Let's take a ride, and run with the dogs tonight

Timeslip moment again, methinks...

Our ever-rusting TARDIS has dropped us [courtesy of the sixth Doctor Who Colin Baker, in his last outing this year before being transformed into Sylvester McCoy] back thirty years to a world of BIG hair, BIG shoulders, BIG money and the BIG Bang.

In the news in mid-October 1986: HM The Queen and Prince Philip embarked on the first ever visit to China by a British monarch; Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Phantom of the Opera opened at Her Majesty's Theatre in London (and it's still going!); an earthquake in El Salvador killed 1500 people; in the ascendant: Britain's first new national broadsheet newspaper for decades The Independent, the largest shopping complex in Europe (at the time) MetroCentre Tyneside and Rupert Murdoch's Fox Broadcasting Company (all launched this month); and the world's media were still madly debating that ludicrous plotline in Dallas when "Pam" awoke from a dream to find the entire events of the previous year or so were a figment of her imagination and "Bobby" wasn't dead at all - he was in the shower! In our cinemas: Top Gun, Aliens, Basil the Great Mouse Detective. On telly: New Faces of '86 presented by Marti Caine; Casualty (which first began that September, and is still on); and the first (experimental) "two-hander" episode of EastEnders, featuring "Den and Angie Watts" (the one where she lied about her terminal cancer when he told her he wanted a divorce).

And in our charts this week in 1986? Our Glorious Leader Madonna was at the top slot with True Blue, holding off the likes of Five Star, The Communards, Nick Berry, Paul Simon, Cameo, the Eurythmics, A-Ha and Status Quo. But just creeping into the Top Ten was one of our favourites of that (and any other) era - Pet Shop Boys, with Suburbia:

Pet Shop Boys - Suburbia

Suburbia, where the suburbs met Utopia
(Where the suburbs met Utopia)

Lost in the high street, where the dogs run
Roaming suburban boys
Mother's got a hairdo to be done
She says they're too old for toys
Stood by the bus stop with a felt pen
In this suburban hell
And in the distance a police car
To break the suburban spell

Let's take a ride, and run with the dogs tonight
In Suburbia
You can't hide, run with the dogs tonight
In Suburbia

Break a window by the town hall
Listen, the siren screams
There in the distance, like a roll call
Of all the suburban dreams

Let's take a ride, and run with the dogs tonight
In Suburbia
You can't hide, run with the dogs tonight
In Suburbia

I only wanted something else to do but hang around
I only wanted something else to do but hang around
(Hang around, hang around)

It's on the front page of the papers
This is their hour of need
Where's a policeman when you need one
To blame the colour TV?

Let's take a ride, and run with the dogs tonight
In Suburbia
You can't hide, run with the dogs tonight
In Suburbia
In Suburbia
In Suburbia

Run with the dogs tonight
You can't hide
Run with the dogs tonight
You can't hide
(You can't hide, you can't hide)
In Suburbia

(Suburbia, where the suburbs met Utopia)
(What kind of dream was this, so easy to destroy?)
(A world together, the cities of the past)
(Mews, slums of the future)
(Suburbia, where the suburbs met Utopia)
(Suburbia, where the suburbs met Utopia)
(Where the suburbs met Utopia)

I really cannot believe it has been THREE DECADES since we all learned every word of that song...