Teenage Revolution

by Alan Davies

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  TEENAGE REVOLUTION

  Alan Davies is a comedian, writer and actor, best known for starring in the hit BBC series Jonathan Creek and his regular appearances as a panel-list on QI. Teenage Revolution is his first book.

  Teenage Revolution

  ALAN DAVIES

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published as My Favourite People and Me 1978–1988 by Michael Joseph 2009

  Published as Teenage Revolution in Penguin Books 2010

  Copyright © Alan Davies, 2009

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  ‘Going Underground’ Words and Music by Paul Weller © Copyright 1980 Stylist Music Limited. Universal Music Publishing MGB Limited. Used by permission of Music Sales Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

  ‘Start!’ Words and Music by Paul Weller © Copyright 1980 Stylist Music Limited. Universal Music Publishing MGB Limited. Used by permission of Music Sales Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

  Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders.

  The publishers will be glad to correct any errors or omissions in future editions.

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-196451-5

  Contents

  Introduction

  1978

  1979

  1980

  1981

  1982

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  1988

  Thank You

  Sources

  Appendix

  Introduction

  Growing up, every year brings new people with attributes to admire or ideas to inspire. Remembering those times and looking back over the heroes and villains of my own younger life led me to consider why I thought the world of such and such a person when now I don’t give them a second thought. Which of them were just passing through my world, while I was passing through a phase, and which of them had an influence that was lasting, for better or worse? Soon I started to arrive at a list of my favourite people, not all obviously heroic, just personal icons.

  The process of evolving from an unknown figure, through the admirer’s first awareness, to icon status can be a rapid one, particularly if the person attributing that status is young, impressionable, and pink with naïvety. Before sharing my list I considered researching historical, political, cultural and sporting events to beef up the collection of heroes, to strive for a wider significance. A couple of things undermined the value of detailed research, in my mind.

  One was the realization that the significance, to me, of one of the most important events of 1981, the attempted assassination of US president Ronald Reagan, was the recollection of my dad’s indifference when I called out to him in the kitchen:

  ‘Reagan’s been shot!’

  I repeated the shock news and when he came in to look at the television, he said:

  ‘Oh, I thought you meant Regan in The Sweeney.’

  Of course, John Thaw’s character in The Sweeney was pronounced Reegan, whereas the president went for Raygun. The point is that anyone’s memory of significant events is so couched in the where and when of their own life that there seemed no way of establishing the true influences on me by trawling through old newspapers and history websites. World events connect with individual lives unexpectedly and the connections that matter to me are those that are lodged in my mind still.

  1978 was really the year when I started venturing out more, without adults, with other eleven-, twelve- and thirteen-year-olds. The year in which the accumulation of personal heroes accelerated.

  1988 was the year I graduated from university to pursue the possibility that stand-up comedy could be an alternative to finding a job where I’d have to do what I was told, something I was struggling with at the time. Stand-up would also afford me the chance to continue mimicking heroes well into adulthood and, in fact, might allow the postponement of adulthood altogether.

  The second thing that happened that deflated my interest in research was an early attempt at just that. The first port of call for researching anything, now and for the foreseeable future, is the infernal interweb, accessed, more often than not, by the mind control device that is Google. I typed 1982 into my Google box and was predictably offered the assistance of the eagerly unreliable and peculiarly selective Wikipedia site. I scrolled down to August 1982 and these were the only six entries:

  August 4 – The United Nations Security Council votes to censure Israel because its troops are still in Lebanon.

  August 7 – Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini resigns.

  August 12 – Mexico announces it is unable to pay its large foreign debt, triggering a debt crisis that quickly spread throughout Latin America.

  August 13 – In Hong Kong, health warnings on cigarette packets are made statutory.

  August 17 – The first compact discs (CDs) are released to the public in Germany.

  August 20 – Lebanese Civil War: A multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the PLO withdrawal from Lebanon. French troops arrive August 21, US Marines August 25.

  I’m not suggesting that the break-up of The Jam should have been noted as a world event twenty-six years later but, for me, August 1982 meant going to one of their farewell gigs at Wembley Arena before searching through Camden Market to find a bootleg tape of the gig. I’ve lost the tape but I still have the poster.

  I considered that to be the most important event of August 1982, until there was a knock on my front door only minutes after writing the above paragraph. A package had arrived for me, containing The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles and Albums that I’d ordered the day before. I had been looking for my old copy, to check that some song or other had fallen between 1978 and 1988, only to discover that it not only fell apart in my hands, but had been published in 1978.

  The new book shows that The Jam charted with Beat Surrender, their farewell single, in December 1982. Another search led me to www.thejam.org.uk which shows the farewell gigs also to have been in December 1982. It actually shows only one at Wembley when I know (or I think I do) that four extra dates were added.

