The 70's and 80's in Ireland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119107251#Comment_119107251

The 80s was still the era of the permanent pensionable job. Those that had one stayed- those that didn’t, emigrated if they could and had skills and/or education to travel with.

Interest rates were Sky high, incomes low in general, tax was ridiculous but if you could get mortgage approval you could get a house- the prices weren’t as ridiculous as they are now. Council houses were the norm for many- but that allowed them to work and raise a family with a roof over their heads- but wages for skilled workers like plumbers and carpenters weren’t near as high as they are today.

IT as a mainstream job was still in its infancy in the 1980s in Ireland- a teacher, guard, bank official after say 7 years service would have been on decent wages - certainly enough to get a Dublin 3 bed semi mortgage over 20 years. But these would have been considered “normal” jobs- not extra ordinary - if you drove a new Mercedes’ or bmw in the 1980s you had seriously more money than most- politicians and company directors would have but most could only dream of such luxuries. A foreign holiday was still classed as a luxury - most still holidayed in Ireland.

fryup

yep, even to travel by plane over to London was seen as exotic

Hotblack Desiato

It used to be IR£300 for a return flight Dublin-London in the 80s which was far more than a week's wages for most.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/108189000#Comment_108189000

Managed to find a pic:

Anyone else remember these? They were around for a few years in the second half of the 80s and then they just disappeared. I used to love them. There doesn't seem to be anything like them available now which is a shame.

Badly Drunk Boy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120008674#Comment_120008674

Is that the Sallynoggin bus across from Bus Stop/Freebird Records? 😉 I remember seeing those escalopes things back in the day but never tried them. I was never into ham and cheese.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120008674#Comment_120008674

They were loud as fûck down the back… and very smoky… between passengers smoking and the engine..

cj maxx

Cutting turf on the mountain, , snaring rabbits. Money was at a premium. If the was a bit of mould on a slice of bread you scraped it off.

Mad_maxx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119096476#Comment_119096476

My late granny had a phone voice , she didn’t get a phone until she was seventy seven ( 1987 )

JupiterKid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120008674#Comment_120008674

Absolute bangers by the late 1980s when I had the misfortune to use them on my way to school each morning - that were very badly maintained, broke down all the time, freezing cold upstairs in the winter and the rear of the lower deck would fill up with fumes from the engine.

Banana Republic days...

BrianD3

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120009698#Comment_120009698

You went to school in a Galtee Ham & Cheese Escalope? The 80s was even worse than I remembered!

riclad

you don,t wish for something you dont have, people played games on consoles,pcs .instead of netflix there was satellite tv, or sky tv, 100s of tv channels, or cable tv. people listed to pirate radio ,or bbc radio, before 2fm existed, or radio luxembourg.

now theres endless choice on youtube, tik tok,netflix, many games on xbox look as good as a movie. people would buy porn magazines .

people would put up aerials just to watch bbc,itv,c4 or else get cable tv .many tv stations switched off at midnight. we were not bored ,people probably read more books or magazines than young people nowadays

wotzgoingon

I remember my Da stealing the pipe after the guy came out to cut us off quite literally. He cut us off many times over the years. He would go up with a ladder and snip the coaxial cable and then cut it again where it when into the sitting room at the front of the house. And all you had to do is connect it back up. But My Da didn't do it properly as the reception would be real iffy. I was a child then and knew nothing about it but I was an electrician for years so if I was a spark back then we could have stolen the pipe and have it connected properly.

For Forks Sake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120011713#Comment_120011713

..

Cluedo Monopoly

Christmas would definitely start later in the 80s. We wouldn't put up decorations until a few days before Xmas day. You were also genuinely thankful for presents and nice food/sweets. Nowadays people have everything they want already.

Count Dracula

Had no phone until 1980. Used to be a public one across the road.

It was 82 pence for 10 silk cut Red, we would usually go 3's or 4's on a packet. Whoever vomited first usually lost out on any spares. Burger Bites were 10p. Chomps and Wham bars something similar. It was 20p Schools bus fare. A ticket to the schoolboys terrace in Lansdowne was 2 pound, for a 5 nations game. In 1987 it was one pound to see Ireland v Romania, we won 60 - 0 and it was at the time the largest international victory ever, it was only 4 points a try.

I cycled into town on a regular basis. There were no cycle paths. Clanbrassil street was a derelict shell from Leonard's Corner all the way to St Patricks Cathedral, it looked like a bomb site. Imagine all those redbrick apartments now were just decrepit old Georgian houses with wild shrubbery giving shelter to the South Inner City heroin users who took refuge inside. Gardner street wasn't far behind, it was another wasteland.

McDonalds opened one store i think on Grafton Street? Or maybe O'Connell street.

There was a cinema where st Stephens green centre is . Might have been called the Green Cinema. The Adelphi, The Savoy, The Carlton, The Screen. You would get listings in the Evening Press or the Herald. You could smoke at the Cinema, there would be a haze of smoke, all seats had ashtrays. You could smoke upstairs on the buses, like a trooper.

