I'm Giles Coren. I'm a writer with a healthy appetite
so, obviously, I'm a restaurant critic.
I'm being joined by sylph-like broadcaster Sue Perkins
on a time zone-defying culinary adventure.
Over the coming weeks,
we'll be feasting our way through six periods of culinary history.
Each week, we will be poked and prodded by doctors...
Wear outrageous period costumes...
and feast on the great, and not so great, food of the time.
That, for me, is Dr Who.
This week, our gastronomic journey will take us back
to the Britain of our own adolescence, in the 1980s...
...a time of economic boom and bust.
We'll be feeling under-nourished on nouvelle cuisine...
Attempting to dance like new romantics...
You see, Giles is more right-wing than you are!
'And dining with some of the most controversial figures of the decade.'
TOY SQUEAKS
The 1980s were my teenage years and I spent them doing not much at all.
But for the grown-ups, the 1980s was a time of big hair and glamour,
a decade when wealth in the UK trebled and two women ruled the country.
CAMERAS CLICK
But while some prospered, the lowest-paid workers saw their income go down by 17%.
For once, Sue and I will both be working,
as thousands of women entered the workforce.
I'm a high-flying city trader, while Sue works in public relations.
We'll be over-dosing on packaged and processed foods.
Sue will become obsessed with aerobics,
while I blow my wad on the latest hi-tech gadgets.
But before that, I'm off to Harley street
to visit top cardiologist Dr Duncan Dymond.
The number of men under 45 dying from heart attacks went up in the mid-1980s.
Hello, Giles.
'I'm concerned about the effects such a stressful decade will have on me.'
Everybody lived to work really rather than worked to live and...
Greed was good! Greed was good - that's exactly right.
You were considered a wimp if you gave in to the normal things,
like having meals and going home and seeing your family.
There's no such thing as life-work balance - it was work, work, work.
During the week, Dr Dymond will be monitoring my heart
with an electrocardiogram, or ECG machine.
It will check my heart rate and rhythm
to see how it is affected by a week of 1980s excess.
But that's not the only thing to worry about.
They did a lot of drinking, champagne drinking?
Heavy drinking was a culture. Again, it was considered wimpishness not to.
After a champagne binge, and having had your only meal,
a big curry in the evening, you'd go to bed on a full stomach,
which perhaps also inhibits the quality of your sleep time.
You wake up the next morning, a) with a hangover, b) feeling tired
and what do you do? You have more coffee.
And the hair of the dog.
Before I saw the doctor, I didn't think the '80s
would be a problem. I've lived through it once,
but it now occurs to me that I was a child.
Now I'm a grown-up, I'm gonna be drinking a lot of alcohol,
drinking a lot of coffee because I'm working all hours of the night.
It could kill me.
This week, Sue and I will be a couple of young,
upwardly-mobile professionals, known of course as yuppies.
With home ownership increasing by 25%,
we'll be living in one of London's new warehouse conversions
and hoping it doesn't get repossessed when the property market crashes in 1989.
With my trader's salary of £100,000, and Sue's measly £50,000,
we're able to embrace all the '80s has to offer, including the latest fashions.
And I've decided it's time to embrace my inner blonde
as I power-dress my way to the top.
Does that say alpha female to you? Yes, it does.
SHE GROWLS Come on, tiger!
Buy. Buy those, buy that... Lunch? Lunch is for...!
Hi. Sell everything - news just in. Hello.
My word! Gotta go - Sergeant Pepper's here!
Yeah. It's repossessions Barbie!
Look at you! You're very smart!
You're smart. I'm amazed. I'm very tall in this outfit, I'm afraid.
I'm delighted to see that you're a blonde in this particular period.
Finally, you're my type.
Introducing us to the culinary trends of the time
is Michelin-starred chef Marcus Wareing, who trained at the Savoy in the 1980s.
The decade was a tale of two diets.
There was more fresh food and less red meat,
but there was also a dramatic increase in the amount of processed food,
which many blame for the doubling of obesity rates in the UK since 1980.
Here we are with the food of the '80s - the fresh food here.
Tuna, chicken and prawns.
And then we have all of this -
A lot of microwave dinners.
It was a case of just in, eating and out.
Even I remember these.
Yeah. I mean at boarding school, that's what I ate in the '80s.
That was all I ate in the '80s! It's only good for percussion, this.
You shouldn't eat it! That's all you should do.
Those look like real sun-dried tomatoes.
I literally remember my first one, being handed it in sort of '87.
Wondering what it was? Asking what it was.
The thing is, you just accepted it.
If someone handed me this in 1987, I'd say, "Get off!" And lots of this.
There's a lot of booze. 30% of this table is booze.
You have to drink that to be able to eat some of this.
Changes in licensing laws also meant that pubs didn't have to close
in the middle of the afternoon, allowing all-day drinking.
CORK POPS
I don't remember perforating my eardrum first time round, so it's good.
Does that taste like the '80s? Mmm. I think that is the '80s.
Absolutely. I'm gonna go and repossess a few houses now.
Morning. I've got 30 seconds
before I need to run something up a flag pole, so...
You're not in a hurry, you're saying? Exactly.
I've got a leisurely breakfast.
Coffee? Yes. I'm just gonna run this past the citrus star ship.
'Working hours almost doubled in the 1980s,
so there was little time for breakfast.
'Filter coffee machines were one piece of new technology that helped save time.'
Right, I've probably gotta go in a sec.
Right. I'll leave you to it. You do that.
Oh, am I having a waffle? Ready. I'm having it on the move. Good plan.
Ugh! Not cooked!
This was the decade when people became increasingly work-focused.
What you did and how much you earned defined everything about you
and it didn't matter who you trod on to get to the top.
I'm meeting Giles in one of London's
trendy new 1980s restaurants for a power lunch.
This book, Power Lunching, was the ultimate accessory.
According to its authors,
some foods will define you as a wimp, some as being powerful.
