Stuart Maconie's Brain Unspooling

Over at TV Cream, a couple of years back there was an attempt to compile the definitive list of ‘The 50 Most Nostalgic Things’, those lost-in-the-mists-of-time defuncteries that best embodied the Cream Era. That list was whittled down from an initial one of 350 suggestions, and here (more for reasons of having found it in an itself long-forgotten folder than anything else) is the full thing. How many do you remember??! (“Eight” – Bawrence from Denim)

1. A brown and orange branch of WH Smith
2. The titles to Once Upon A Time Man
3. Game and Watch
4. Letts revision guides
5. Berol felt-tip pens (with click-top lid)
6. School trips to the local wildfowl centre – with sheets to fill in during the visit
7. Watching cricket scores change on Ceefax
8. Ray Allen
9. Premium-line telephone services (why was Dial-a-Disc so popular?)
10. The Oxo cube family
11. Track and Field
12. Life before remote controls
13. Betamax
14. Your mates pretending to be drunk on 01% ginger beer shandy
15. Geometry sets
16. Your mother’s ABBA/Neil Sedaka/Helen Reddy albums
17. Your father’s Pipe Band of the 9th Dragoons album
18. PacLand
19. Water bombs
20. Closedown (with the national anthem)
21. 01 (or other old) telephone dialling codes
22. School buses
23. Nutty comic (with free gift)
24. Ultra Quiz
25. School milk
26. 4-Tel (particularly the pages before Countdown used to come on)
27. Red and yellow packets of Sherbet Dip-Dabs (with Swizzle stick)
28. Atari game console cartridges
29. Wham bars
30. The smell of the ink used in a Bander copier
31. Sealink ferries with the huge BR logo on one side of the funnel and a back-to-front BR logo on the other side
32. The BBC Schools’ Diamond
33. Pocketeers
34. Citrus Spring
35. Waiting for TV to ‘start’
36. The King’s Singers
37. Horace, of ZX Spectrum fame
38. Adrian Juste
39. BBC1′s old 535pm slot before Neighbours came along
40. Public Information Films
41. Rondo Veneziano
42. Those unconvincing oversized plastic ‘rings’ that squirted water with the aid of a totally inconspicuous massive squeezable bulb
43. Farmhouse Kitchen
44. Alec Christie from The Children Of Green Knowe
45. Star Bar
46. KP Sky Divers
47. Chris Needham
48. ‘Something Outa Nothing’/'Every Loser Wins’/'Anyone Can Fall In Love’