Condoms were illegal until the King Charles J Introduced them, via prescription only, to the Free State. Before that you just had to get married and keep her washed at all times. I didn't pop my cherry until the early 90's, I had terrible acne and we never had enough hot water, I stank fairly high no doubt, woooooooooo. Mother of Christ, who is that? I would use my brothers Old Spice at the discos, where I would ask every girl there for a dance during the slow sets.

For any millennials reading, a slow set was a 10-12 minute period of romantic slow music played roughly every hour at the Disco. It was a great opportunity to get some awkward French kissing in. A " Frenchie " were the precursor to the modern shift or snog. Boob rubbing and dry humping was widespread in the corner couches. Those were the days my friends. Dock Martens, Paisly shirts , black leather jackets with patches stitched onto them with the names and logos of your favorite band.

Millennials might also be interested in knowing that nobody wore English Club Soccer Jerseys either, the Flecky tracksuit and shiny jersey of choice only creeped in towards the very late eighties. The fact still remains that the Premier League has ensured that Britain still has a fundamental stranglehold on Irish sports fans, it is very very sad. You didn't hang around your local shouting " ah come on Manupool" etc on a Sunday afternoon either, the pubs were closed and they only played sport on a Sunday in the north of England, Yorkshire and Scotland. In the bookies you would listen to the races on MW radio, the odds were compiled by a dude on a blackboard with chalk.

There were only 2 TV stations. We watched a Soap Opera every Saturday night which was based around an unscrupulous family from Texas who lived in a ranch called South Fork, all of them in the same gaff ,3 generations. They also moonlighted as the richest Oil Producers in the United States. It was called Dallas and was a national institution. The show centered around the Ewing family, who when they weren't fighting over dinner, or drinking endless amounts of Johnny Walker Red label from a mahogany cabinet in either their office or living room, managed to spend the rest of their time lying topless in a double bed with whoever it was implicated they were screwing at the time. Top stud was JR, the eldest son of Jock and poor aul dote Miss Ellie. JR was your textbook backstabbing womaniser who you just could not help but adore. He was married to former Miss USA Sue Ellen, who fancied the local ranch hand Dusty, who was JR's dad illegitimate sons' head Cowboy, his named was Ray. Ray was a nice guy but painfully boring he went steady with some bland type who never wore as much revealing clothes as the Cheerleader lookalike Lucy who was JR's, Ray's and Bobby's ( get to him in sec ) other brother's daughter. Can't remember his name, he was an off screen character anyways, lived in Knots Landing, don't ask I think possibly posh Los Angeles. The aforementioned Bobby was JR's sibling headache and they were always at each other. Bobby's touch was the divine Pamela who was played sexily and touched the auto neuronic erogenous zones of every red blooded house husband who couldn't spare himself a fiver for 3-4 pints of a Saturday night. Instead he visually stimulated himself and enjoyed mild stiffy's watching Lucy or Victoria Principal flaunt around in backless strapless cocktail dresses or ever so subtly see through blouses. Oh yeah I almost forgot the luckless loser Cliff Barnes who had a constant vendetta against the Ewing family ( except Miss Ellie who has to be easily the biggest passive aggressive character ever created in the history of filmmaking, right down to her annoying accent, and squinting weeney grey eyes). The best craic usually occurred at the perennial fist fight at the oil barons ball or the bomb diving of the Ewing swimming pool at the annual barbecue, I recall a few fisticuffs at that as well. Or when someone was shot, Kidnapped, murdered etc at the season finale. Which in full credit to the Irish televison viewer was rarely watched again after the producers decided to resurrect Bobby Ewing from the dead by convincing the remaining brain dead viewership that the entire previous series had been a dream that Pamela had. I was out by that stage in case any of you think I was that phucking thick. Things to be doing.

They don't make them like they used to.

wotzgoingon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120012721#Comment_120012721

It was a good read until you went on a mad rant about some show I never watched. Didn't even read it I quickly glanced through it. (the part about the tv show that is)

riclad

Even in the 80s people would put aerials on the roof to get BBC and ITV or get cable TV people smoked everywhere work pubs offices. You could not buy condoms in supermarkets it was happy d to get contraception it was a big deal when MTV was on cable and you could watch music videos instead of waiting to watch top of the pops once a week

Any single person with a job like a nurse Garda could buy a house on one salary

Rents were low it was easy to get a flat or a bedsit Dublin had a lot of old derelict buildings falling down empty before apartments were built all over the place

and new offices were built after old buildings were knocked down

People mostly stayed in jobs till they retired all documents bank records were on files paper documents company's were just starting to use computers in the 80s people in the country would have large aerials to get BBC itv signal

If a woman in the civil service got married she was expected to leave her job

Well off people had a large stereo hi fi system and a 32 inch Sony TV

It was common for married people to have 4 or 5 kids

There' was no online bullying or trolls since the internet did not exist people only took photos with expensive camera,s

Usually at weddings or party's

blackbox

28 inch was considered to be a huge tv.

cml387

Talking about cinemas as you were (I'm not rom Dublin so bear with me) there used to be a cinema I believe at the bottom of O'Connel Bridge House called I think the Film Centre.

