“Dear Mr Meadows,
It has recently come to our attention that you have made a television serial named This Is England ’86, a sequel of sorts to your feature film This Is England, which we all more or less agree on having enjoyed greatly. So it was that we tuned in to this new series expecting an entertaining and diverting story of well-observed retro fun tinged with an undercurrent of social commentary. Imagine our surprise, then, when it turned out to contain little more than a series of unpleasantly graphically depicted scenes of sexual assault that even Alan Driscoll, lead singer of techno band thewomb would consider ‘too dystopian’, with little therein to actually ’enjoy’ in any sense. It wasn’t even particularly well-observed; not one character was seen to enjoy a can of Citrus Spring or chortle at latex lampoonery or rubber-faced ribaldry, and more to the point this collection of music-driven ‘alternative’ types did not include one single solitary Smiths fan which is, frankly, utter bollocks. More to the point it did not touch on the actual major social issue of the day – the cancellation of the third series of The Tripods – and given that Harvey had a grand total of about three and a half lines you could at least have him reference that.
Thus it is with deep regret that the undersigned demand that you issue a formal apology for besmirching this most popular-culturally rich of bygone years.
Phil Cool
Jaymi Bantok
Max Headroom
It Bites
Doctor And The Medics
Dick Spanner
Letitia Dean & Paul J Medford
Anita Baker
So Easy by Nick Berry
Alec Christie
Alexander’s Flute
Clare Wilkie
Michael McDonald (circa Sweet Freedom only)
The Housemartins
The Pig that The Housemartins claimed to have turned upside down in Rap Around The Clock
Corrine From Swing Out Sister
Colin Baker
Camper Van Beethoven (especially when on Cheggers Plays Pop)
Patsy Kensit
The assembled companies of Red Wedge and Who Cares?
Simon Toulson-Clarke and The Other One
Roland Rat
A Cricket Bat
Captain Zep
Radio 1′s Hey RRradio!! (so angry it travelled back in time from 1988)
The censored re-release of former ‘Video Nasty’ Zombie Creeping Flesh
Santa Claus (on the dole)
‘Belouis’ ‘Some’
The Bloke Out Of Hollywood Beyond
Eric from Skool Daze
Bruce Hornsby
The Range
Mehmet Osman from EastEnders
Series One of The Two Of Us
The Grimleys”