But will Sue and I be able to guess which is which?
Power lunch. First course -
French onion soup or minestrone soup?
Obviously that charming Doris has put the powerful soup down
in front of me. Minestrone must be power,
because she took one look at me and dropped it right in front of me.
Yeah, but every time someone looks at you,
they want to drop something in your lap!
What have you got there? French onion.
Well! I'll bet you one phone that minestrone is power.
Eugh! That's for wimps.
And the survey says...
Minestrone, we're right. Our phones are safe. We?! Yeah.
You see, you took all the credit for the...
That is power, Giles. Oh, I see.
Power is taking someone else's ideas,
running with them and claiming them as your own.
You're right. You chose the minestrone.
Don't be overly submissive, that's wimpy.
Main course - grilled salmon or salmon en croute?
Ratatouille or mixed vegetables?
You've got the power meal there. You know it, baby.
Because clearly anything that's sort of been woofed around with,
layered with spinach and pastry, that's blatantly for wimps.
Salmon en croute...
Is for wimps. Is for wimps.
That's why you're hoovering it up.
Oh, dear!
Well, that is screaming weakness at me.
Baby vegetables? Eugh!
Very hard to imagine a power man going,
"I'll have the salmon en croute and the ratatouille."
Do you think restaurants were full of people
holding these books going, "Before I order, I need to check.
"Ratatouille, what's that?" Ratatouille is power!
Baby vegetables is for wimps. But for women, the rules don't stop at food.
I'm not allowed to talk about women's liberation, children, divorces...
Thank God! Good, you and me both.
I'm not interested in children or divorces, or psychiatrists,
personal problems, fashion or make-up, because I don't wear make-up.
I can see you're not interested... I don't wear make-up.
The whole point about power is you go natural,
and that's what my look stands for. Keep it simple.
After a hard day's trading and power lunching,
I'm heading home to play with my new toys.
The '80s was the decade we all went hi-tech.
First, there's the Atari 2600, one of the first computer consoles
with changeable games cartridges.
I'm playing space invaders.
Buy Atari, yeah, yeah. I don't care how much...
'But my pride and joy is my Dynatac mobile phone,
'which came on the market in 1985 and cost over £3,000.'
The 1980s also saw the rise of the television chef.
Madhur Jaffrey's BBC series taught millions
of British cooks how to use spices and make authentic Indian food.
So I have half a teaspoon of cayenne.
This would make it mildly hot.
If you want the dish to be hotter, you can put in as much as you like.
As we're way too busy to cook, we've left Marcus to make curries
from Jaffrey's Indian cooking book, which sold over one million copies.
It's got a lot of spice. This is gonna hurt!
Fancy a Grolsch?
European lagers became increasingly popular in Britain during the 1980s.
By 1989, sales had overtaken British ale for the first time,
accounting for 62% of the market.
You've gotta have some vindaloo.
Mmm. Mmm!
There's a lot of paprika in the chicken.
Very nice, though. It's delicious.
Oh, you've got sweaty nostrils!
My nose is starting to run now,
there's no doubt about that.
You don't mind if I mop some of this?
No. Please be my guest.
How is it?
Really good.
What's quite interesting about this, you two,
is that you look absolutely fine and you're suffering, Giles.
But she's wearing make-up! How dare you!
You're sweating, eyes bulging...
It's good, though. Keep going, Giles. Slightly sweaty. Keep going.
Gosh! You know, one day into the 1980s
and I've uncovered the secret of why they didn't sleep much.
It's nothing to do with ambition
and getting up early in the morning and firing off to work.
It's to do with having a vindaloo and eight pints
of fizzy chemical lager just before going to bed!
I'm gonna try and get back to sleep.
With my job on the derivatives markets
I need to be up at the crack of dawn to be on the trading floor by 7am.
But first, I'm off to get a caffeine fix at Pret A Manger,
which first opened in 1986.
A city trader, if you think lunch is for wimps,
breakfast doesn't even get a mention.
I simply drink five large espressos.
Ooh, that's hot!
And then I hit the trading floor.
If your breath smells of food,
people will know you're not up for the game.
Along with American working habits,
the UK started to follow their trend for drinking huge amounts of coffee,
but excessive caffeine is also linked to high blood pressure.
That's five espressos. I thought I was absolutely fine
but I've noticed my left elbow is twitching backwards and forwards,
which is... I'm quite a big coffee drinker.
I drink normally a double espresso
or two double espressos in the morning to get going. But five?
Yeah, I mean it's quite...
I feel quite lively.
City boys and working girls ruled in the Square Mile.
But Sloane square had been taken over by a different gang -
a group of posh boys and girls called Sloane Rangers.
Camilla! Hello, darling!
How's the little filly?
She all right? She bearing up?
Stocky little thing, isn't she?
Really, really good fun - jolly good fun.
I'll see you at the countryside!
The Sloane Ranger Handbook was the ultimate guide,
telling wannabe Henriettas where to go and what to wear.
The female Sloane would spend hours in the mother ship -
Peter Jones - indulging in her passion for silk scarves.
In the '80s, being posh and having oodles of Daddy's dosh
became terribly fashionable.
The queen of Sloane's was Diana.
She bagged the ultimate husband and had the ultimate wedding.
Dragging each other up the aisle in the summer of 1981, Charles and Di
were married in front of an estimated 750 million television viewers worldwide.
I'm off to La Brasserie, a regular haunt of Diana's in south Kensington.
Joining me is a contributor to the Sloane Ranger Handbook,
while Ingrid Seward is editor of Majesty magazine.
We're eating from the same menu that Charles and Di had at their wedding.
How many did they have for their wedding breakfast? They had 110.
Right. That's a lot of Krug!
I mean the Queen Mum alone could drink probably six or seven bottles.
Not before lunch.
Bottoms up. Bottoms up! Bottoms up!
Chin, chin! Good for you.
