Butlins 1987 - Butlins 2014: a tale of two eras.
It was a plan fated to go wrong from the outset.
Marie and I decided to bunk over the perimeter fence into Bognor Butlins one heady summer’s night when Pet Shop Boys’ Always on My Mind topped the charts.
Little did we know that security had daubed the high fence with a green paint. This then showed up luminous under the disco lights. In the course of clambering over the fence, Marie’s tassel leather jacket – at the height of fashion in 1987 – became daubed with paint.
Needless to say, the paint flashed up fluorescent as we made our way into the cabaret room and danced around our handbags to Things Can Only Get Better by Howard Jones. As the burly security men headed our way, we made a dash for the exit. But Marie’s stiletto heel snapped en route so the security men caught up with her.
And so it was with my hen weekend at the 80s live music festival in May 2014 – almost three decades later - that I returned to Bognor Butlins to call Marie out of the deep freeze and return her to her rightful place – dancing to 80s hits, drinking shots of Blue Nun, smoking SuperKings, crimping her hair, wearing skinny jeans, her Iron Maiden T-shirt, Poison perfume and black kohl eyeliner.
The time had come to bring Marie back to life. And so it was that I said the magic words to break the spell of 1987.
Babushka,
Babushka,
Babushka,
Aye Aye
And there she was; Marie thawed out and looking resplendent with big hair and not looking too unlike Tina Turner’s in Beyond Thunderdrome in the Mad Max movies.
“Aw right love. Ow’ve ya been?” said Marie, as chirpy as ever.
“Marie we’re going to the Butlins 80s live music weekend for my hen weekend. We’ll be seeing live performances of Howard Jones, Toyah, ASWAD, ABC and Musical Youth.”
“Fantastic I saw Toyah last week at Worthing Pavilion but the Brighton Brew Crew turned up and trashed the place; they’re such a pain those Crusties,” she said.
And then it dawned on me that Marie had no awareness of the intervening years. She had started off where she had left off – back in July 1987.
“Marie, I lot has changed since 1987. Its 2014 now. Toyah’s still around but things have changed.”
“Like what”
“Well for starters, Toyah’s had a facelift and what’s more you can’t smoke indoors and secondly all drinks are served in plastic cups. You can even buy a bottle of Heineken in plastic. Can you imagine”
“No way. But where are you supposed to smoke?”
“You’ve got to go outdoors.”
“What even in the wind and rain.”
“Even in the wind and rain.”
“Geez…That's gonna do wonders to my hair innit? So what else?”
“Well there’s a lot less spats and punch ups on the dance floor, less stubbing out fag ends on the floorboards, less spitting, less spraying hairspray and less hurling things on stage.”
“Glad to hear of it.”
“But it feels a lot more controlled nowadays. Security, CCTV-cameras and security ropes everywhere. There’s no room for spontaneous self-expression and it’s all quite sanitised.”
“So how’ve you survived since the advent of 80s music?”
“There’s been a steady flow of 80s revivals, especially among the student population and at Mediterranean holiday resorts but they’re never the same.”
“What do you mean.”
“The 80s nights are usually compiled by someone who never experienced the 80s first hand so they just choose from a narrow selection of dance anthems such as Wake me Up before you Go Go. They forget that the 80s covered a wide spectrum of musical genres, starting with SKA and new romantics that evolved into electronica, and then we left the decade with the early warehouse raves. You simply don’t get that at 80s student nights. I don’t bother with them any more unless of the DJs play vinyl that he bought first time round.”
“Anything else I need to know about life after the 80s?”
“Well I can tell you about iPhones and the internet. But perhaps we can leave that to another time. The music will be the same – after all we are at an 80s weekend – and I’ve booked a chalet that hasn’t been updated since the 80s. They’ve even got one of those block TV sets and a bath without a shower. Can you imagine anything more disgusting than queuing for bath time?”
“I quite like baths.”
“Not if you’re sharing a chalet with a bunch a girls all waiting to wash and dress each morning.”
“So is Butlins still the same; is there still the cabaret room with velvet theatre curtains and knobby knees and glamorous gran competitions?”
“No idea but I do know there’s lots of concerts to watch and song so to dance to. So come on let’s return to the 80s that we once knew, loved, lived and breathed…Let’s return to that time…”
