Don't make me cry

And so, farewell then, Wee Jimmy Krankie Nicola Sturgeon, bane of our lives with her constant wittering on about Scottish independence (despite the fact the people of Scotland voted that a resounding "No"), while her own benighted country has a worse record on the economy and jobs than the rest of the UK.

She won't be missed around these parts.

Speaking of tartan, here's an appropriate song:

Bay City Rollers - Bye Bye Baby

Bye Bye - but Magnifique!

Oh, blessed relief is in sight...

Our "welcome to the weekend" slot is upon us, but before we get to the party proper, a little tribute is in order. Before Disco was invented, before Punk was even a wet dream in Malcolm McLaren's pants, the pop world was a very different place. In the early 1970s Britain was depressed, hit by constant strikes and power cuts; the "Swinging Sixties" and even the supposed "Summer of Love" a distant memory. Then along came Glam Rock - basically an excuse to dress up in faintly ridiculous clothing and have a bop - and, in its wake, the rise of a phenomenon. The "boy band" was born - with the arrival of the Bay City Rollers! Sadly, news arrived yesterday that the band's spunky lead singer Les McKeown has unexpectedly departed for Fabulon, aged just 65...

RIP

Bay City Rollers - Bye Bye Baby

Tributes done, let's continue the party with what is a more customary way to welcome a weekend - a Roller Boogie, of course!

C'est Magnifique - and Thank Disco It's Friday!

Magnifique - Magnifique

Have a great weekend, peeps!

It's a teenage dream to be seventeen, apparently

Timeslip moment again...

Our trusty TARDIS has deposited us into a weird world of Nylon clothing, Safari Suits, platforms and flares, to 1975 - the year of the final end of the Vietnam War, The Naked Civil Servant, two assassination attempts on President Gerald Ford, Jaws, Lord Lucan, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Moorgate tube crash, Jim'll Fix It, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, the Sex Discrimination Act, "George Davis is Innocent", Patty Hearst, Poldark, Ding-a-dong, King Juan Carlos I of Spain, Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes, the kidnap and murder of heiress Lesley Whittle, Idi Amin, Isabel Perón, the Spaghetti House siege, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, David Essex, Margaret Thatcher becoming leader of the Tory party, football hooliganism, war in Angola, Muhammad Ali, Tommy, the assassination of Ross McWhirter by the IRA, "Davros" in Doctor Who, the first referendum on membership of the EEC, The Good Life, the "Birmingham Six", Bohemian Rhapsody and the "Crossman Diaries", and we had snow in June; this year David Beckham, Michael Bublé, Kate Winslet, Enrique Iglesias, Mark Ronson, Tiger Woods, Drew Barrymore, Mel B, Joe McFadden, The Sweeney, Charlize Theron, Tobey Maguire, Ant (Anthony McPartlin) and Dec (Declan Donnelly), Microsoft, Natalie Imbruglia, Paddington, Angelina Jolie, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Lauryn Hill, Papua New Guinea, Bradley Cooper, Jamie Oliver and Fawlty Towers were all born; and Josephine Baker, Susan Hayward, William Hartnell, P.G. Wodehouse, Louis Jordan, Graham Hill, Haile Selassie, Bernard Herrmann, Aristotle Onassis, Chiang Kai-shek, Dmitri Shostakovich, Lee Wiley, Michael Flanders, Barbara Hepworth and James Robertson Justice all died.

In the headlines in July forty-five years ago: Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win Wimbledon, Foreign Minister Jim Callaghan flew to Uganda to personally request Idi Amin release British prisoner Denis Hills, an American Apollo spacecraft made a symbolic docking with the Soviet Soyuz craft, Harold Wilson's government agreed a one-year cash limit on pay rises with the TUC, and the first phase of the extension of the Piccadilly line to Heathrow Airport was completed with the opening of Hatton Cross tube station. In our cinemas: Young Frankenstein; Paper Tiger; Doc Savage - Man of Bronze. On telly? Celebrity Squares, Seaside Special and That's Life; and Ray Langton married Deirdre Hunt in Coronation Street.

