proved incapable of holding her port) by his schoolmates, he does nothing to dispel the notion and ends up feeling even worse about the situation as theythey flutter round him, begging for tell-tale titbits and exposing their own naivety in in the process.


“Not too many of those nasty drugs now you two.”


Ah, the parents. Between his amorous adventures, Jamie returns to the family home where mum (Moyra Fraser) and dad (Michael Bates, the police inspector in Bedazzled!) read books, do crosswords and listen to the football scores on the wireless while younger brother Joe seemingly enjoys an infinitely more exciting social life, and perhaps sex life, than Jamie. In one telling scene, Jamie sneakily glances at Joe in the bath, as if to look for clues to his younger sibling’s “secret”. When dad confronts Joe about coming home at 2:30 in the morning covered in mud like he’s been rolling about in a field, Jamie’s shame is palpable. “My own brother a Casanova at 16 and me still a celibate monk!”


The twin staples of sex and innuendo rear their heads constantly throughout the film. Indeed, Mulberry Bush was often written off as an early, failed attempt at the kind of


28


saucy but grim“sex comedies” us Brits excelled at in the ’70s, until the ’80s when more


was so much more and bums.


more enlightened late-night TV viewers were treatedeated to regular screenings and realised it was


much more besides. But still with tits


So Spike talks of satisfying his “other desires” of a Saturday night and encourages Jamie to do the same, knowing damn well that he’ll get nowhere (with Mary, it transpires) while Jamie makes out his looming, semi- accidental liaison with runny old Linda is actually a hot date. “It’s all you’re after – it’s all any of us is after,” preaches Spike. “You’re waiting for it to be all hearts and lace and flowers,” he continues. “What are you saving yourself up for?” Even at this early juncture, Jamie is struggling with the idea of sex without love and, more pertinently, how one goes about getting it.


Once Jamie is perceived to have lost his cherry (with “capable” Caroline, who had


And, on top of all of this, all girls are different of course. Nobody mentioned that, did they? Linda needs throwing on the floor before her juices start flowing; Paula is what could still be commonly known in this day and age as a prick teaser; Audrey a numb receptacle into which one does his thing; Caroline sophisticated, mature but ultimately impenetrable (in both senses). Even as he approaches the end of these fumbling, formative encounters and claims the glittering prize that is his beloved Mary, the sex is cold and heartless, the chat awkward and contrived and there’s nary a skipped heartbeat when it all goes nowhere. Now wipe it up.


Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush succeeds in portraying these largely hapless teens as intelligent beings, capable of coming to considered conclusions and then making their own minds up, rather than vacuous, pointlessly permissive extras in the glorified pop video that many would have us believe was “the ’60s”.


“I wanna hear what’s top.”


Many people came to the filmthrough its soundtrack album, which, until fairly recently, could still be picked up for a few guineas. The theme tune that bookends the filmand appears in several variations within it, was written and recorded by Traffic, the


"I used to be a seven stone weakling." Audrey has Jamie's cherry (top); shopping with Caroline (above); philosophising with Mary (above right).


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