I am resisting the urge to just drink this down to the bottom
and then have another couple. That is delightful.
It's very good. Of course this is the seminal Sloane's handbook.
Absolutely and we all lived by it. Yes. "How not to cry at carols."
Yes. "The problem with Hampstead."
"How to kill salmon." So if I'm a Sloane I've gotta kill stuff?
Of course you have to kill stuff!
Definitely. You should have been hunting. Really? Yeah!
I've got to just grab a rifle after a couple of bottles of Krug
and blast some stuff out of the sky? Yes!
Volaille de, de, de... Princesse...
Mmm, that's quite delicious actually.
...Princesse de Galles.
Both Charles and Diana rarely ate red meat, reflecting a wider trend
as half the British population reduced their intake of meat.
Refreshingly normal, this food.
It's sort of sweetcorn chowder with a chargrilled chicken breast on top.
Nursery food!
Prep school food. Yeah.
What characteristics did Diana have that made her uber Sloane?
Her image was Sloane.
Yeah. The early pie crust collars -
very keen on shooting, meeting Charles in the shooting field.
And her hairstyle. Everyone copied her hairstyle.
Everybody copied everything she wore.
Including me.
These strawberries are certainly from Sandringham or Windsor,
and the clotted cream is from the Windsor dairy.
You reckon? Absolutely, cos Diana loved clotted cream. Really?
She didn't push this around her plate, then?
No, this went straight down. Oh, good.
I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I mean, I get to eat when I want, drink vast quantities of champagne,
kill everything in my wake. It's all very red-blooded and marvellous.
There's nothing wrong with it. I hope Sloane-ism lasts forever.
Do you think you could get used to it?
Yes, as long as I could change outfit.
Apart from royalty, the best catch for a Sloane
was a successful City trader.
Under Margaret Thatcher, it was out with bowler hats
and in with deregulation, long hours and hard work.
It was the era of young, money-hungry financial traders,
fuelled by caffeine and alcohol.
They blew their cash on Porsches and vintage champagne,
spending and being seen to spend.
I've come to the Royal Exchange, the old trading floor,
to meet two people who were there.
Dom Perignon was the bottle you bought on the good trading day.
Everybody knew, if you bought a bottle of Dom Perignon,
you'd had a great trading day.
There was a whole motif going on
around the bottle of champagne you bought on the day.
Between 1983 and 1989, champagne sales doubled
from ten to 20 million bottles a year,
and for the first time, you could buy it in supermarkets.
The supermarkets validated champagne,
because Sainsbury's champagne, Marks's champagne...
When did that happen? When did Sainsbury's...?
In the '80s - same thing.
Do you regret that slightly? That they got their hands on it?
No, they were bloody good standard stuff.
They made bloody sure that their own brands were good.
I've gotta get back on the floor, make some more money.
You don't mind if I take that...? Or lose some money!
Listen old boy, take a wad! Have a wad. Thank you, Giles.
Have some fun.
But the competitiveness didn't end on the trading floor.
In the 1980s there was another bear pit - the squash court.
Beating colleagues but letting the boss win
was key to climbing the corporate ladder.
When you need an energy boost, what better way that Lucozade?
Once seen as medicinal, it was re-branded in 1984 as the UK's first energy drink.
Sadly, the intensive cardiac workout of squash was later linked to heart attacks.
I started the day feeling quite judgemental about Sloanes.
I thought, "Oh, they're horsey and braying and posh and they frighten me."
But - hey presto - a few hours later today I was fondling a Hermes scarf
and thinking to myself, "Oh, God, that's so wizard!
"I'd so love one of those!
It would be just so rad and amazing, and just wonderful and wild.
I've got to show everybody and I've got to have it now!"
Which just goes to show, I guess, that even for a girl from Croydon
it only takes about a £140-bottle of Krug to...
connect with your inner poshness.
The '80s was all about the power of the individual
and there was one person who defined the decade more than any other.
The lady's not for turning.
After five years of Labour government, the Tories got their chance in 1979.
Margaret Thatcher was the ultimate working girl,
some say, the ultimate dragon.
She divided the country but the '80s belonged to her.
Oh, my word, it's a Tory landslide!
They're just talking about Thatcher's face!
I've got ambitions of being selected as a Tory candidate
for the next election, so Sue and I
are having dinner at Shepherd's, a famous political haunt in Westminster.
We're meeting with two icons of Thatcherism.
As Employment Secretary, Norman Tebbit diminished the power
of the trade unions and had a fearsome reputation as a hardliner.
Let's roll back socialism even further.
Jeffrey Archer was deputy chairman of the Conservatives and was then
seen as the golden boy of the party.
There's an element of nerves as I sit here pouring champagne for Lord Tebbit.
I mean, obviously in my, in my fantasy landscape, it's something
I've done a million times, but in reality, you know...
Could we go on with your fantasy land?
Every December, Lord Archer hosts two parties
famed for their shepherd's pie and Krug.
So why the shepherd's pie? I think a lot of men
don't get shepherd's pie, and they love it. And a lot of people
who come to my party, it's the only time they get shepherd's pie the whole year.
People think with the meat that, if you do a shepherd's pie,
you're gonna get inferior meat, its gotta be the best meat.
So you would meet here at Shepherd's?
This would be a place you'd come?
Very often. Very popular in those days. Yes.
We used to have the corner table. Over there.
Which we loved. And who would be there?
This was always filled with politicians,
but I must say more Conservative than Labour.
My ambitions of being selected as a Tory candidate
were about to be put to the test by Lord Tebbit.
How are you gonna make your pitch now? What is it that you're offering?
I just kind of want to meet girls and stuff, researchers and stuff. I...
Go to central office! You don't have to become a Member of Parliament.
Just go to central office and get a job, you pathetic worm!
SUE: I never thought I'd agree but my God!
It can't have been like this! We can find consensus.
I'm just a jolly good chap.