  So, I decided on a new policy: fact-checking, a safety n
et for my addled memory. Rushing back to Wikipedia, in case I had doubted it unadvisedly, I checked entries for December 1982. Unless you’re a regular at Times Beach, Missouri, they are largely forgettable, apart from Marty Feldman dying in Mexico. Oh, and Greenham Common, but more of that later:

  December 2 – British comedian and writer Marty Feldman dies in Mexico.

  December 3 – A final soil sample is taken from the site of Times Beach, Missouri. It is found to contain 300 times the safe level of dioxin.

  December 7 – The first US execution by lethal injection is carried out in Texas.

  December 12 – Women’s peace protest at Greenham Common: 30,000 women hold hands and form a human chain around the 14.5 km (9 mi) perimeter fence.

  December 23 – The United States Environmental Protection Agency recommends the evacuation of Times Beach, Missouri due to dangerous levels of dioxin contamination.

  December 26 –Time Magazine’s Man of the Year is given for the first time to a non-human, the computer.

  Scrolling down the page brings you to my favourite entry for 1982. It’s the only one in a section for the year marked ‘Ongoing’ and reads simply:

  Cold War.

  Some things need to be established before picking through the people who inspired and influenced, initially in my teenage years, and then through four years at university, with all the malnourished frowning with episodes of idealistic ambition (and constipation) that I endured there. I’ll rephrase that: the four years of playing pool in the pub (and constipation) that I enjoyed there.

  I was born on 6 March 1966 and my star sign is Pisces. Which must mean nothing, surely, as horoscopes are an escapist fantasy, except that I really like fish, I eat it all the time, pollock, haddock, mackerel, all sorts, and I’m Pisces. Unrelated? Surely not.

  My top 10 fish

  1. Tuna, but we shouldn’t eat that because they’re dying out. The same goes for

  2. Anchovies.

  3. Salmon, but, watch out, are they farmed and if so are they getting out, mixing with the wild salmon, and then producing young who can’t remember the way upriver to the spawning grounds? Think on.

  4. Cod, because, am I right, they use it for taramasalata? Cod roe? Anyway, it’s lovely with chips but it’s been overfished, so think on.

  5. Haddock. Get a piece from Steve Hatt on the Essex Rd in Islington, or your local fishmonger, whichever is nearest. Then go to the herb rack in your grocery store where they might have a little jar with ‘fish’ on it. It’s a mixture of herbs but primarily dill. Sprinkle liberally on your haddock and grill it for 10–15 minutes. Lush, lush, lush.

  6. Trout. Often have that in Italian restaurants. They’re good with capers, your Italians. That is to say the capers go on the fish, not on the Italian.

  7. Sardines. On toast or with potatoes. Lovely.

  8. Monkfish. I didn’t realize, they only use the tail. Meaty and thick. Ugliest fish you’ll ever see. Poor sod, just looks a mess.

  9. Rock. Get this from the chippy. Bit chewier and more flavour.

  10. Swordfish. Growing up I imagined swordfish as lethal. They looked so fearsome in pictures, as if they could saw your arm off, but actually they’re quite nice for tea, it turns out.

  My top 10 fish from the early ’70s

  (by way of comparison)

  1. Fish fingers. Cod ones.

  2. Fish from the chip shop. Don’t know what it was but very likely cod.

  3. Boil in the bag cod with parsley sauce.

  4. Plaice with chips and peas.

  5. Haddock with chips and peas.

  6. Prawn cocktail.

  7. Tbc.

  8. No data.

  9. Tba.

  10. Goldfish, in a clear bag from the fair but you don’t eat them. Also, you don’t necessarily flush them when they float on the top of the water. They might not be dead. Sadly we didn’t know that in our house in the ’70s and several went down the lavatory who may have been alive.

  Loughton is in Epping Forest, which straddles the border between Essex and Greater London. At different times both Boadicea (that’s the ’70s spelling) and Dick Turpin used the forest to hide out in but nowadays it’s on the Central Line. That’s the long red one that goes across the middle of the tube map for those of you who have been to London. For those of you who haven’t been to London: What are you doing? Get your act together. Is someone reading this to you?

  Although London isn’t to everyone’s taste. I met a woman from Preston once who told me, in a broad Lancashire accent, that the trouble with London is:

  ‘It hasn’t got any good shops. There isn’t really a High Street as such.’

  I’ve no idea where she’d been, she said London but maybe she’d disembarked at Euston, thought Tie Rack and WH Smith a poor show, and gone home. She can’t have, though, because she also said:

  ‘There was one place that were good, now what were it called …? Oh yes, TGI Fridays! Have you been?’

  I hadn’t, even though I like stripes.

  ‘You should go, it’s brilliant.’