And in our charts this week in 1975? Typically Tropical, Johnny Nash, Ray Stevens, the Bee Gees, Smokie, Linda Lewis, Van McCoy, Judge Dread and - for some reason - a reissue of a Brian Hyland's teenybopper number Sealed With A Kiss from 1962 were all present and correct...

...but, of course, above all else here in the UK - 1975 was the year when tartan became a "uniform" for teenage girls, as a group of lads from Edinburgh had emerged from practically nowhere to rule the world (or so it seemed).


It's all about the trousers...

As this article observes:

Wherever the Bay City Rollers appeared in public they caused mass hysteria - with fans screaming, crying, fainting, stretching their hands out to touch the group and oftentimes at concerts rushing the stage in an effort to get to the group. In the presence of the Rollers, many fans would become completely hysterical and as such, totally uncontrollable. For the uninitiated, scenes like this were bewildering, quite worrying, even a little frightening. The group completely took over the lives of their fans, who were predominantly young girls. Most were probably teenagers but many were pre-teens. And this pop group was their first love, their heartthrobs, in fact their whole world. The effect The Bay City Rollers had on their fans was such a phenomenon that it was given a name by the press - 'Rollermania'.

Their success was indeed phenomenal. They'd already chalked up a string of hits the previous year, and in March Bye, Bye, Baby went to #1 for six weeks [which back then meant selling a million physical copies of a single, from a shop such as Woolworths, rather than these days when a track only needs to sell about 36 CDs and get a few thousand views on YouTube to reach the top]. This week in 1975, this was their second (and final) chart-topper. Grab your tartan hankies, girls!

Bay City Rollers - Give A Little Love

It's a teenage dream to be seventeen
And to find you're all wrapped up in love
And I found that you made a dream come true
Now I do believe in what I say

You've got to give a little love, take a little love
Be prepared to forsake a little love
And when the sun comes shining through
We'll know what to do
Give a little love, take a little love
Be prepared to forsake a little love
And when the sun comes shining through
We'll know what to do

When I walk with you there is just we two
And the world goes by but I just don't care
And I know one day that I'll find the way
To be safe and sound within your heart
So until I do I'm gonna give a little love, take a little love...

That's poetry, that is.

Bay City Rollers on Wikipedia

The decade of the Bimbo

It's a bit of a Seventies Day, all told.

Today marks the 60th anniversary of Britain's first commercial TV network, ITV; the channel that had arguably its greatest successes in that decade - with its non-PC "comedies" (The Benny Hill Show, On The Buses, Love Thy Neighbour, Man About The House, et al), significant factual programming (such as World in Action, The South Bank Show, The World at War) and much-loved dramas (Upstairs Downstairs, A Family at War, Edward the Seventh and many more). It was never a patch on the BBC in its classiness - and, of course, there were all those adverts - but as a kid growing up I have fond memories of 70s ITV's children's programmes such as The Tomorrow People, Just William and anything from the studios of Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds, Joe 90 and the rest)...



Also on this day - in 1976, Charlie's Angels starring Farrah Fawcett had its début; in 1972, Idi Amin expelled 8,000 Asians from Uganda (mostly to the UK); and in 1975, Sara Jane Moore was the second person to fail to assassinate US President Gerald Ford.

Just today, reviving cringe-worthy memories of the sudden and unstoppable rise of "tartan-mania" - particularly among the girls at my school - the most popular "boy-band" of the 1970s, the Bay City Rollers have (embarrassingly) have announced a reunion tour...



And, among today's birthdays is the centenary of Arthur Lowe (one of the curmudgeonly stars of that archetypal (BBC) 70s show Dad's Army); and Captain Mark Phillips (whose marriage to Princess Anne in November 1973 was the first Royal Wedding celebration I remember) blows out 67 candles.

So, to really capture the "feel" of that delightfully tacky decade in spectacular fashion, what better than this long-forgotten "gem" from 1975?!

Bimbo Jet - El Bimbo

Someone crack open the Babycham, would you?