So... Now, this banoffee pie I have been led to believe
was Lady Thatcher's favourite pudding.
But you tell me that she wasn't bothered about food.
I don't think she gave a damn. I didn't think she was.
She just regarded it as fuel.
Yeah. Did you ever see her eating a banoffee pie?
Someone's having us on. But you don't see her blink.
There's lots of things you don't see her doing.
Was it totally the job and nothing else? Overwhelmingly so.
Norman's right - when she sat down to a meal it was three courses and she left.
So she didn't... If you'd said to her three minutes later,
"What did you have for lunch?"
she wouldn't be able to tell you. I think that's right.
SUE: 'All this Tory talk means it's time for me to reveal my true colours.
I was born a Conservative. I was born quite old and a Conservative!
Would you ever change? Can anyone change you?
- Change? - Change.
I know this is a very difficult thing!
Change is possible. Change is good.
- Change is not necessary. - Change is always necessary.
Don't do it! Don't do it.
I think I was probably a bit too soft and easy-going.
I felt that! I always felt that you just needed to sharpen up a bit! Wet!
Yes, he was. You were the person
Margaret always thought of when she used the word, "wet".
Just a touch damp at the edges.
If you attended a Conservative party
hoping your husband would be the next candidate...
It's just a brooch, Jeffrey! That would... It's just a brooch.
I think people in the audience might vote for someone else.
You think so? You think I should take off...
I have a feeling my inability to answer the question,
"What would you do if you were an MP?"
would probably count against me even more.
'Alas, something else was about to thwart my ambitions of being an MP.'
Dirty... Anything interesting? Yes, you.
Dirty Coren rocked by more scandal.
Oh, it's rather a good photo, though.
Four in a bed? Is that all you can manage? You are 39...
Like so many Tories in the 1980s, my political career
has been brought to a premature end by a tabloid sex scandal.
Disgusting. I think you should be ashamed. For what?
Bringing us into disrepute. I'd do that, but you like it!
Oh, I do. You love it, you dirty little Tory, you!
Wait till I get you home!
As consolation for Giles's political failure, we decide
to embrace the economic boom that was sweeping Britain by the mid-1980s.
With our high-flying city lifestyles, we're fully embracing the yuppie dream.
And what better way to show off our new wealth
than a nouvelle cuisine dinner with social commentator Peter York?
Well, I'm stuffed now.
So did people really eat this?
Growing up, hearing about nouvelle cuisine it's like a joke.
Everything was tiny and small and microscopic.
The answer is, I must have.
I ate what was there.
I didn't think about it, I didn't pay for it. I bet you I ate this.
But clearly that's how aesthetics change as much as food tastes.
It looks beautiful but not if you're hungry.
It was unsmart to express the fact that you were deeply disappointed by this.
You wanted something piled high.
Our dishes are based on recipes by Anton Mosimann,
a leading architect of nouvelle cuisine.
Although it was a laudable attempt to simplify classical French cooking,
some chefs focused to much on the minimalist design and portion size.
There was a saying that nouvelle cuisine
put nothing on the plate and everything on the bill.
I was thinking surely the way to, to eat this is presumably...
Is that presumably the manner?
Yes.
It's basically a single decent mouthful.
Throughout the '80s my, my parents used to go out to these restaurants
like Chez Nico and come back with their tales of spending 250 quid.
They were typical 80s, tales of spending 250 quid.
My dad would always get a Big Mac on the way home.
I had no idea, I couldn't imagine what they were eating with these tiny little...
This is the first time I've really seen.
That was real money then, Giles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Real money.
I know, just imagine if they could have, you know, saved it.
I wouldn't have to make TV programmes about it now,
I'd just be living in a castle.
People say, "There's not much food on the plate."
But these people did no manual labour -
they weren't down a mine. The mines got closed.
The only work they did was pick up a phone
and shout at some lackey and pop it down again.
That doesn't require that many calories. What course was that?
That was the main course. That's the main bit.
As you could tell from its gigantic size. Yeah, it's done. Yeah, yeah.
I think we were easily impressed then.
# This government had an idea And Parliament made it law
# Seems like it's illegal To fight for the union any more... #
Nothing highlighted the economic divide in 1980's Britain more
than the difference between yuppie diners and striking miners.
The early '80s had seen unemployment hit three million and,
with Thatcher threatening to sack 20,000 miners, the rest decided to go on strike.
MOCK GEORDIE ACCENT: Oot, oot, oot! Maggie, Maggie, Maggie!
Out, out, out! Maggie!
Out! Maggie!
Out! Maggie, Maggie, Maggie!
Oot, oot, oot!
Are you doing the whole thing as a Geordie?
I don't know, I thought I might. I'm hungry now.
A staple food of the striking miners was a layered potato pie called pan haggerty.
It's, erm, pomme de miners, this is.
No meat, no meat for us. Unless it comes in a tin from Poland.
However, there was one desiccated foodstuff
that came to the rescue of the mining community in Wales.
What the hell was that? Pot Noodle.
Have you got one? I've got one. In me pocket.
Chicken and mushroom as well.
Just as well, my favourite.
One second.
Maggie, Maggie, Maggie!. Oot, oot, oot! Right.
Opened in 1979, Pot Noodle's factory is based in Crumlin
in the centre of the Welsh mining community
and would come to provide an unlikely source of employment for ex-miners.
Oh, man that brings back good memories. Oh!
Did you used to eat Pot Noodles? Of course.
Why do you think my complexion's like this?
Oh, it's terrible. Mmm, that's good eating.
It's like, it is like the closure of the pits.
It's wrong but once you've started,
you've started a chain reaction and you can't stop.
You might as well, you might as well eat it.
I'm ready to demonstrate again, are you?
Thatcher out. Coal. Save out pits.
What do we want? Coal not dole. When do we want it?
Yesterday. Now. Now! What do we want?
An open fire. How do we want it?
