My Jubilee Arch - June 16 1977

My diary's a positive whirlwind of royalty imagery in the Jubilee summer, isn't it? Here we find me describing, in between hopeless poems and delusional self portraiture, the horseshoe shaped archway I was designing to commemorate the Jubilee by hanging it over my bedroom door for, I can only guess, no-one to see. Oh, look, I've just found a photo of the very arch I describe in this diary. Yes, it still exists, in a cupboard, in my childhood home:

It's decorated with hundreds of tiny comic characters and panels from some of my favourite strips of the time - Barry Smith's Conan, Gil Kane's Spider-Man and Neal Adams Vision featuring prominently, alongside a Queen logo and a celebration of our school rock band which was, by that stage, called Walter Tottle And The Expanding Liberals With A Member Of The Royal Family, The Corgis and a Shaggy Dog. Why oh why were we not more successful?


Records For The Day were an interesting mix. Sure we all remember The Muppet Show and ELP, but Hollywood by Rufus?

Bernard Manning & Murder Most English - June 2 1977

And if any illustration were needed of just how different 1977 was from today, here he see an illustration of racist comedian Bernard Manning, wearing a union jack waistcoat, on a spread which includes TV shows Top Of The Pops, Royal Heritage and Murder Most English. No comment from me, no sense of irony, just an innocent acceptance of all things Royal in the run up to the Jubilee.


And isn't that a beautiful picture by Mick Brownfield, cut out of the Radio Times and necessitating me writing the whole page sideways to fit it in. Around this time, my Dad was something to do with Radio Leicester, the details of which I didn't take enough notice of at the time, and we got a free Radio Times every week. Mick Brownfield, meanwhile, had also produced the artwork for one of my favourite albums of 1977, The Goodies' Nothing To Do With Us. We'll talk about my musical taste on another day.

See this page on the Peoples History Of Pop.

My Records For The Day were Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy by Queen and Strutting Ground from Rock Follies of 77.