49. Marvin glue, and the green spatulas that were generally used to apply it
50. Rainbow-striped scented rubbers (the pencil case variety)
51. Denim, for the man who doesn’t have to try too hard
52. Ronco Button Magic
53. A 10p mix-up bought from the back of the local ‘bread van’ (with an advert for Nimble painted on the side)
54. The tedium of afternoon ITV (Pennywise, Crown Court, etc) that’s indelibly associated with being poorly
55. Berlitz phrasebooks (“May I introduce Miss Phillips?”)
56. SMP maths cards
57. The Purdy haircut
58. Proper ‘supporting features’ at the cinema (not just trailers)
59. Piglet crisps
60. Top-loading VCRs
61. A Conservative government
62. Eye-wateringly-coloured leotards/tights ‘uniform’ for anyone into aerobics/keep-fit
63. Warming up your television
64. Fluorescent socks
65. The swing-door wooden cabinets that housed school televisions
66. Today newspaper
67. School milk
68. Rotary dials on telephones, or indeed, pulse dialling
69. Any TV presentation that says “In Colour”
70. The put-downs “not!” and “Get a life!”
71. Chinos
72. Quantel effects
73. TV Tops magazine
74. Tony Dortie
75. Toy slime
76. Bermuda shorts
77. Liverpool FC being good
78. Leather jackets
79. Breakdance 2 – Electric Boogaloo
80. Ruby Spears cartoons
81. Gunge tanks/booths
82. The Barron Knights
83. ‘Comedy’ t-shirts that showed the ‘naughty’ highway code road signs, or “I’m with stupid! –>”
84. American football being a trend
85. Hi-tec trainers
86. Rainbow Brite
87. “Whenever you rent or buy a video” – Simon Bates acting for the BBFC Gestapo
88. Marshall Cavendish
89. Punks being scary
90. Monday night 8:30pm behemoth confrontation between Panarama and World In Action
91. Remus Toys
92. Tiger Tokens
93. Panini Football Sticker Albums (half completed, natch)
94. Grange Hill photo-strips with Zammo and Roland out of school uniform
95. Australian Lager being exotic
96. Dempsey and Makepeace
97. Topsy and Tim books
98. Jet Set Willy
99. Paper ‘whizz-bangs’
100. Pencil cases
101. Midland Bank -The Listening Bank
102. Bodywarmers
103. The Weetabix skinheads
104. The Paul Daniels Magic Show
105. Computer graphics linking Children’s BBC
106. 12″ singles that comprised an ‘extended version’ of the a-side with a couple of extra songs
107. Postermags
108. Melodicas
109. Newsagents having scrolling LED displays in the window (“Happy Birthday Mitzi”)
110. BBC Continuity slides using ridiculously random photos from programmes
111. Pookiesnackenburger
112. Kalkitos transfers
113. Those funny fold-out paper ‘fortune tellers’ girls always made in school
114. Those spidery octopus things that rolled down windows
115. Fred Harris’ “Tasty, Tasty, Very Very Tasty” Bran Flakes ad
116. Derek Griffiths’ cycle security Public Information Film
117. Sport On 4
118. Jim and Mac (those American comedians that Denis Norden ‘discovered’ but failed to arouse any interest in)
119. Black and white comedy films in the school holidays
120. Open Air
121. Those ‘military’ jumpers with shoulder and elbow patches
122. Maxwell House Coffee
123. Busby
124. Dandelion and Burdock
125. Well’s soft drinks
126. Those grasping plastic’ robot’ style hands you got in WH Smith
127. Richmond tests at school (especially the one about Monarch Butterflies)
128. Screwball scramble
129. Perfumed Stationary
130. Pierrot
131. Green Shield Stamps
132. The blue lower-case ‘milk’ circular logo you used to get in cafes
133. Weetabix DR WHO stand-up figures
134. The St Ivel Prize guys
135. I-Spy books
136. Evel Knievel
137. Robbie, the railway safety film
138. “The wonder of Woolies”
139. Buzby
140. 3D Viewmaster
141. Upside down “writing” on calculators
142. Save It!
143. The Stamp Bug Club
144. British Leyland
145. The Country Code
146. “Don’t Be A Dinosaur”
147. Prestel
148. Shiny faced actors in ’70s drama serials
149. Gas showrooms
150. School book clubs
151. The Corona fizzical
152. Hedgehog flavoured crisps
153. The luminous socks/fingerless gloves debacle
154. Jokes from the joke shop
155. On the ITV, the announcer telling you about the ILR station in your area at closedown
156. Shoot! League Ladders
157. The News of the World’s pontoon table underneath the football results
158. 061 228 1166/01 200 0200 And the rest W12 8TQ/8QT, 01 811 8055 etc etc
159. “Dial 100 and ask for freephone Everest”
160. Rolf’s Magic Brushes
161. Bingo in the paper and the number reading thereof
162. Howard Stapleford with one of those baseball caps sporting a foam arm and mallet hitting the head, sat underneath and to the left of the immortal noughts-n crosses board of Beat The Teacher
163. When TV shows used to “stamp” a word in stencil lettering across the screen to indicate urgency, accompanied by a stamp sound effect
164. The windows/patio doors/raincoat tiny ads in the RT and its ilk
165. Housewives
166. Rulers with animated bits as you moved it
167. On screen continuity announcers
168. Bubblicious
169. Poochie
170. Old Disney films on at the cinema
171. Rub on transfers in cereal packets
172. Hector, the Help The Aged dog
173. Andre Previn’s advert: “The best picture of all time – the best sound all round!”
174. Little Chef traffic light lollies for clearing your plate
175. Dick Emery’s Airfix Club page in Buster
176. The Domesday Detectives and tie-in laserdiscs in schools project
177. 4-T
178. Hungry Hippos
179. Trio adverts
180. The early ’80s ’50s revival
181. Stiff records
182. The Art Of Landscape
183. Nerds, those tiny flavoured sweets in flip-top boxes withdrawn after a glass scare
184. The Chocablock car
185. Grey sweatshirts
186. Woolco
187. Bubble-blowing equipment
188. Big plastic desk-mounted pencil sharpeners with a clear bit you could see the shavings through
189. “Rap-Tou crushes that idea!
