Quizzes in Edinburgh Tonight:

7pm – Brass Monkey Leith. Jackpot: £50. Cheat: Harold Faltermeyer (music round)

9pm – Safari Lounge. Jackpot £30. Cheat news: Slovakia (pic round)

The song in the Brass Monkey Leith music round is an eighties cracker. Synths had already been invented for a while when people like Harold Faltermeyer and Jan Hammer had hits, but they made it feel like they had just been invented.

 

Every morning in nineteen eighty-five included this tune and others like it. You had to have block-rocking shoulders for the walk to school and boombox stride, cos the synth was loud inside your head.

It was the year of strut. We had survived the predicted Orwellian nightmare of nineteen eighty-four and the Chernobyl and Challenger disasters lay ahead. 1985 was cool and it was a time to think about entertainment and chips.

I think we went to Scarborough that year. That was where my dad found the holy grail of custard slice and it has been a truth in our family ever since that the greatest custard slices in the world are to be found on the Yorkshire coast.

See the slices in this picture? They were about one thousandth as good as the ones in 1985 in Scarborough. Plus the Radio One Roadshow was there while we were there with Peter Fucking Powell who, as far as I know, never got Yewtreed.

1985, son. You weren’t there because you’re TOO YOUNG. Youth has its advantages but the drawback is you can’t even REMEMBER how good it was to hear Opus on the radio singing “Live Is Life”.

I’m clutching at memory straws here, but so far they’re holding firm. Still sane.