Popular Nostalgia

Popular Nostalgia specific to the UK & (or) Ireland. These are either events which took place in the UK or Ireland, or those remembered by people who were in the UK or Ireland at the time…

Danny, Champion of the World, was both a book by Roald Dahl, and a movie. Both of which I loved as a child, involving the perennial class war between a boy and his father, and the local lord of the manor. Danny and his dad play a great trick on the local rich folk by [...]

Ordinary people and well known entertainers alike were shown through their own lives with the “big red book” – no, not heaven, but the TV series “This is Your Life”. This Is Your Life originated on American radio with NBC from 1948 – 1952. The popular biography show hit the small screen in 1952 with [...]

Don’t you open that Trap Door. There’s something down there. This was on children’s TV when I was growing up, and I can remember only the intro, which is in the video above, and the fact that there was a talking skull. The start bit went like this: Somewhere in the dark and nasty regions, [...]

“A right proper love song” according to the writer, Gary Barlow. The Northern souls of Take That banded together to create the greatest pop love song of the 1990′s. With more musical courage than anything Simon Cowell could possibly muster, Barlow croons a descant in the final chorus and the boys of Take That back [...]

Fun House with Pat Sharp ran for an amazing decade, despite not really having much more to it than a few messy games, a really slow grand prix in go karts that seemed to have been turned right down to minimum, and an end bit with lots of great prizes like a trip to bognor [...]

Being young in the 70s meant finishing school and going straight out after a bite to eat and going on the nearby football pitch to play footy until dark and beyond. It also meant going into the woods close to the fields and playing at commandos running around with sticks for make believe guns, we [...]

For no reason at all, I today remembered this three-piece girl group, Cleopatra, who came at us in the 1990s with not only a theme tune (Cleopatra’s Theme, AKA “Cleopatra Coming At Ya”), but a really lame TV programme which was, from hazy recollection, on childrens ITV. I don’t remember much else about them, but [...]

“Bidi bidi bidi” – Twiki says, as he helps the heroic Buck Rogers save the Earth once more. The television series, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, ran for two seasons between 1979 – 1981. The story was based on the character created in 1928 by Philip Francis Nowlan. Captain William Anthony “Buck” Rogers, played [...]

Long ago, before the internet was even really invented, or at least before it was available to people without bottle end glasses, there was no such thing as email. If people wanted to deliver a message on the spot, however, they did have an option. They could send a fax. To do this, you needed [...]

Its time for a very British TV focussed post here in Popular Nostalgia – its Teletext! We all remember reading Teletext for news, sport reports and even, once Fastext (oh what an advancement in technology that was – like the internet, only with four “choices”!) was invented, quizzes, like Bamboozle. If the internet is the [...]

The Toxic Crusaders was a short cartoon that I remember airing on UK TV during my childhood – I can just remember thinking “oh great, another cartoon” while the show started, then the theme tune featured the line “we’re hideously deformed” (or similar) and I was hooked. The toxic crusaders tried to ride the tidal [...]

I remember the cartoon M.A.S.K as one of my childhood favourites – I used to love everything about this cartoon, particularly the fact that they fought crime, all the time. I even got a M.A.S.K paper plate and cup set for my fifth birthday party (postponed because I had chicken pox I believe) so I [...]

No, I’m not talking about the fruit and dairy products that posh people eat at Wimbledon. I’m talking about the Strawberries and Cream sweeties that you used to buy from the local sweet shop and which would go slightly soggy and stick to your pocket while you swung on your chair in double maths. A [...]

I was first introduced to Kop Kops by my friend who bought a quarter of Kop Kops one morning. At first, I thought they were cough sweets but there was enough sugar in there to keep the ten year old me perfectly happy and these things fast became a firm favourite of mine. They still [...]

Remember those school disco mid 90s days when we would spin around unrhytmically to this track while squeezing our partners bum before heading home at 10pm full of the joys of spring? We all do, don’t worry. This track, which Bryan Adams held at the top of world charts for around 100 years before, during [...]