- It wasn't until 2005 that I actually started voting Tory. Not because I thought they would get in, not because I was especially fond of Michael Howard, but because, presumably like a lot of other people in the country at the time, I totted up all the things the Labour party had done that I profoundly disagreed with: introducing top-up fees, banning fox-hunting, slashing the armed forces and introducing the most convoluted forms of accountability into the NHS, the police force and the schools system. Not forgetting the war, of course, and the pensions crisis. The friends of mine who decided to protest against the Government did so by voting for Charles Kennedy, but when I told them I had no intention of being penalised by a ten per cent tax hike and had decided to vote for the Conservatives, I was treated like a man who had just admitted he not only enjoyed the music of Phil Collins, but also kept bound volumes of illegal pornography in his attic.
- To me, the Eighties meant matt black designer suits, matt black designer nightclubs, matt black designer jobs and matt black designer women. They also meant pop groups in pastel suits, an abundance of Golf GTis, 'tech towers', nouvelle cuisine, rolled-up jacket sleeves, Boy George and Phil Collins. Yes, I know we also had fundamental economic reform, the miners' strike, the City's Big Bang and the systematic carving up of the Eastern Bloc. But it's those pastel suits that I can't get out of my mind.You may also remember the language, in particular the designer Valley Girl-speak that became the lingua franca of everyone under the age of 30, whether they lived in the San Fernando Valley or - in my case - on the outskirts of Soho. Walking through the wild West End you couldn't escape 'mega' (amazing, obviously), 'grodie' (gross, as in: 'Phil Collins is grodie to the max'), 'gnarly' (excellent), 'bogus' (er, bogus), 'Gag me with a spoon' ('Phil Collins makes me sick') and my favourite, 'Well, duh' (the classic retort to an obvious statement: Phil Collins's Face Value is the worst album of the Eighties).
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content