190. Mobile libraries
191. Tricolor, the French text books
192. Ron Saunders
193. Magnetic weather boards
194. William ‘The Refridgerator’ Perry
195. Top Trumps
196. Daley Thompson’s Decathlon
197. The Japanese game show Endurance, as Clive James always called it
198. The synth-burbles at the start of Pigeon Street
199. Slinkys
200. Those tiny balls that could bounce about 12 feet
201. Faux-East German army gear
202. “David Jensen with the UK hits!”
203. Plastic eyeballs-on-springs comedy glasses
204. Walkers Crisps packets with a clear window in the front
205. The Midland Griffin
206. Peter Pan Toys
207. Holograms and jelly in bubble pack plastic
208. Jelly lager sweets
209. Slush Puppies
210. Instant Sunshine
211. The Kickstart theme tune/Junior Kickstart,/Peter Purves’ anorak
212. “Dabs”
213. The Country Life Butterfolk
214. Park Avenue
215. Quattro
216. The Joy of Knowledge
217. The Parker vs Platignum ink cartridge power struggle
218. Speak and Spell/The Little Professor
219. Walkmans
220. The ‘oh, no, it’s school tomorrow’ comedy slot on LWT (Spitting Image, Hot Metal et al)
221. Seeing the ‘proper’ London local news for the first time when travelling to London with your parents
222. 45-second long (or more) theme tunes (Supergran, Parky-era Give Us a Clue for example)
223. *CH “”, LOAD “” and similar one-liner programming knowledge
224. EUGENE READY
225. Trivial Pursuit, particularly arguments over answers
226. Dot-matrix printers
227. “VT editor: ANDY QUESTED” and similar credits of solid BBC production values
228. Fine Fare
229. Bejams
230. The famous midlands stores Owen and Owen
231. The Wimpy beefeater
232. 1/2p sweets in the sweet shop
233. Mountain Dew
234. The marble swirly thing before a film
235. Ghettoblasters the size of houses
236. People shouting “I am a mod, I am a mod” without owning a mod
237. Fingerless gloves in crazy colours (one pink, one green)
238. Acccieeddd!
239. The word “bonk”
240. Wizbit
241. Shake and Vac advert
242. The Peter and Jane books
243. Milly Molly Mandy
244. Magic pens
245. Fuzzy felts
246. Fisher Price School/hospital
247. R Whites lemonade drinker advert
248. Nat West pigs
249. “There’s lots of fun for everyone, in the big yellow … teapot!”
250. “Save it!”
251. Spot the Ball
252. Newsreaders accidentally ducking their heads behind the little superimposed square picture in the top right-hand corner of the screen
253. Domino toppling
254. Willie Rushton on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue singing My Old Man’s a Dustman to the tune of The Girl From Ipanema
255. Klaus from the Cafe Hag ads
256. Joe Gormley
257. Colour Separation Overlay (especially when it was being used in serious dramas rather than just to make it look like Johnny Ball’s head has floated off)
258. The Presto Manifesto
259. Christmas gift catalogues where everything is monogrammed, including long whisky flasks hidden inside “shooting sticks”
260. The Adventures of 4-T
261. “Let’s go to the shop (Shell station)”
262. The theme tune to the original series of Puzzle Trail
263. The voice of Jack Smith urging us to “write that down!”
264. Phil Oakey singing “I close my ey-eees!” on Electric Dreams
265. “Hi man! I’ve come about a Choices pension!”
