by Alan Davies
People were afraid, Maggie Thatcher knew that. She was going to encourage them to believe in happier times gone by, which could return again, inducing nostalgia with wartime imagery and invoking the spirit of Good Old Winnie. The woman who had once voted for the return of birching in schools grabbed Britain by the scruff of the neck, put it over her knee, and beat it until it snapped in two. If you were lucky you ended up in the half where the money was. We were lucky… ish.
Debbie Harry
On Top of the Pops, just as I was turning twelve, appeared the stop-you-on-the-spot most captivating woman I’d ever seen. Debbie Harry, the peroxided eponymous heroine of Blondie, first wafted, skipped and smiled around the living room singing ‘Denis (Denee)’ in 1978. It was the New York band’s first hit in Britain (number two, I remember) and afterwards many boys were never the same again. For me, if there was one person linking the boy of the late ’70s with the adolescent of the early ’80s, it was her.
Many men claim a monastic devotion to onanism. It’s a common error, made in the hope that pronouncements of achievement in masturbation, chiefly concerned with frequency, will cement an enviable reputation for virility, in the certain belief that women will be attracted to a relentless tosser. In truth it doesn’t appeal, the image of enthused self-abuse. Besides, I was average, nothing special at all and a bit of a late starter (13 August 1979).
Not long prior to that, I had known that I liked girls but it was their faces and the way they said things that was attractive as opposed to their limbs and protrusions. I fancied TV’s Marti Caine and before her I had loved Jan Hunt off of Crackerjack. When another boy’s letter was read out to Jan on Crackerjack, a letter in which the boy signed off by saying ‘I love you, Jan’, there was much aah-ing in the studio and Jan said she loved him too. The thing is, I suspect he really did love Jan, and she perhaps didn’t really love him. To declare your love, for your message to reach the person, and then for them to go ‘aah’ in front of everyone (and with those ’70s viewing figures it virtually was everyone), that can break a man, even at eight years old.
Trying to please my dad, by accepting the chance to go to secondary school a year early, meant that many of the boys in my year were as much as eighteen months older than me. The Mr Men stickers on my briefcase had drawn sarcastic comments and I felt the age gap from the first day. By 1979 I had been there for two and a half years and I was a follower and copier. This was hard going at times but better to follow the herd than stick out as the baby. On a school trip to Sorrento in Italy, to visit Vesuvius and Pompeii, I discovered how big a difference a year and a half can be.
Pompeii was just baking hot but Vesuvius was good. We all had to walk across a large flat expanse of sulphur crust. There were fenced off areas where the crust had given way and a bubbling volcanic broth was visible. We were under strict instructions (not strict enough) to walk in pairs, as a concentration of weight could see us as croutons in the black soup. A boy called O’Keefe, who had such big wide shoes some called him duck-feet, gleefully started to jump up and down. Several of us joined in. We wanted it to crack. Perhaps we thought we could leap aside if it collapsed. Our Italian guide turned and screamed at us with real fear in her eyes and we desisted.
In the evenings our time was our own. We discovered a bar on the beach that could be reached via a tunnel carved through the cliffside. This place had two things going for it:
None of our teachers had found it;
The staff were happy to serve bottled beer to fourteen-year-olds.
This was the first place I was ever drunk. We played table football with local kids and taught them how to swear in English. They then called us wankers all night which started to get on our nerves. ‘No, we’re not wankers, you are wankers,’ we said.
We had to walk back up through the cliff to find our hotel. It was pitch black in the tunnel but I had a small portable ‘combat radio’ which had a light built in to it. This was a child’s toy that I had taken to a beach bar. It was made in camouflage colours with absurd pseudo-military features, such as a button you could press that emitted a bleep. Intended for morse code transmissions (that could reach as far as the person standing next to you), it only served to nearly trigger a fit in an epileptic fifth former.
Another night someone had borrowed my radio so they could walk up through the tunnel in the dark. Later, stranded alone in absolute blackness, I was rescued by an Italian kid striking a match and lighting up the opening of the tunnel. I was too young to be staggering home from bars in the dark.
