B is for ...

B is for ...

Boy George One of the most popular and successful new wave groups of the early 1980s music scene were 'Culture Club', racking up 7 straight Top Ten hits in the UK and six Top Ten hits in the US. As the MTV era dawned, it was Boy George's iconic fashion style: cross dressing, heavy make up and vibrant dresses, coupled with his wit, quips and soundbites (long before we knew what a soundbite was) that helped to propel the group to stardom, as much as their infectious poppy sound; a sound that would have your macho uncle singing along to on the radio, before reeling in horror at the site of Boy George on Top of the Pops. The band split up in 1987, and recent years have seen George in the limelight for less happy reasons.

Lets, though, remember those heady days of the 80s and listen to 3 Culture Club classics that help to define the music of the 1980s:

Karma Chameleon

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me

Church of the Poison Mind

Blackadder Wednesday, June 15th, 1983 and a new series was broadcast over the airwaves that was to come to dominate and define 1980s TV. For the first time, we met the dreadful, the deceitful, but the oh so funny Edmund Blackadder and his chums, that included Baldrick, Lord Percy and others. Played by the brilliant Rowan Atkinson, Blackadder the First was set in the 15th Century - and made comedy from History and Shakespeare, perhaps two of the dullest subjects we were studying at school at the time.

The show ran for 4 series, spanning the 1980s, with the brilliant 'Blackadder goes Forth', set in the trenches of the First World war, airing in 1989. Many feel that this was the best of a brilliant bunch of Blackadder series, but my favourite remains the first. Television in the 1980s was so much the richer for the despicable Blackadder. Enjoy a couple of treats below, and watch, again, our first introduction to Edmund Blackadder, and then the end of his reign as the Archbishop of Canterbury. TV at its very best.





Bananarama ... the most successful British girl group in pop music history. Formed in 1981, they initially produced great pop songs, all be it with little substance. In 1984 they released 'Robert De Niro's Waiting' giving the group a gravitas they had previously lacked. In 1986 they joined the production maestro's of 'Stock, Aitken & Watreman' who helped catapult them to the stratospheric success they enjoyed. Cool enough to be cool, but poppy enough for mass appeal, everyone loved Bananarama - girls wanted to be them, and boys, well boys ...!

Great pop, great music, listen to these:

Robert De Niro's Waiting

Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)

Love in the First Degree