266. That bit on Hi-De-Hi! where Peggy and Spike are dressed as a pantomime horse and sat on top of a real horse, for some reason, and boozy old Mr Partridge sees them while drinking booze and eating a banana, and he looks at the booze and looks at the banana and throws the banana away
267. The WH Smith Wool Shop
268. Blue bubblegum pop in those corrugated plastic things with a straw
269. Getting a computer for Christmas, and having your parents write ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS’ on the screen
270. Computer paper with green lines on the back
271. Colin Weston off Granada
272. Fast Forward, and Nick Wilton and Robert Harley in particular
273. When credits used to go up the screen and disappear just slightly before they reached the top
274. Toad in the hole
275. The dagger in TV Times that denoted a repeat
276. The Grandstand teleprinter with score draw counter (apart from on Boxing Day when it was replaced by a sprig of holly)
277. The ‘AVCO’ West Ham strip
278. The ‘casual’ font, as seen in the credits of Grange Hill crica 1988 and every kids show and comic afterwards
279. Charlie Brown in the mornings over Christmas
280. Children’s programmes from Border TV
281. Tex Winchester, the Naked Video scriptwriter
282. Play School moving ‘house’
283. Telex
284. 2-star petrol
285. Tottie, the horrible doll’s house cartoon
286. The band’s name in funny graphics after their song on Top of the Pops
287. Co-Op 99 Tea, and the supermarket Leo’s
288. Crosse and Blackwell Alphabet Soup in a cube
289. Word Probe and Logic Problems puzzle magazines
290. Polystyrene gliders
291. The grid of TV listings in Look-In
292. The smell of Home Brew (especially from Boots)
293. Singles in a generic plain black or white sleeve
294. The word ‘Cassingle’
295. Water butts
296. “This is the age of the train, this is the aaaaaage… of the train!”
297. “Come to OTV, Lea Bridge Road, Hackney”
298. Those bits of metal that they jammed into the 5p coin slot on payphones when the minimum charge went up
299. Yellow AA handbooks with the motorway diagrams and local radio frequencies in them
300. Deelyboppers
301. Recording LPs onto cassette by pointing a tape recorder at the speakers
302. Casio calculator watches, and their hourly charms
303. The Munch Bunch
304. Nike shoe bags
305. Laugh? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee
306. Bottles of Monterey
307. Days Of The Week Y-fronts
308. Christmas card ‘post boxes’ at school
309. Modern Romance
310. Luminous socks
311. “Tonight, it’s Harry the spider’s coming-out party”
312. Connecting two tape recorders with a ‘din plug’ to do tape to tape copies
313. The mayor (you could tell he was a mayor, because he was wearing his hat and chain things) sitting in a bath eating chips in the opening titles of Look North West
314. “Ip dip” and similar choice-making devices
315. “Bagsy”
316. Warlock of Firetop Mountain
317. Those little flashing signs on cigarette displays saying “£137″
318. £1 notes
319. Bob Monkhouse’s pocket watch
320. Mechanical supermarket tills
321. Blankety Blank’s ‘ready’ sticks
322. Shin pads with attached velcro ankle protectors
323. Swimming bags that smelled great and sport a picture of a bloke swimming on them
324. Texan bars
325. The bedtime routine
326. ‘Rainy day’ books
327. White tennis balls
328. Wizzword
329. Jackson Grandways stores
330. Police helmets with under-chin tie-ups
331. Ruler pencil cases
332. Nutrasweet
333. Two-litre glass Coke bottles
334. The eternal battle ‘twixt Superman and Nick O’Teen (and that lung logo which adorned each poster, the British Lung Foundation?)
335. Wednesday closing
336. Access – your flexible friend, and “does you does or does you don’t take Access?”
337. Luncheon Vouchers
338. Computer games on TV shows – eg Paperboy/Hypersports on First Class, or Starglider on Get Fresh
339. The acid house smiley face
340. That font which was used on every shopping centre in the ’60s,the same one used by Granada – only three examples left of this in Manchester, including atop the Granada building on Quay Street (M sixteh 9 eee ayyh)
341. Rolling pins depicted as a device for hitting “hubbies” with
342. “I’m in with the in-phone, I go where the in-phone goes”
343. “5-4-3-2-1 first bite into real milk chocolate 5-4-3-2-1″
344. “It Started With A Crisp” for KP low fat
345. Pot Noodles for 50p
346. The Reynolds Girls
347. Kettles which needed to be switched off manually
348. Block 1-2-3
349. The Austin Maxi
350. ‘O’ levels