On our last night we drank lots of the foul beer and, when I returned to the room, which four of us were sharing, I found it was spinning. I knelt over the toilet for ages but was not sick. Each time I went to lie down the room would pitch and sway. If I closed my eyes it spun so violently I felt as if I’d fall off the bed. The next morning we had to wait for hours in Naples airport, which was a sweltering building site with no chairs. Perfect for a first hangover.
The four of us in that hotel room lay in bed at night talking about stuff that was a little advanced for me. This lot were practised onanists, or at least Gary at the far end was. As we lay there in the dark he would talk us through a strange synchronized masturbation ritual. He fiddled away whilst describing what he was doing and inquiring of his peers how they were progressing. Answers were generally informal, then monosyllabic and serious until, after a while, they became less frequent and any sounds were primal in nature. I was at the end against the wall furthest from Gary. The boy next to him moaned and strained slightly and Gary asked him if he had finished. He confirmed that he had indeed ejaculated and was advised to ‘let it dry off’. I had never ejaculated and this ‘drying off’ process sounded a bit revolting. Soon afterwards the boy in the bed next to me announced his climax. I also intimated that I was done (I wasn’t). Gary’s shuddering endgame was alarming.
Thankfully the bedroom light stayed off and there was no post-mortem of the ejaculate. No height and distance comparisons and no biscuit introduced into the event as I had heard of in other institutions. I went to sleep unaware that a lasting impression had been made on me.
Returning home, I was delighted to be back in my own bedroom, with Debbie Harry staring down at me from the wall slumped on her knees in a zebra print leotard, ring-eyed and pouting. She was far from the picture of health epitomized by Farrah Fawcett from Charlie’s Angels or Victoria Principal from Dallas who were both snipped from the TV Times and Blu-Tacked in place. In fact, Debbie had a little heroin chic about her, approximately ten years before there was heroin chic. But I liked her. Much more than the millions of other boys worldwide who would have done anything she asked except stop looking at her.
On top of all that X-factor sex-factor stuff, Blondie’s music, in particular Parallel Lines, was distinctive, catchy and as edgy as big-selling popular music dared to be. I still have that album on cassette and the later AutoAmerican on vinyl.
I had unwrapped a small portable record player the previous Christmas (or birthday). My constant use of the family record player in the living room had been wearing a bit thin, especially as I only had two compilation LPs to choose from, Action Replay and Midnight Hustle. I recommend them. In order to record on to a cassette I had to put my tape recorder up against the mono speaker when the charts were on the radio and then press play and record. From that moment everyone had to be totally silent or vacate the living room.
The new record player changed my life for the better and I saved up my pennies to buy my first album, Regatta de Blanc by The Police. Within a fortnight a friend had borrowed it for taping and when he returned it no one was in so he left it in the porch. My dad found it and I expected him to be annoyed at the expense but he bought my story that I’d saved up for it.
In truth I was nicking any coin I could lay my hands on by now and pilfering notes from the handbag of the lovely woman, Jenny, who was employed by my dad to be at home each evening when we came home from school. She made our tea and caj
oled us into homework before sitting with us until my dad came home. Eventually, I confessed to my dad that I’d been stealing from her, when more and more unexplainable items began to appear (‘I’d have bought you a stopwatch if you’d asked for one’, ‘No you wouldn’t’, ‘Yes I would’). He told me that Jenny’s husband had left her because of the money going missing from her handbag.
Thirty years later, Jenny’s son e-mailed out of the blue and sent me some pictures that he’d come across after Jenny had passed away. We corresponded and he told me that I hadn’t, in fact, broken up her marriage, which was a relief to hear. I was very fond of her and she had been a wonderful surrogate mother, particularly to me and my sister.
The Police were my favourite band by the end of 1979 (the year Blondie had number ones with ‘Heart of Glass’ and ‘Sunday Girl’ and The Police had number ones with ‘Message in a Bottle’ and ‘Walking on the Moon’) but no one could replace Debbie Harry as the top pop icon of her era. Sting was pretty but not that pretty.
