Good Lord! Have a look at the mast there. Turns out we’ve managed to get through seventy (SEVEN OH) versions of this literary piffle together. And it got me to thinking, as it does when you’re running out of ideas, that just maybe it would be a bit of fun to do a quick post about…wait for it…the 1970s. Obviously I will have to tie this concept in with the pub, but between you & me I think I can swing it: I’ll just say something about the price of a pint back then (probably about 50p), then have a good old moan about inflation, the Tories and the grand old summer of 76, when you could fry an egg on the pavement and Terry Scott (off Terry and June) pushed me into the swimming pool with his face covered in meringue and scared the living shit out of me for the rest of my years. It’s a long shot, but I think Nibs will run with it ‘cos he’s good like that.

It’s funny. I was having an ale with me ‘ole mate Donald (off Julian Cope) just now, asking him which peeps he remembered most from that time. And both of us came up with pretty much all of the Yewtree candidates. Admittedly we’re both diehard musos, and our reference points were probably the DJ’s that allowed us a path to the songs that would change our lives forever (currently residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure). But even as a soft as shite, lily-livered Southern pansy, I still recall the blackouts when Nibs & I helped our mom dig about in the pantry for the Prices candle multipack as our stepfather crawled the walls upstairs, hurling abuse and worse at the Three Day Week whilst simultaneously sorting the eight track cartridges for his three hour journey in the Jensen the following morning: Walker Brothers, followed by Shirley Bassey, followed by Cleo Laine. And, if we were lucky, we’d get a pound to spend in his absence, half of which usually went on a chart-topper of choice and the other on premium smack, straight off the boats. Innocent times, innocent times…

But no other consumable can define the zeitgeist like a chocolate bar. Mars, Galaxy, Milky Way were just entry-level stellar signposts to the hard stuff. From here we got the Texan bar (sure was a mighty chew), and for misogynist hardcore chocoholics there was always the Yorkie, marketed at the Surrey stockbroker craving a bit of rough via the long-haul trucker. And let us not forget the aftershaves: Hi Karate, Old Spice, Blue Stratos, Bay Rhum, all of which I had purchased long before the fluff came, and the illusion that a socially backward pre-teen actually had a chance with a pneumatic bikini-clad babe had been shattered for good. But never mind that, I still had the lovely Farrah. Always Farrah. Isn’t that right, Charlie?