5/the 80S Gurning back the years


Wallow in a spot of harmless nostalgia as we take a wry look at the highs and lows of the decade that gave us the foodie, nouvelle cuisine, Keith Floyd and those addictively low-tech video games


Branded wine


Blue Nun, Black Tower, Mateus Rosé and Bull’s Blood. As we


tentatively felt our way towards grown-up wine appreciation,


those fi rst recognisable brands off ered a sense of security.


Florid labels and foreign names were a minefi eld, but with


brands you could be absolutely sure what you were getting for your money: blended plonk, delivered in tankers that made


it taste like something you’d use to fl ush a blocked drain.


Provençal man


Provence may have existed since long before the


Neanderthals colonised, but


it took another breed of man to bring it to the attention of the Brits. Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence made it the natural stomping ground for retired


ad men and off -duty bankers. It spawned a property boom and a particular look – whaff y greying hair, blue French


‘ouvrier’ jacket and satchel – that survives in gentlemen of


a certain age to this day (we’re looking at you, Monty Don).


The fi rst ‘foodies’ At fi rst glance, The Offi cial


Foodie Handbook (1984) was every bit as queasy a piece of elitist drivel as its stablemate The Offi cial Sloane Ranger Handbook (1982), but for all its


fl aws it’s a fantastically complete document on the beginning of


the British food renaissance. It’s nearly 30 years old now, and the names of the main characters have changed, but a modern


food lover can’t read it without an uncomfortable rush of recognition.


The Slim Panatella


If you believed the ads, the perfect end to a sumptuous


dinner was Black Forest Gateau ‘for the lady’, a ‘sniſt er’ of toxic brandy bigger than your head and a tiny little brown thing, a sort of fl ammable version


of the Twiglet that was less of a cigar and more of a cheap cigarette with a tan. This


aff ordable symbol of impossible sophistication has mysteriously failed to pass the test of time.


Keith Floyd Dear Keith Floyd was like a dodgy uncle. He behaved like an incorrigible ex-offi cer with rackety fi nances, who couldn’t be left safely in the same room as your drinks cabinet or your daughter, because that’s exactly what he was. Today, when all our celebrities have their lives rewritten and airbrushed to create their personas, it’s salutary to occasionally remember somebody so honest and authentic.


MARCO PIERRE WHITE There was a time when a chef was a grunting blue-collar sociopath whose only qualifi cation for the job was having been cashiered from the Catering Corps for poor personal hygiene. Then there was Marco. In spite of being born on a perfectly ordinary council estate in Leeds, he managed to convey the image of some untameable Mediterranean lust-deity while simultaneously cooking like an angel. Face it, there has never been a chef before or since so completely and devastatingly sexy.


Bad cocktails Tom Cruise’s 1988 appearance as a juggling barman marked the peak of the cocktail wave. In the 80s we believed we could ‘have it all’ – and a cocktail meant having it all in the same glass. Huge, lurid, dangling with paper brollies, straws, unlikely fruit and probably ignited by the barman, a proper 80s cocktail was fi nished off with the sort of name you couldn’t ask for in a bar today without being justifi ably arrested.


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