1979 was remarkable for freaks and oddballs having hits. No one remotely fanciable. The Boomtown Rats were number one for four weeks with ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’, which I bought without knowing that it was about a sixteen-year-old girl in San Diego shooting several children in a playground because she didn’t like Mondays. Then there was Tubeway Army fronted by Gary Numan with ‘Are Friends Electric?’ That was a great song but he was no role model for me, I never had bleach and guyliner urges. ‘Pop Musik’ by M was as popular as a song could be without being number one. In January Ian Dury had a number one with ‘Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick’. I bought it in a record shop on Tottenham High Road walking back to the car with my dad after another Spurs game. The Clash released ‘London Calling’ but it made no impression on me; I had Amii Stewart, Sister Sledge and ‘Le Freak’ by Chic on my mini-turntable.
Top of the Pops was essential viewing but in 1979 I considered boycotting it if they kept putting Gloria Gaynor on singing ‘I Will Survive’. Me and my sister found adult expressions of emotion ludicrous and, for years, had been turning away from the TV when couples kissed.
At thirteen I was yet to discover music outside the charts. I was a devotee of Smash Hits and that was as far as I was going to look, so I had to put up with songs charting that I found unlistenable.
There was an affecting combination of innocence and sexual confidence about Debbie Harry, a childish sense of play in her fronting of the band. She sang in a high, childlike, voice too. But she was entirely adult and in her mid-thirties, which explains her relaxed demeanour, since she wasn’t playing at what she thought might be sexy, as a young star might, she was actually sexy. If she winked at you it would leave you briefly paralysed. In 1980 Blondie had three singles in the UK (‘Atomic’, ‘Call Me’ and ‘The Tide is High’) and all of them went to number one. Then they went a bit weird, the music was good but not as good and in 1982 they split and Debbie was gone. All I had left was a couple of albums, a couple of singles, a calendar and the heroin-chic poster.
Liam Brady
On 23 December 1978 Arsenal played Spurs at White Hart Lane in the first game between the two clubs since Spurs were relegated in May ’77. In the second half Liam Brady robbed Peter Taylor of possession on the left-hand edge of the Spurs’ penalty area. Looking up, he swung his left foot across the back of the ball, hitting it with the outside of his boot. The ball leapt up, past the defender obscuring Brady’s view of the goal, and took off in the direction of the terracing near the corner flag on the right-hand side of the pitch. No sooner was it travelling than it started to move in the air, pulling against its natural line, arcing high past the Spurs keeper. It still looked like it was going wide with a few yards to go before swerving hard left under the bar and smashing in to the net in front of the Arsenal fans.
John Motson was commentating for the BBC:
‘Look at that!’ he screamed. ‘Oh look at that!’
When Brady finished his follow-through he had swivelled through 180 degrees and was looking back over his shoulder to see the ball go in. He then jigged, arms wide, towards the delirious Arsenal fans with a broad grin on his face while Graham Rix yanked on his shirt to try and catch him. Arsenal beat Spurs 5–0. I wore a badge on the inside of my school blazer with the date and the score on it for months afterwards.
That single moment propelled me back through the gates at Highbury a week later for the first time in nine months. Arsenal beat Birmingham 3–1 and Pat Rice scored, which was very rare. Pat became widely known as Patrice after so many years working as Arsene Wenger’s assistant. I hadn’t been to any games since Ipswich beat Arsenal in the ’78 FA Cup Final but now Arsenal had a confirmed superstar in their midst and I wanted to see him. He’d always been good but now he was moving on to another level and was considered to be the best midfielder in the country. This was agony for Spurs fans, who considered the foppish under-achiever Hoddle to be the best.
The joy of Brady was his unathletic gait. He loped rather than ran, round-shouldered and persistent. He wasn’t a powerhouse, he was slight and pale with tufty hair and bony knees, but he was beyond exceptional with the ball. Almost impossible to dispossess, with a shifting centre of balance and a speed of thought that set him apart from anyone else, he was the player everyone in the team looked for whenever Arsenal had the ball. He could drive it across the pitch, or loft it, or chip it, he had the full set of golf clubs to choose from, any height, pace or distance you want, with hook or fade and the ability to stop it dead, run it on or even spin it back. Older Arsenal fans compared him to Alex James (not the goat’s cheese maker out of Blur but a Scottish inside forward) who played for Arsenal in their earliest heydays in the ’30s. Forty years’ worth of players had run out on to that pitch and only now was there someone worthy of comparison to James.
