Record Duggie Chop's into, right this moment:

Record Duggie Chop's into, right at this moment: Muswell Hillbillies - The Kinks (1971)


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Tuesday 23 February 2010

Can you take the past seriously - when you've been there recently?

Spending time with your heroes. [Duggie Chop being philosophical]

About as natural as spreading honey on a smear of excrement.

And the way Matt [that’s Matt Score from Hair Tom – look at the earlier posts for info. Go on! You know you want to!] – sky high on Coca-Cola – was looking at the pair of us as if we were a sample of the honey and crap mix, residing on the sole of his Hush Puppy.

The other thing is, travelling back in time, you know, you’re never really there. [again, look it up, Duggie and his mate were back in 1982, or have been for a while now…] It’s like you’re always comparing things. Technology, the fact people can and do smoke anywhere, old cars that look new, fashions.

1982. Not just the year good taste forgot (I realise people were still tainted by the ‘70s until about 1985). 1982 is the year people have forgotten [Steve Hill obviously hasn’t, he writes this garbage] except for The Falklands.

Mainstream music was pants - nothing new there – telly was a pale imitation of life, except Minder, on three, soon to be four channels.

Start of Channel 4 [looking through Duggie’s eyes at his boring upbringing]

Duggie remembers the start of Channel 4 really well.

It was an exciting innovation. It sticks in Duggie’s mind because he had to fix a puncture on is bike - fast – so he didn’t miss the first edition of ‘Countdown’ ever broadcast.

Winter. A dark afternoon. Duggie sat in his parent’s front-room (“it was a front room, too,” says Duggie, “before they built the extension round the back of the house and moved the room there. I saw Tommy Cooper peg-out in the same room.”) he was wearing a baggy green, hand-knitted jumper. His fingers were caked in bike grease as he watched the new future unfold.

(“Early C4 was strange, the shows had no atmosphere, like fresh plaster drying in an unpainted new-build dining room”, says Duggie).

Once you’d been in the future and were a backward moving time-traveller, you couldn’t sit there like Duggie did that day in his parents front room, fingers smelling of rubber from his new inner-tube.

Channel Four travelled a timeline from showing unseen-for-years classic ‘60s films, like ‘Billy Liar’ and ‘Georgie Girl’ and resurrecting The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan and Man About The House, to wading through the cess-pool of ‘reality TV’ and Property shows.

And TV went from something to catch – or you missed it – unless you had a £400 VHS recorder, to something to sample or discard at your own leisure, using iPlayer, DVD and Sky boxes.

“Duggie!” said Duggie’s mum, “your dinner’s ready. You want it in the front-room, so you can watch the new telly thingy?”

“Yes, Mum. What we got?” he said, picking some black muck from under his fingernails with his front teeth.

“Foreign. Them new frozen chicken Kievs,” said Duggie’s mum, “and a Findus mince pancake with minted, processed peas.”

Yes, when you’d seen the future, you couldn’t really take the past seriously.

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