Through the extraction of coal, underground methods involving miners.
You're probably thinking, "Why has Sue got a towel over her head?"
The answer is quite simply this -
I had lunch with Norman Tebbit and Jeffrey Archer today and I think
that's a fairly prime reason not to show my face ever again in public.
If you'll excuse me...
But even for yuppies, the financial bubble burst very abruptly
on Monday the 19th of October 1987 - Black Monday.
Over £50 billion was wiped off the value of shares
for reasons that have never been fully understood.
Having invested all our money in the stock market, Sue and I are now penniless.
Morning. Morning.
Coffee? The real stuff, the filter coffee?
To which we've become used to in the fat years?
The fat years are over and it's now the emaciated years.
Which means we get this - freeze dried.
Oh, oh! I was gonna say, can I at least pop the lid?
I've just read here that there's speculation
about Prince Charles' marriage.
It's as safe as houses.
Not our house of course, that's being repossessed. But, yeah...
Pop tart?
Who you calling a pop tart? I've dressed down today.
No, no, I mean these new fangled new things,
which you put in the toaster or the microwave.
It says here "Due to possible risk of fire,
never leave your toasting appliance or microwave unattended."
Yes. So why don't we put two in and then go on holiday?
I'd better stay away from that
'cause currently I am the most flammable woman in Britain.
You remember when breakfast used to be such a rush?
We used to have to rush off to work, we had our phones,
presumably you've sold the phones?
Yes, I've pawned them, all of them. Even the little one(!)
This is a very handy new drink.
It's called Um Bongo. Do you know where they drink it?
Tanzania?
No, nor Sierra Leone, it's not that. They drink it in the Congo.
Basically what happens, the story of the drink... The Congo?
The Congo, yeah. Not the People's Democratic Republic of Congo.
Oh. Where do they eat Pop Tarts?
Ouch! Ah! Take a big bite now.
No, don't cos you'll ruin the whole day!
A-a-aw!
Is it hot?
Oh.
It's basically an envelope with molten strawberries in!
What is the outside made of?
I don't know, it's...
Is this what it's going to be like, being poor?
I can't believe it. First we have to sell the Delorean and now these.
Slighty more successful, ice skating duo Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean
were welcomed back to Britain as national treasures
after scoring gold at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics.
In Britain, ice skating suddenly became popular.
With no jobs to go to, Giles and I are seeing if we've got what it takes.
It's a great way to meet girls apparently. Really?
There's one over there but I can't catch her.
If you trip her up, I'll come over.
Oh, I missed that one!
Giles basically looked like
the boy at the disco looking, ever searching, for the lady of his dreams.
Will he find the making of a star? No.
He's gonna meet a lot of girls like that. He's just one step away
from a life partner.
We just look like two scallies in a fridge.
After ice skating, what better way to warm up
than by tucking into the icy snacks of our teenage years?
ADVERT: Bird's Ice Magic - Rich, smooth, chocolatey, then deliciously crisp.
Ice Magic, now with a taste and a price that's a treat.
You're probably thinking, "Why have I got this boring piece of ice cream?
"I want something hard, tooth-breaking and brown and artificial on top."
I want you to make it into Ice Magic!
Ah, now that's... Is that magic? It's sloppier than I remember.
That really is magic, isn't it?
You've transformed a nice piece of ice cream into,
basically, a brown diarrhoea mush. Yeah.
Magic. That's what I call magic!
Eugh! Yeah. That's really, really honking, isn't it?
It's Nana's socks on a, on a bar fire. Horrible!
And this was the perfect end to any dinner party in Croydon.
ADVERT: Walls Viennetta, one slice is never enough.
Oh, that's very nice. Because I'm now eating all of it.
Because I did used to have this.
Mmm. This would be like a treat on the weekend.
We never had it at home cos we weren't allowed to have anything
that was "slightly common."
But they used to have it next door, and so when we went next door,
the combination of our next door neighbours' mum in her tennis kit
and the possibility of a slice of Viennetta. That was the '80s for me.
We were slightly common, so this was properly a treat.
I did think it was sophisticated.
My mum used to say,
"You can't have that Viennetta, that's what them Perkinses eat."
No longer able to afford expensive meals out,
Sue and I are forced to embrace the other big culinary discovery
of the 1980s - the microwave.
It's a long, long time since I've done that. Which...
Oh, I've got some in the eye.
The sproingy thing which was meant to stop it exploding.
But microwaves when they first came along
had all kinds of horror stories and stuff that could happen.
Not long - this is quite exciting.
It says full power for six and a half minutes, so...
It came with all these kind of warnings, as new technology always will.
It was all this thing, it's as hot as the inside of a nuclear explosion.
And then there's the same thing that it could give you cancer,
it wasn't real cooking, it wasn't proper heat.
'By 1986, a quarter of British kitchens had microwave ovens.'
MICROWAVE PINGS
It's very dangerous to touch this.
If you touch this, it can blow up in your hands.
That is quite hot. Although, the strange thing is after six minutes.
you've become aware that you could have actually made a proper meal.
It's a urinal. There you go.
Here's one I made earlier.
Wines from the New World became popular in the 1980s
and nothing was cheaper than a box of Australian chardonnay.
You sure that's wine?
Very cleaning fluid. Here you are.
It's got a foam to it, hasn't it? It's all in the presentation.
That's lovely. The thing about microwaves is English food,
old-fashioned English food, doesn't lend itself to being microwaved.
You can't just put a thing in and roast it there.
Foreign food, which is basically perceived,
by the English anyway, as just a load of gloop, you can.
And if you'd eaten in the '80s,
when they started getting some proper Chinese restaurants,
this is like Chinese food from the '60s and '70s -
sweet and gloopy and not at all foreign.
I've just eaten all the chicken.
Is that chicken chow mein?
It's chicken sweet and sour and that's chicken chow mein.
Oh. That chicken's been a long time dead, hasn't it?