For the first few weeks of ’79 I still had to be chaperoned to Highbury by my older brother, who agreed to come though he apparently hated the whole experience. In January Arsenal were playing Nottingham Forest, who were the champions of England. Late in the first half, John Robertson scored for Forest and they led 1–0. My brother celebrated their goal. Quietly, of course, so as not to draw the attention of Arsenal fans in the tightly packed terrace, but I distinctly heard him say, ‘Yes!’ when the goal went in. It’s bad enough that he had to come with me but now he was supporting the away team, after all those years I had at White Hart Lane amusing myself while he cheered on Spurs with my dad. It all turned out all right. Arsenal won 2–1. There were 52,000 people packed in, the biggest crowd I’d ever been crushed by. A few weeks later I turned thirteen and I was allowed out on my own, at last, free.
I loved going. I loved the journey into my own time and space, on the 20 bus, past school without stopping, to Walthamstow Central for the Victoria line, and I loved Highbury, more than anywhere I’d ever been. Unfortunately, I’ve been all over the shop now and Highbury’s probably still my top spot. You should look around though, would be my advice, you may find somewhere better than your favourite childhood haunts (you won’t actually, nowhere will ever mean as much).
I went there all the time. Not only on match days. Sometimes I went to the club shop. This consisted of a room near the top end of Avenell Road. Inside was a counter with a stern old man behind it who didn’t have much time for kids who just wanted to hang around in the shop. He assumed, I suppose, that kids who hang around in the shop might try and nick stuff. He did not assume – why would he? – that some of the boys who hung around in the shop did so because travelling there took nearly an hour and a half door-to-door by public transport from Essex. Any less than ten minutes peering over the counter would mean it was hardly worth the effort. Of course, as a raging kleptomaniac, I would have tried to nick stuff but it was all behind the counter with this narky old sod with a scarred forehead guarding it.
The narky old sod turned out to be Jack Kelsey, one of the greatest goalkeepers in Arsenal’s history. A winner of a league championship medal in
1953, he played for Wales against Brazil, including the seventeen-year-old Pele, in the 1958 World Cup Finals. The Brazilians called him ‘the cat with magnetic claws’.
In 1959, during a Cup tie for Arsenal, he broke his left arm but carried on playing, on the left wing. Kelsey was a tough, really tough, custodian of the Arsenal goal.
From Jack Kelsey I would buy, for example, an Arsenal comb. In a red leather comb holder. I used to carry a comb because sometimes on telly you’d see a cool American dude whipping a comb out of his back pocket and quickly tidying his hair. This would usually happen when a girl was approaching. This made him more attractive to the girl. At least the cool dude characters thought so and often the scriptwriter went along with it (especially where the Fonz in Happy Days was concerned). Generally though, preeners only make themselves more attractive to themselves, which is a narcissistic downward spiral best avoided.
I combed my hair often. Sometimes I would part it in the centre and then run the comb horizontally from the forehead to the crown. This would make my hair lift up in a kind of fluffy sub-Kid Jensen look. This was obviously a mistake on my part but I was twelve and didn’t know any better. The centre-parted ‘hairstyle’ drew only two reactions. One from a kid at school who said: ‘What have you done to your hair?’ The other was from my brother. Having watched my lengthy preening ritual, he kicked me in the leg.
I managed to get Brady’s autograph, ironically, at half-time during a Spurs v Man City game at White Hart Lane. He was sitting in the stands with Jimmy Holmes, a Spurs player who played with him for the Republic of Ireland. As soon as the half-time whistle went I was straight over to him. ‘Chippy?’ I said and he looked round a bit surprised. Chippy was his nickname, apparently coined because he likes chips. Nowadays he wouldn’t be allowed chips at the Arsenal training ground and his nickname would be ‘lightly grilled chicken’. He signed my programme and I left him alone. First rule of autograph hunting: don’t linger, get in and get out. The autographer does not want to chat to you, you are twelve, he wants to chat to his friend. He signed a few more and then he stopped signing. I was close enough to be first in. How lucky.