you included. What was her name? And what do you think of the latest developments, the guy who thinks she didn't go to Shorrolds Road and the dig at Pershore?

Hello, David!

Thanks for writing. Susannah was named after the actress Susannah York and actively informed her colleagues on the QE2 that it was 'Susannah with an H' - so much so that her nickname amongst some of them was 'H'. Apparently, the 'h' does not appear on her birth certificate, but Suzy much preferred it! I really hope the latest developments lead to closure for her family and friends. I'm uncertain about the Shorrolds Road theory. Certainly, a witness from 1986 claims that Suzy's company car was parked in Stevenage Road about five minutes after she'd left the Sturgis branch so it would certainly make sense that she hadn't been to Shorrolds Road. I really don't know. The fact that it's now claimed that she didn't take the Sturgis key to the Shorrolds Road property adds to the hope that perhaps things might finally become clear.

Link to the Suzy Lamplugh blog post - click HERE.

Greg says:

I really enjoyed your pieces on BC of Anglia Television (1980-2002 RIP). Do you remember the name of the main Anglia weatherman in the 1980s? He was quite a tall, thickset bloke as I recall, had a quiet sense of humour.

I think it would be David Brooks, Greg (see pic). He was at Anglia from 1972-1993. He was a nice presence at the station. I was watching his reaction to the failure of a weather screen to appear after he'd said 'let's look at tomorrow's weather,' or some such back in the day. When the manual board showing today's weather was slipped out (manually, of course!), the board beneath was completely blank. 'Good 'ere, innit?' quipped David, as the studio dissolved into laughter.

David was a huge golf fan and one of his greatest claims to fame was being struck by lightning on the Gog Magog course near Cambridge in 1979. As he said afterwards, next time he'd check the Anglia weather forecast before venturing out! He died of leukaemia in 2010.

Fran has written:

Saw all the excitement about the thirtieth anniversary of the invention of the World Wide Web back in March. 1989-2019! It's changed everything. On balance, would you say good or bad?

Definitely both, Fran! It's brought the world closer together but also exposed differences and maybe exacerbated a few! Personally, I'm allergic to SJWs online!

INTRODUCTION

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 of Ronald 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 Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979, 1983 and 1987.

Fashion came fast and furious - deelyboppers, ra ra skirts with lycra leggings, Swatch watches, pixie boots, jelly shoes, shoulder pads, blonde highlights, hair gel, hair mousse, men in pink, goths, shell suits, New Romantics, donkey jackets, leg warmers...

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...

At the amusement arcades, Space Invaders ran rampant and we first met Pac-Man...

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 of The Simpsons, Twin Peaks, and other wonderful (often groundbreaking) American TV shows like 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 the Scotch 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.

The '80s were a fascinating time for science and technology! Video recorders became widespread, the Sony Walkman arrived, the first hand-held mobile phones hit the streets (expensive analogue bricks!), the ZX Spectrum, Game Boy and the World Wide Web (Thanks, Sir Tim Berners-Lee!) were invented, the first computer mouse eeked its way into our homes and Sir Alec Jeffreys accidentally discovered DNA fingerprinting. It's all here!

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.