We were so excited, if you remember, about the microwave
that I sold the oven thinking I wouldn't need it.
Every meal we're ever going to eat again is going to be made in the microwave.
From the cornflakes through to the roast chicken.
So after Black Monday, of course, came Quiz Tuesday.
Oh, the answers can only be yes.
Rio. The answers to any Trivial Pursuit question is always Rio.
No, it's always Leonard Rossiter.
'First arriving in the shops in 1981,
Trivial Pursuit has now sold over 88 million games.
But there is still one question that remains unanswered.'
Do you think they're pieces of pie or pieces of cheese?
They're pieces of cake. Huh?
I don't know which cake. Maybe they are cake...
Sue and I soon tire of Trivial Pursuit and boxed wine
so we decide to experience the night life fashion movement
of the '80s - the new romantics.
While I attempt to channel an early stage Madonna,
Giles is strutting his stuff as Adam Ant.
Following in the footsteps of Spandau Ballet,
new romantic boys often wore more make-up than the girls.
Of course, the only way you could go out in public looking like this was drunk.
It's time for a selection of cocktails made from the ultimate 1980s liqueur.
First up, it's the B52,
a terrifying combination of Kahlua, Baileys and Cointreau.
OK, bomb the brain cells.
I can't do it!
I've got a cream beard!
Oh, God. My whole childhood has come back now.
Those desperate nights spent in clubs
when I'd drink myself witless because I'd go home alone, alone. Alone, alone...
That's the sort of drink you drink
if you want to spend the evening in a gutter...
That's nice.
...Breathing in your own sick. That's a girl's drink, it was delicious.
'Next up, a flaming Lamborghini.'
We have some Sambuca in one glass.
Oh, the old friend Kahlua. Again, Kahlua. Not the blue one.
Baileys. Not the blue one. Curacao. That has terrible memories for me.
Spread-eagled in a car park, Croydon 1987.
And when I start pouring you start drinking.
What?! Go!
Really?
I'm getting toothpaste.
Oh. It's basically sort of Colgate, coffee and ethanol.
Aaargh! But that is my memory of these drinks, is that you have a millisecond
of euphoric grandeur and then you'd be plunged deep into depression.
You had a fun childhood. That's the first time I've ever had one of those.
Is it? This is why I can't help throwing it down.
I had nothing, no mates, no girlfriends...
Oh, come on. Don't be ridiculous!
I wasn't allowed to buy records, I was kept in the cellar, I lived on oats.
The cement mixer is quite possibly the worst cocktail ever invented,
involving one shot of lemon juice and one of baileys
which then curdle in your mouth.
Now, swill, swill, swill like a piggy!
Swill like a piggy, swill, swill, swill. Swill, swill!
Swill like a piggy, swill, swill!
Oh, it's coming out!
Hang on.
Mmm, mmm, mmm!
It smells of vomit!
Ah, it's all the curdling in your mouth!
Jesus!
Oh! Oh, God!
Yeah, that's it. That for me, that's it. That's my childhood.
Look at my cacky hands.
Yes. No. Don't. That's a write-off.
They say if you can remember the '80s, you weren't there.
Lucky old me.
I'm gonna keep this particular video diary very short.
Goodnight.
After our late-night cocktail binge,
it's time to detox our way back to health.
Yes, this outfit may hide 1,000 sins,
but it's time I take control of my body.
Yes, it's time for aerobics.
Published in 1981, Jane Fonda's number one selling workout book
started the craze for aerobics, leg warmers and sweat bands.
Back then, people were chanting the mantra, "no pain, no gain".
# Let's get physical, physical I wanna get physical
# Let's get into physical... #
No pain, no Mrs Tom Selleck!
Sadly, the high-impact nature of many workouts
left many aerobics disciples with back and joint problems for life.
While Sue works out, I'm working in
and taking things slightly easier with my Sony Walkman.
MUSIC: "Take on Me" by Aha
Launched in 1979, the Walkman was the first stereo
that allowed you to walk and run around town,
with Aha ringing in your ears.
Taking a break from my workout, it's time to experience
the quintessential '80s diet - the F-Plan, a low-fat and high-fibre diet book
that sold two million copies in just five weeks on its release in 1982.
It was called the F-Plan, cos it was all to do with fibre and making sure
that things just don't hang around in your colon for very long
before they get fired out.
As a result, it was mainly called the Flatulence Plan or the Fart Plan.
'First, a tantalising baked bean cassoulet.'
Great. So this flatulent landslide is horrible. That is the taste...
...of the worst bits of my childhood.
But it will make me lose weight because I have absolutely no desire to eat it.
For dessert, a charming dish of stewed prunes and bananas.
Oh, dear...
Within ten minutes of eating this, there'd be a nuclear winter, there really would.
The amount of explosive gas generated from these.
We think we've got trouble with global warming.
If everybody stuck to this diet,
the human race would have been wiped out ten years ago.
Yeah. I feel a bit like a wind sock right now.
Might go and deal with that. Oh, dear... Scared to move though.
Actually, thank God I'm wearing a leotard, that's all I can say!
Hold it in, hold it in...
This is madness. I mean, with this diet thing, the F-Plan diet,
the G-Plan diet, the K-Plan diet, the fibre diet, the calorie-controlled diet.
They weren't eating anything anyway in the '80s.
I have eaten practically nothing -
I'm wasting away, there is nothing left of me.
I mean, can I pinch more than an inch? Barely a millimetre.
I am starving. Tell no-one, I am having some Opal Fruits.
That's what I did in the '80s.
That's good. Good, clean fun.
Luckily, Black Monday was just a blip.
We're back in the money and I'm heading out for lunch.
Although I didn't know it at the time, something was to happen
in the late 1980s that would have a huge effect on my life.
There was a revolution in London's restaurant scene.
And what restaurants need more than anything is restaurant critics.
