Keeping alive the glorious spirit of 1976
. Few institutions have aroused fascination and mockery in such equal measure as the Eurovision Song Contest. Staged by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) since 1956, it is easily the longest-running televised competitive annual musical event. Each year most of the nations of Europe, plus one or two others besides, vie for the prize of […]
Continue ReadingIf you are fortunate enough to have a da Vinci or a Rembrandt hanging in your lobby you are unlikely ever to want for much. But what do you think would be the going rate for a Sexton? Far from being a painter, Sexton Blake of course was a fictional detective. And being a Londoner, […]
Continue Reading. Terrorist outrages were as much a thing in the 1970s as they are today, but the protagonists and their causes were often different and their method, if crude, was in many respects more audacious and daring. To some extent this was down to the fact that surveillance methods were less well developed and thus […]
Continue Reading. As great sporting rivalries go, they don’t come any more tense or bitter than that which existed between British playboy racing car driver James Hunt and his steely Austrian competitor Niki Lauda. And nowhere did this stark contrast of style and character manifest itself more explosively than in the unforgettable Formula One World Championship […]
Continue Reading. 1976 was an Olympic year, and the choice of Montreal as the host city had, as has so often been the case in more recent years, been to some extent a political decision. It was the Cold War era and the Canadian city had staged its bid in competition with Los Angeles and Moscow. […]
Continue Reading. Anybody who remembers the 1970s will recall the sense of stark fear that pervaded during the Cold War, when the West and the Soviet Union fought proxy battles around the world and faced off behind their respective formidable nuclear arsenals. Everyone knew that if the balloon went up there would be no winner, and […]
Continue ReadingI first saw Concorde fly over my home in 1970. I was eight years of age, and the Anglo-French supersonic jetliner was landing at London’s Heathrow airport, under the flightpath of whose Runway 28-Left my Isleworth home was located. My late father, who saw it too, was unconvinced. He told me it was a Vulcan […]
Continue Reading. On 13th December 1975 my own team, Brentford, then plying their trade in English league football’s fourth tier, won a comfortable 2-0 victory at the appropriately named Plough Lane, home of non-league Wimbledon, in the second round of the FA Cup. I attended the match with my mate Tim, in whose company I would […]
Continue ReadingSeeing your favourite artist or band on film is these days simply a matter of logging into YouTube or something similar and typing your choice into the search bar, but it wasn’t always so. Time was, one was compelled to wait patiently in eager anticipation of their next appearance on Top Of The Pops. Unless, […]
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