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Product Description
The 1970s was not just the decade of power-cuts and three-day weeks, of Chopper bikes and Spacehoppers, of kipper ties and bad perms, of Abba and the Bay City Rollers ...it was also the decade of Fawlty Towers and Porridge; A Bouquet of Barbed Wire and I, Claudius; The Sweeney and Starsky and Hutch. There was no such thing in those days as Wacky Warehouse or Playstation or even video recorders -- for its entertainment, the nation switched on the telly. Some programmes, such as The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show, were practically part of the national psyche, while some characters -- such as Benny from Crossroads and Olive from On The Buses -- became the unlikeliest of icons. Watching the box will never again be the collective experience it was then, and Brian Viner, in this hilarious and affectionate memoir, pays tribute to an era in televison -- the forgettable as well as the memorable -- which happily coincided with his own formative years.
About the Author
Brian Viner was born in 1961 and grew up in Southport, Lancashire. He was the Mail on Sunday's award-winning television critic between 1995 and 1999, since when he has been a columnist on the Independent. He lives with his family in Herefordshire.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book will be an absolute joy to anyone who grew up in the UK in the 1970s. I read it with an almost-fixed grin of recognition as Brian Viner discussed some favourite old shows and the ensuing playground debates. He works in some moving autobiography too, and the real bonus is the later material from his journalistic career when he got to meet some of his boyhood heroes.
My only disappointment - no mention of my favourite, Planet of the Apes, which enlivened Sunday evenings. My only surprise - no real discussion of Charlie's Angels, which played a significant part in the lives of so many boys in the 1970s.
My only disappointment - no mention of my favourite, Planet of the Apes, which enlivened Sunday evenings. My only surprise - no real discussion of Charlie's Angels, which played a significant part in the lives of so many boys in the 1970s.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The book brought back happy memories for me. It was very funny and very relevant. I really enjoyed it.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I still can't completely work out why the seventies were as magical a time for me as they evidently were for Brian Viner and so many others. Moreover, although he is three years older than me and brought up in Southport, rather than Exeter, we appear to have lived the same life. That's a complete illusion, of course: we just watched the same telly. Nevertheless, the illusion is so strong that it shows just how much the box in the corner of the room held us in its grip.
Viner writes with great skill, capturing the sheer excitement generated by one medium (television) in another (print) and it's a book I never wanted to end. While his tastes very occasionally differed from my own (he seemed to enjoy To The Manor Born, for example. I believe you can get a prescription for that), they seemed strikingly similar: we both loved Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) being regularly repeated and were horrified when Vic and Bob desecrated it; we both sat glued to Morecambe and Wise Christmas Specials and Petrocelli; we both got very hot and flustered over Bouquet of Barbed Wire - or Bucket of Barbed Wire as my neighbour used to pronounce it.
Who would have thought simply reminiscing about your favourite childhood telly could be so compelling? Of course, like Nigel Slater talking about food, he cunningly makes this something of an autobiography but we barely notice and we certainly don't mind. He also reveals fascinating things about the biographies of others, including the Martini girl and the actor who used to star in Mind Your Language - there are moments when the book feels a bit like Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon. Not in a bad way!
Does he miss anything out? Only Stanley Baxter, but perhaps he missed all his Christmas shows. There weren't many of them.
To anyone aged between 40 and 50 this will send you back to a golden time when the sun always shone. But, of course, it didn't. That's why we spent so much time in front of the TV!
Viner writes with great skill, capturing the sheer excitement generated by one medium (television) in another (print) and it's a book I never wanted to end. While his tastes very occasionally differed from my own (he seemed to enjoy To The Manor Born, for example. I believe you can get a prescription for that), they seemed strikingly similar: we both loved Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) being regularly repeated and were horrified when Vic and Bob desecrated it; we both sat glued to Morecambe and Wise Christmas Specials and Petrocelli; we both got very hot and flustered over Bouquet of Barbed Wire - or Bucket of Barbed Wire as my neighbour used to pronounce it.
Who would have thought simply reminiscing about your favourite childhood telly could be so compelling? Of course, like Nigel Slater talking about food, he cunningly makes this something of an autobiography but we barely notice and we certainly don't mind. He also reveals fascinating things about the biographies of others, including the Martini girl and the actor who used to star in Mind Your Language - there are moments when the book feels a bit like Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon. Not in a bad way!
Does he miss anything out? Only Stanley Baxter, but perhaps he missed all his Christmas shows. There weren't many of them.
To anyone aged between 40 and 50 this will send you back to a golden time when the sun always shone. But, of course, it didn't. That's why we spent so much time in front of the TV!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
More Early Seventies than Seventies
This is an okay book but the title is a bit misleading. The authors formative television years start in 1970 and kind of fall away by about 1975 after which presumably he found... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Book Monster
GOOD READ
I loved this book brought lot of memories flooding back
not to similar to my own time in front of the telvison at this time
not to similar to my own time in front of the telvison at this time
Published 15 months ago by Mr. M. Dunstan
A nostalgic read
I bought this for my son who was born in 1965 and he says it's right up his street.
Published 19 months ago by Ms. Carol M. Eyden
Tedious and badly-written
It is a mystery who this book is aimed at (apart from Mr. Viner's ego) - his superficial and unstructured coverage of 1970s TV is unlikely to interest anyone like me (I'm the same... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Hammersmith Resident
Very funny and a return to my childhood
I thought Jackie Pallo and Kendo Nagasaki would never be talked about again! I was so wrong. I bought this book on the strength of Brian Viners 'Tales of the country' books which i... Read more
Published on 23 May 2010 by M. D. Grierson
To see it, to see it, nice
If the past few decades fascinate you then this autobiography is certainly a window on a time when so many of us were children. Read more
Published on 9 May 2010 by M. J. Bell
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