Less focused on Michelin stars and more focused on
decent user friendly food, Rowley Leigh's Kensington Place,
Alistair Little's eponymous restaurant,
and Simon Hopkinson's Bibendum were a move away from nouvelle cuisine.
These young British chefs put the focus back on food
that you wanted to eat in places that made you feel welcome.
Is this the thing that saw off nouvelle cuisine?
Yes, yes, yes. You started looking for things that were
maybe older or highly-flavoured and not necessarily small.
It's not difficult to make, it tastes delicious and it looks wonderful.
Were you full of kind of '80s tossers in the restaurant then?
Was it a lot of big mobile phones and...
To a certain extent, yes. It was in the '80s that people
started to go to restaurants as a regular recreational activity
rather than special occasions.
That was the real revolution which is still going on.
So people were able to be relaxed in a restaurant
rather than looking forward to it...
Much more so. They became more experienced at eating out. Yes, yes.
This is something you didn't get in the '80s, is it? Chef serving.
Three revolutionary chefs of the '80s food revolution
that's made eating the way it is today.
One of the things you got, possibly a by-product, was restaurant critics.
A good thing or a bad thing?
Very good, very good.
Is that because you lot have been treated well by critics? Of course!
'But while the food led the way,
these new restaurants also concentrated on interior design.
'Right down to the ashtrays.'
They must have stolen these? They did, in their 100s.
With those big boxy '80s jackets, there's loads of room...
You could purchase them.
What do you do with them now? They're butter dishes now.
That's how merchandising started off - with stealing.
The only way to stop people stealing was to sell it to them.
And you could even, if you saw somebody stealing it,
you wouldn't even mention it, just put it on the bill.
Normally we could have a toast
and then I'd toast something '80s like Margaret Thatcher.
I think we should toast you three for changing the way we eat,
and for which I have every reason to be extremely grateful. Thank you.
Thank you very much, boys. How charming. You made life worth living.
Modern design was not just for restaurants.
Across the country people were embracing the clean lines of Ikea,
which first opened in 1987.
Yes, well I need you to shift 1,000 units before sun down
otherwise my ass is toast, goodbye!
Sorry, I was just on the phone to Mummy.
'Assembling flat pack furniture was as easy as cooking a microwave meal.
'In theory.'
Some sort of pillow arrangement here.
It's the weekend but no lie-in for us.
RADIO ALARM ACTIVATES
We can't sleep in, we've got to have a dinner party in 11 hours.
We need to start preparing for it.
Right, put one marinade tuna in...
posh fanciful stuff that we'll pretend we came across on holiday in Oo-oombria.
Then a shop, I'll do that, I'll take the new car. Then I'd like you to...
'The 1980s saw the birth of the foodie.
'People with a nerdy passion for food.
Dinner parties were the perfect place to showcase your gourmet credentials.'
Mineral waters, how many mineral waters have we got?
Yeah, we've got, we've got Badoit, Perrier,
Vittel, Evian, Vichy, San Pellegrino...
Oh, that's just six.
We can't just have six different mineral. We need four or five more.
We need one that's come from Iceland or from Fiji. Fiji, we need Fiji.
Fiji, we need some Fijian water but I'll get that.
6.04. OK? In the morning?
What have we been doing? We've lost two hours!
I know, well I've got tuna to marinade and a C5 to crank up.
I'm heading out to shop
in the latest in 20th-century transportation - the Sinclair C5.
Launched in 1985, this battery-powered gem cost just £399.
Sadly, bad press and the feeling of total vulnerability whilst driving
the C5 meant it was doomed for the scrap yard and eternal ridicule.
Speeds of up to 15 miles an hour, I have to move,
otherwise I won't be at the shops till midnight.
To the foodie, food was no longer just sustenance.
It was something to be passionate about.
This new interest in food was fuelled by travel
as more of us became influenced by international cuisine.
People weren't just taking one holiday a year, as weekend breaks
became all the rage, increasing exposure to foreign food and wine.
Little bit of Tatty, another bit of Tatty.
Massive, massive bit of Bolly.
'Giles and I are entertaining some hugely powerful '80s figures
'so I'm going all out to impress.'
Essential for any gourmet was the foodie handbook
which guided you to the perfect dinner party, including how to lay the table.
First start with a decent table cloth, napkins, sturdy glasses and candles.
You have to have the right French mustard and raspberry vinegar.
And to finish off, some table decorations such as ivy.
Lovely!
I'm racing back with the food
as Giles is desperate to get cracking with the dessert.
With a topping of mascarpone, sugar and eggs, Italian tiramisu
quickly became popular at 1980s dinner parties.
It's looking good.
Right, so these go in the bottom of here? Yeah.
Yeah, but arrange them nicely.
Called Tiramisu, because in some Italian dialect or another
it means sort of a pick-me-up. Pick-me-up.
The thing is, if we have all that coffee,
it's gonna pick you up to the point you'll never come down.
Next, marsala wine. They say drizzle but...
That's a tramp's drizzle what you've just done there. A tramp's drizzle?
Yeah. There was one of those outside the front door when I got up this morning!
Have you got a little plate there? Oh, that looks good.
It's gone. I'm gonna put a bit more on
cos otherwise they'll be just bourbon fingers.
Well, that's why they're called sponge fingers,
is they just sop up alcohol, but I don't know.
There you go. Have this one.
Oh, it's like a Tampax soaked in paraffin!
No more, no more, no more, no more, no more booze, no more booze!
That's a whole bottle you've put in there.
Get ready with your sprinkles, that's what you've gotta do.
I'm gonna layer this. That is a proper fatty duvet.
Mmm!
Look how much you get from hardly any chocolate. It's good, innit?
With our guests about to arrive,
Sue and I just have time to change into our '80s finest.
For our final meal we're joined by Carol Decker out of T'Pau.
Bob Farrand, the founder of the Guild of Fine Food.
Good evening, come in.
'80s expert Richard Evans.
