12. ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...LEGWARMERS

The absolute very first time I saw a pair of legwarmers were wrapped around the shapely calves of Olivia Newton John in her video to Physical in 1981. ONJ still had some caché from playing Sandy in Grease having completely reinvented herself following her early career which veered between a distinctly uncool cover of Take Me Home Country Roads (which personally - shhhh - I loved) and finishing an equally uncool 4th in the Eurovision Song Contest behind some Swedish no-hopers (and what happened to them then, eh?). As I told you in an earlier blog - here - she was clearly old enough to be John Travolta’s mum.

‘Physical’ was not exactly a track you’d have found on Side 2 of Never Mind the Bollocks but the song and video were definitely more Sandy than Sandra Dee (“there’s nothing left to talk about unless it’s horizontally” – what the actual fuck, Olivia!!). This video had all the elements to catapult her back to the top of the teenage boys chart above Pamela Stephenson…until we realised she was wearing thick woolly socks.

Fame hadn’t made it to my local cinema in 1980 - neither had the Blues Brothers although I managed to get to see Private Benjamin so not all was lost – but I gather it was leg warming heaven. The TV spin-off series was still a year away so the Physical video was my first opportunity to see a sexy woman wearing thick long socks since I’d walked in on my grandmother by mistake as she was getting dressed.

Legwarmers - along with leotards - became associated with dancing and exercise, neither of which struck me as activities which required such elaborate dresswear. Lightly shimmering to Soft Cell on a Saturday night, as I was known to do (pretty stylishly if I say so myself), was hardly going to work up a sweat and, if you wanted to get fit, that’s what PE lessons were for and legwarmers weren't on any approved school gym kit list that I ever saw.

In fact, what you wore in PE lessons relied exclusively on what kit your mother remembered to pack for you to take to school on the days in question. As many of us experienced – and some still bear the mental scars to this day – if you forgot your kit, you had to take the lesson in your pants and socks (and, if you were lucky enough to be wearing one, a vest). On the odd occasion I’ve been to the gym more recently, it looks like this is what everyone wears to exercise nowadays but, in those days, it was absolutely mortifying.

There’s an obsession with keeping fit and taking exercise today but, when we were young, I didn’t know any parents who kept fit, other than dads who played competitive sport (and the on-field punch-ups and off-field piss-ups suggested that fitness was not the primary motivation for their participation). If you saw someone jogging down the road, you’d assume they were late for work. If they were wearing the sort of thing which ONJ was sporting in her video, you’d assume they’d escaped from a nearby institutional facility.

If we’d had role models who encouraged young people to keep active, it would’ve helped. Instead, we saw our sporting heroes – Keegan and ‘Enry Cooper – sitting around in the showers discussing the great smell of Brut whilst our favourite bionic-related TV shows would prompt nothing more vigorous than slow-motion sprinting around the playground like versions of Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers. Visually very striking but not much cop when it came to getting fit. I probably drew more exercise inspiration from the Shake & Vac advert.

Anyway, it wasn’t the fitness aspect of legwarmers that was the problem, it was when I started to notice friends of mine from the girls school wearing them at parties (and possibly in school too for all I knew). They were not my favourite item of clothing and I obviously still had that shocking memory of granny to haunt me but a) what’s it got to do with me and b) I was a new romantic at the time so I’m a fine one to talk.

Legwarmers weren’t the worse fashion atrocity of the 80s though - take a bow, jump suits, and thank your lucky stars that Sheena Easton secured that recording contract on The Big Time. Some of the other clothing of the time – stone-washed jeans, fingerless gloves, buttoned-up blouses and pixie boots – actually looked pretty good. This all fell apart when Dexys came along and told us, a little unnecessarily, to come on Eileen. That led to an influx of dungarees and neckerchiefs which might have fitted in around the campfire in gypsy communities but looked distinctly out of place on spotty-faced teenagers outside Our Price or Woolies on the high streets of Halifax.

I was always adamant (no, not him) that 70s fashion didn't have a prayer of a revival but look how flairs stormed back into our lives not so long ago (or was that just me?). It gives me hope that frilly shirts, baggy trousers and winklepickers could join puffa skirts, shoulder pads and pixie boots in enjoying another day in the sun. And, if Eileen's still game, we could make it a party to remember.

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Next Time: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME.......BROOKE BOND TEA CARDS