Louise Wener - Just For One Day: Adventures in Britpop

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This edition published 2011
First published in 2010 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Random House Group company
Originally published by Ebury Press in 2010 as Different for Girls

Copyright Louise Wener 2010

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PART II

Its a typical Sunday teatime in the spring of 79 and I am twelve. My parents are enjoying a packet of fondant fancies in front of the Holiday programme while I scurry around the house making last-minute preparations for the top 40 singles broadcast on Radio 1. You might imagine listening to the radio is a largely passive activity, requiring little or no advance planning, but in this case youd be entirely wrong. If you were serious about such things, and I was, youd know the task at hand wasnt simply to listen to the top 40 countdown, but to capture its edited highlights on a hand-held tape cassette recorder. The resulting compilation could then be played repeatedly my mother might say incessantly over the coming week, until a new set of movers and shakers had climbed the chart, and it was time to begin the entire process all over again.

With half an hour to kick-off, I run through my checklist of very important jobs.

Job one: Locate tape recorder. Last seen in hands of older brother. Most likely use, the covert playback of Derek and Clive tapes in his bedroom with the door shut. I cant be certain the sound is muffled, even with my ear pressed tight to the lock but these contraband recordings seem largely to consist of two men swearing and giggling, and some jokes about lobsters and cancer. My brother thinks this stuff is very funny. He is clearly quite odd.

Job two: Locate suitable WHSmith C90 cassette tape. Again, more difficult than it sounds. I only have a dozen or so of these treasured oblong boxes and some are so worn from repeated tapings of the top 40 countdown, Ive had to reinforce perished sections with Sellotape. These mended sections are inherently problematic. Not only do they cause ruinous blank spots in the middle of Ladies Night by Kool & The Gang, for instance they are also liable to snag in the machinery at any moment, resulting in hours of patient salvaging, untangling and re-spooling.

Job three: Re-acquaint self with auto-reverse function of tape recorder. As hard as I try, I will never get the hang of this. At least once each Sunday I lose focus for a moment and find myself recording on the wrong side of the tape with potentially devastating consequences. I once went over a cherished Top of the Pops recording of Boney M.s Brown Girl In The Ring with Barbara Dickson singing I Know Him So Well. It still upsets me to think about it.

Job four: Practise hitting pause button with thumb until reflexes are lightning fast. We dont want a repeat of last weeks debacle in which I somehow managed to lop off the front and back ends of Heart Of Glass whilst capturing Bright Eyes a song about a dead rabbit in its entirety.

Job five: After due consideration and much soul-searching, Ive decided not to record over Bright Eyes just yet. For now it keeps a treasured spot on my least worn C90 cassette tape. Dont get too comfortable, Art Garfunkel. Well review things again in another week.

With minutes to spare and all the necessary recording equipment in place, theres just time to run through my interpretive dance routine to Wuthering Heights. Ive been perfecting it for weeks and I almost have it down. It begins with a flurry of high karate kicks, segues into some manic twirling and the occasional head-over-heels, and ends in a series of star jumps accompanied by a lengthy series of winks and some protracted batting of the eyelashes. The eyelash segment is fundamental to the routines success. In the most recent issue of Jackie magazine, Kate Bush says she is quite emphatic that the secret to a great performance is talking to the audience with your eyes. My older brother says he is quite emphatic that the secret of Kates performance is wearing a skimpy leotard without a bra on underneath.

In case this isnt obvious from the outset, I wasnt the coolest of twelve-year-olds. If I had been, I wouldnt have grown up to be a pop star. Its a little-known equation that ambition flourishes in direct proportion to the level of embarrassment you experience as a child. To put it another way, if you grow up with parents so disinterested in your social wellbeing they let your half-blind grandmother choose your glasses for you when youre six and make you wear the same style National Health, pink plastic until you are fourteen, theyve only themselves to blame when you turn up on their doorstep, decades later, brandishing a platinum album saying I told you so.

There are other impediments to my coolness. I have chronic asthma. Ive already sprouted my first spots. I live in a dull Essex suburb and have parents who are at least a decade older than those of all my friends. As my big sister who is twelve years older than me never tires of saying, Mum had me late and by mistake. I was a cap baby. I made it through the twin obstacles of latex and spermicide just in time to greet a pair of forceps, in the middle of a notable football match, on 30 July 1966. If nothing else, I like to think this demonstrates a certain level of pluck and ambition. If nothing else, my mum would like you to know that if you ever have to be on the wrong end of a pair of forceps, its advisable to avoid them being operated by a doctor who is missing seeing England win the World Cup.

From the ages of ten to twelve as disco fades and punk combusts, and the New Romantics ride into town with their blouses flapping Im rarely to be seen without my Panasonic cassette recorder. Its a cherished Christmas gift from my Auntie Dolly, my dads eldest sister, and a particularly generous one at that, given cassette players are relatively expensive and my Auntie Dolly being from the Jewish side of the family doesnt believe in Christmas.