PR guru Lynn Franks, the inspiration for Absolutely Fabulous.
Writer and baldy Toby Young.
Best of all, Ken Livingstone, Thatcher's arch rival
and leader of the alternative government, the GLC.
Can we chuck the Pinot grigio down the table?
Pinot Grigot, now that's a wine of the '80s.
The essential thing wasn't the white wine but the mineral water.
You combined it to create your spritzer. I remember Perrier.
Perrier was the big thing.
Ciabatta as we know it was created
in Italy in 1982 as a response to the success of the French baguette.
Isn't it pronounced "chibarta"?
But in the south of England, "chibarta", yes, but,
but anywhere north of Watford, it's "chibatta".
We have Margaret Thatcher to thank...
For being here today.
...For the culinary revolution that took place in the '80s.
Mrs Thatcher did this with the big bang,
got rid of all those boring old public school bankers.
All the banks over there, they're foreign and they all wanted good food
and they weren't prepared to put out with, you know, two veg and meat.
You've come round to Thatcher's side rather late.
Give me a good meal, I'm anybody's!
As a PR in the '80s, I would have these lunches, and it was just normal
that you'd have three courses plus at least a bottle of wine.
If I was taken out by business people in the early '80s,
the meal would start at 12.30
and you wouldn't leave the restaurant before 4.30 or 5pm.
What were the preferred destinations, El Vino's?
I can't remember, I was pissed!
This was why that lot got wiped out when there was deregulation.
All these sharp young Americans came in with their mineral water,
and they were sober whilst the Brits were all absolutely bladdered.
During the '80s, the percentage of men
with a body mass index of over 30 increased by 15%.
Was that when obesity got invented?
Sadly our boozy tiramisu is not a success.
Not especially delicious really, is it?
Not especially nice, it's got a slightly odd after-taste.
This is the most disgusting tiramisu I've had since the '80s.
Fantastic! I'll work with that.
Amaretti biscuits were rarely eaten.
There was much more fun to be had with the paper wrappers.
Yes! We're in trouble!
London today was burnt to the ground by Ken Livingstone!
By a bitter ex-mayor. Yeah!
CHEERING
Oh, unlucky, Carol! Carol!
It landed in my baby vomit!
I can't eat it now.
Here you go, the listeria wheel has arrived.
Following the salmonella egg scandal,
Stilton found itself at the centre of another food scare in 1989
when it was blamed for several cases of listeria poisoning.
The Stilton Cheese Makers Association, for better or for worse,
gave way to the food police and banned the use of unpasteurised milk in Stilton.
Many thought this ruined the taste.
So we've found a 21st century unpasteurised version called Stichelton.
I don't think we ever ate these crackers, even in the '80s.
Oh, Lynne!
These are water biscuits. We had...
No, these are cream crackers actually.
Lynne, eat your listeria and shut up!
Let me tell you, Langham's did not serve Jacob's cream crackers
with their cheese after dinner.
You are not at Langham's, love, we're at my house for dinner!
With our guests complaining about the food,
it's time to bring the evening to a swift end.
To the 1980s, well done.
An end to shoulder pads, this metallic outfit, and quite frankly better tiramisu.
And to T'Pau and the GLC as well, long may they...
And the miners' strike. The miners!
You can't sit with Toby Young, Ken Livingstone, Carol Decker out of T'Pau
and Lynne Franks without realising
that there is something positive to come from such extremes.
It was a decade of extremes which has allowed the balance that we have today,
this fantastic gastronomic nutritional food world that we're in now.
It is a lot of silliness to create a little bit of sensibility.
For the last week, I've looked like a drag queen at South Fork.
I've danced badly to terrible music, and I've hung around with people
that I shouldn't have done, done things that I ought to have thought twice about.
I've been drunk every night on six, seven times my own body weight of cheap,
exotic liqueurs.
So, thank you.
In that respect, I've spent this last week
as I spent the 1980s when it first came around, so great!
It's been a brilliant trip down memory lane, thank you.
I think it's time to have a little bit of respect when we talk about the 1980s.
It was a great decade
and it made us the people we are today.
Back in the 21st century, I'm off to see how my heart has dealt
with a week of 1980s stress and excess.
Good to see you again. Nice to see you. How are you?
You tell me. Less well, I think, than probably when you left me.
You're not bad really.
We've got your heart trace here from the time you were on
the heart monitor.
And we can look at what happened to you
when you were doing all the things that people do in the '80s. But I'm alive.
You are alive, and actually, you're surprisingly healthy.
We can look at what your heart did when you had your five espresso shots.
And your heart rate here went up from about 70 beats per minute,
which is normal, up to over 100 beats a minute.
Just from drinking coffee? Just from drinking coffee.
How long did my heart...?
About 15-20 minutes. 15? Really?
That may not sound very long, and you're a healthy guy,
but you can imagine that someone who had
underlying heart disease, who drinks too much coffee
and gets a rise in their heart rate and a rise in blood pressure,
that could be the sort of thing that might start
a chain of events that could start a heart attack for example.
So I'm basically '80s proof?
You have, in the time that you were doing this,
you were doing it for how long? A week? Yeah.
I think if you did this for a year, you might not be '80s proof.
I could tell from living in the '80s that it wasn't very good for me.
I could tell when I was drinking the espressos that my heart was racing.
Constantly drunk and then hungover was terrible.
Diet was grabbed on the hoof.
I wasn't living the actual stressful life of a broker but it was
a close approximation, certainly an nutritional approximation.
I'm very glad that I was a schoolboy cos it's no life for an adult.
As a grown-up, it would clearly have killed me.
Next week, we'll be going back to medieval England.
We'll be gorging on mythical beasts.
I'll be learning how to be a knight.
And Sue will have a run-in with a ravenous bird of prey.
Don't eat my hat!
MUSIC: "Land Of Make Believe" by Bucks Fizz
Arrest Perkins!