  In 1992 I did a stand-up gig in Preston and The Temptations were playing in the same building. The Temptations! I love them and they were playing the Guildhall, Preston, even though at least two of them were dead. I snuck in next to the mixing desk and watched 1,500 Lancastrians, on their feet, singing that they were doing fine on cloud nine. Joyous.

  I was going to say Loughton was boring but that seems harsh. Soporific is fair though; so is quiet, and boring.

  My mum had died of leukaemia in 1972 so I lived with my dad, elder brother and younger sister. I seemed to drive the family mental. Every day I looked into the eyes of at least one exasperated relative. The mantra in our house was:

  ‘What are we going to do with you?’

  They were The Exasperated. Which would be a good film title perhaps. It brings to mind The Departed. Bagsy Mark Wahlberg to play me. Sadly, Adam Woodyatt was more me (that’s Ian Beale from EastEnders, so you’re clear).

  I went to Staples Road County Primary, which I liked, particularly because of the surrogate parenting of our twenty-three-year-old teacher, Mrs Thorogood, but in 1976 I started at Bancroft’s School in Woodford Green, which was either:

  a) an old-fashioned English institution that drummed stuffy, outdated pre-war values into pupils suffocating in modish, post-war nylon shirts

  or

  b) a Minor Public School with an exceptional exam record and reasonably good personal hygiene in the staff room.

  It was both actually, so less ambiguity there than I intimated. No ambiguity about the prefects though. They were tossers.

  By 1978 I was cycling everywhere and wanting to go out a lot more, which I was allowed to do a bit, as I was nearly twelve and starting to grow up. This book covers that growing up from 1978 to 1988. It is intended to be a nostalgic trawl with a little anecdotal back-up. An attempt to remember who and what I liked as a boy/youth/idiot and to work out why.

  There are also some pictures.

  1978

  Barry Sheene

  In 1978 I collected stickers assiduously, doggedly, obsessively and privately, in a fog of seeking and accumulating. There was a sticker book called Motorcycle 78 and another called Football 78 and filling the appropriate space with the appropriate image was satisfying but no cheap thrill. I was also afflicted with a potent, potentially upsetting, not to mention pricey, emotional attachment to Arsenal Football Club that had taken root early in the decade and by 1978 ought to have been a source of concern for those who ought to have been concerned. By then though I was an eleven-year-old pathological liar and kleptomaniac so why would anyone be concerned?

  In 1978 I had joined the Barry Sheene Appreciation Society, the Starsky & Hutch Fan Club and the Arsenal Supporters Club. I was an enthusiastic joiner. I loved having membership cards. I wanted to belong to something, to feel part of a group, a collective. Perhaps, in part, this was tribal boy stuff, looking for societies and clubs and gangs. For
me though, these were solitary activities. My things that I liked. I didn’t join to meet people. Deeply ingrained in my siblings and me throughout our growing up was a fear of new people and the perils associated with them, principally of conversation, of having to listen or contribute to it, for a time rarely specified, often with no end in sight. This was a reason to be fearful and we became expert solo players. To this day I have no interest in hooking my games console to the internet. I’ll play alone, thank you. Fortunately when you’re eleven, so long as it’s not too late, or too far away, you can go out by yourself and ride your bike by yourself and in doing so you can become Barry Sheene, by yourself.

  Barry Sheene raced motorbikes, by himself. He was World Champion, by himself. He was cocky and cool and he’d been smashed to pieces a couple of times in horrific 170 mph accidents so he was held together by screws. He was also good-looking in a dimply, tousled, grinning, disobedient sort of way which appeared to me to be the best way to be good-looking and something to aspire to.

  Hurtling down our front drive (sloping speckled Tarmac) and out on to Spring Grove, I could career into Mr Newby’s front drive (flat crazy-paving) next door before heading back again, which constituted a lap. It was a decent-sized lap as we lived in big houses with big gardens in leafy suburban Loughton, out on the edge of North-east London.

  Despite the London proximity, the Central Line station and the 01 phone number, people were generally proudly and resolutely Essex. Chingford, where I was born and spent the first couple of years, was now London E4, though most of its residents would have nothing to do with their new urban postcode. Many of their grandparents had moved out to Chingford for their health, to get away from the smog and grime of London, and the last thing they wanted was for the dirty old town to catch them up.

  The poor next-door Newbys. Eventually they must have had a quiet word with my dad about the endless Grand Prix-length repetitious solo bike riding of his second son. Whether they were really bothered about the cycling or the enthusiastic Murray Walker-style commentary that accompanied it is hard to say. They may just have thought I was obsessively lapping the two drives for a very long time and that I was heading for social misfitness (I was) with few friends (none to speak of ) and I could do with varying my activities (I would if someone would buy me a skateboard ).