Category: Comedy

Last Monday I moved offices and pondered how the contents of my desk differed to that of my first desk, which was situated just off the Strand in 1974 (in an office building, obviously, not me sat, on the Strand, at a desk outside the Stanley Gibbons shop).

The fundamental change on my desk being there is a PC now and no sign of a Newton’s Cradle (certainly no drinking bird with its nodding head slowly filling up with (in my case) Civil Service tea) – a must for any executive desk (not that I was anything like an executive in 1974).

I did have a typewriter – for younger readers this was like a PC, only with slightly more dexterity needed to type, although it did come with a selection (red and black) of typewriter ribbons; sadly, it didn’t have Tetris.

As well as the example of conserving momentum and energy (who said physics was useless at school?), aside from Newton’s Cradles being on desks, during the 70s, there would always be some form of calendar involving wooden blocks; and if you really were an executive, an angle-poised lamp.

The most senior person in the room would possess the pencil sharpener – scarily not dissimilar to ones you’d have had at primary school, so talking to your boss always left with you the feeling that you’d hope you’d not be tested on your four times table.

But no executive desk was complete without having some form of balancing toy. The trick was to tap the toy and set off the perpetual motion without being too cack-handed and knock it off.  It would be the nearest any of us got to doing gymnastics.

Tomorrow I’m off round the shops in Covent Garden to seek out a 70s executive toy. I wonder if the drinking bird likes Irn Bru?

I miss “Take Your Pick” not being on on a Friday evening. I would sit with my nan in her Balham flat urging everyone to fail at every opportunity.

The first hurdle for the contestants was the yes/no interlude, when questions would be asked where the obvious Pavlovian response would have been yes or no. “Is the Pope Catholic?” being one of Michael Miles’ trickier questions.  If, after the longest minute of their life to date, the contestant had successfully avoided saying neither yes nor no, they’d be given five bob (25p in new money).  Five bob was double my pocket money in the sixties when Take Your Pick was aired and I believed that five bob could probably have bought the universe – certainly could have bought Rediffusion, the programme’s producers.

If the contestant failed, their ignominy was doubled by having former Pathé News newsreader, Bob Danvers-Walker, banging a gong next to them to make their ears bleed.

I especially enjoyed the climax of the show when the contestants could potentially win a booby prize. The use of the word booby on TV before 9.00 pm amused me.  I was only 11, I hasten to add.

During the show the contestants would have accumulated money and were faced with the ultimate choice of betting against their current winnings (take your pick – geddit?) – on offer by selecting “Box 13” – this could have been a holiday in Totnes, or something equally exotic or an aforementioned booby prize, like a mousetrap. It was when the word stress was first invented.

My nan and I would hope people would select “Box 13”; very few people did; no bad thing as some weeks inside was a three-headed dog who guarded the gates of Hell. Marginally worse than going to Totnes.

There must be a massive market for old telephone seats?

With the advent of modern phones there are several pieces of unwanted furniture no longer needed; the old-fashioned telephone seat, much loved in the 50s, 60s and 70s, is sadly one – along with locks on the phone, wires and telephone directories.

In London there were the four monster books; when they’d arrive you’d always check your own entry and then see if there were any rude names to ring. I was always disappointed to find there was no Mr Knob living within the London postal district.  They were great door-stops, but not very good if your telephone seat was bit wobbly at one end.

I was never encouraged to sit too long on the telephone seat as my mother told me this was how you got piles. Piles of what I always thought to myself not having been professionally trained in rectology?

But there was something even more dangerous than falling off an unbalanced seat or haemorrhoids: that was the address book – not a simple one you’d add people whom you’d met on holiday and would swap Christmas cards with for a respectable period of time until you realised that Hayling Island was a long way from London and did you really liked them? – the device with the letters down the side, which, when pressed, opened up at a speed like that of a hunting cheetah.  If you had bad eye-sight, like me, you’d need to be close to check the number you were about to ring – consequently there was always the danger of just prior to making a call, you’d re-enacted the most famous bit of the Battle of Hastings.

I often dreamed of being able to rip a London telephone directory in two. I clearly never followed the instruction manual which came with my Bullworker that accurately.

You no longer have to answer phones with your number.   Somehow reciting the words “Balham 0557” still rings (no pun intended) favourably with me and was gutted when, sometime in the 60s, the Balham prefix BAL changed to the very impersonal 673 – where is the magic with that?  At least make it 666 – infinitely more comedic; the telephone exchange number of the Beast!

I had an aunt who had a phone voice; if you rang her she started off as Princess Margaret and if she knew who you were would instantly (subsequently moving several rungs down the ascendancy to the Throne scale) became Margaret Powell (who might have driven a Princess, but certainly wasn’t one).

My family’s first phone was red and was a step up from the yoghurt pots and string we’d owned before; although more expensive, you never got cross lines on a yoghurt pot and there were no party lines either – it was YOUR yoghurt pot – no waiting for the old woman downstairs to come off the phone to the chimney sweep.

Until Trimphones came along phones were quite cumbersome – only slightly smaller than the Colossus built at Bletchley Park.   The receivers were good, however, if you wanted to practice rounders in your lounge.

Phone boxes aren’t as popular as they were, either. No wonder there are loads of ads on TV for printing your own business card, the former major advertisers within phone boxes now (allegedly) use the Internet.  And pressing “Button B to get your money back” was how fruit machine addiction began.

“Putting you through now, caller.”

I’ve never touched an actual gun, courtesy of there having been no second amendment in the 1904 Balham Constitutional Club founding declaration.

As a kid, however, to protect myself from strangers and head of my one-man vigilante group, I did possess a Sekiden gun. I also owned fifty silver balls (these were the Sekiden gun’s ammunition not something I’d miraculously acquired during one of my many hernia operations).

Before you could progress to owning a Sekiden gun, you’d have to prove your responsibility with a spud gun (it is an apocryphal thought that the 1845 Irish Famine was caused by the over-use of spud guns within the Emerald Isle).

Armed with my spud gun and a couple of potatoes past their sell-by date courtesy of the Du Cane Fruiters, I would stalk my south London flats seeking out the cleaners – their sole protection being a mop, set of rubber gloves and a tin of Duraglit. Luckily for them my aim was less Jack Ruby more Ruby Murray.

Balham was a gun-free zone as far as I knew growing up in the 60s and the biggest chance of dying was of embarrassment if you’d had your jeans bought for you from the local Tesco Home ‘n’ Wear.