The reason I mention this is that it seemed to show some of the more risque films (at least those that managed to get past the film censor).

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120013713#Comment_120013713

Yeah. I think it was the predecessor of the IFI in Temple Bar and may also have been in what is now the Sugar Club for a time. That was the sugar companies private cinema originally!

SuperBowserWorld

People were not obsessed with fitness.

Now, it's like people are training to join The Avengers.

Still no use when actual physical work needs to be done.

🤣

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120013713#Comment_120013713

….

Caquas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120013947#Comment_120013947

The Irish Film Centre was the target of one of series of bomb attacks in Dublin in 1972/74. No one claimed responsibility for the attack which could have killed dozens if it exploded a little later when the late night showing was due to finish. In the atmosphere of the time, the Gardai assumed this was the work of Republicans but it is quite possible that Loyalists were responsible for the whole series of bombings. It would be very strange if the Provos were behind it because public sympathy for Republicans had rarely been higher in Dublin after Bloody Sunday.

http://archive.oireachtas.ie/2004/REPORT_20041101_0.html

Here’s an eyewitness account.

“I went to the Film Centre cinema with my wife Mary…. We took our seats about six feet from one of the doors. We were watching the film and nothing unusual happened until about 1.30 a.m. At about this time, I got a strong smell of something which came from the direction of the door near me. The smell was sharp and seemed like something burning. A few minutes later, I heard a tremendous blast. The blast seemed quite near me and it raised a cloud of dust in the cinema. I felt as if my body was being torn apart. People were screaming. We all got down on our hands and knees in a natural instinct to protect ourselves… There was extreme confusion all over the place. I realised immediately that a bomb had gone off. My first reaction was to get my wife and myself out of the cinema in case there was another bomb in the place….

We went across the road to Burgh Quay away from the cinema. From this position, I saw a complete wreckage of glass in the vicinity of the cinema. The shops and stores nearby were damaged extensively. In a few minutes, a fleet of ambulances and patrol cars arrived on the scene.”

riclad

There was no housing crisis rents were cheap gen z has it tough now you can work hard and have no chance of buying a house while be stuck paying rent for mediocre accomodation if you went to a cafe or a pub people talked instead of looking at phones now people spend hours on social media or uploading pictures to Instagram now at any public event people are taking photos or selfies

Hotblack Desiato

Punctuation was a thing.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120016503#Comment_120016503

There was a severe housing crisis in the early 1970s, with actual trailer parks popping up as alternatives.

Hotblack Desiato

They were still around in the early 80s, a guy in my class lived in one and a girl in my sister's class lived in another one. They were like what you'd see today at some seaside resorts. Eventually demolished and replaced with 'proper' housing.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120016912#Comment_120016912

yup, and we still managed to resolve it, even when we were pretty much broke as a country, compared to our modern more wealthy nation!

jmayo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120010457#Comment_120010457

You must have been based in Dublin and you are even probably talking about late 80s or even 90s.

Sky only appeared in 89/90. Before that it was Satelite Television something or other and Astra but very few had dishes.

There were only very basic games consoles in 80s.

Very very few had what we would term a PC, they had things like Amigas, Spectrums, BBC Micros with tape decks attached and using the TV.

PCs ala IBMs even Amstrads were expensive and business oriented.

RTE would switch off around 11.35 or so with the old national anthem.

A highlight of the week was MTV USA when it ran early 80s.

cml387

There was a time when there were only two dual carriageways in the country.

One was the Stillorgan bypass which took TD's to Leopardstown and the other was the Naas dual carriageway that took TD's to The Curragh (or maybe Punchestown).

wotzgoingon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120017614#Comment_120017614

I remember when they built the M50. Very early 90's afaik. I walked it before it opened well not the whole thing. One thing you do not notice when driving is just how big the bridge is over the liffey. I looked over it while walking and it is some drop.

edit: Well a view from a child's eye. I don't live in Dublin for more than 20 years but I just went on Google maps to the straw berry beds after I posted and the bridge isn't even that big. I remember as a child thinking I was so high up.

riclad

Yes my mistake very few people used satellite TV in the 80s you had to buy expensive satellite recievers and get the dish installed to recieve European TV channels

I think sky TV started sometime in the 90s

MTV USA was the first time people had a chance to see the latest music videos apart from the few videos that were shown on itv or top of the pops

Most TV stations would shut down around midnight .pirate radio stations like radio Dublin were popular before 2fm was launched.

JupiterKid

We started getting Sky TV in Dublin in late 1987/early 1988 via Cablelink. MTV came around the Spring of 1989, and the rest is... history!

Yep, the country was very broke in the 1980s and much of that was due to gombeen awful economic illiteracy and mismanagement on the part of the government at the time.

There was a huge economic boom in the 1960s and first half of the 70s - basically when Ireland began to modernize and industrialise - but it was pretty much all squandered with precious little capital spending on infrastructure to show for it and rampant political and planning corruption. It was only in the 1990s that we finally learned how to successfully run the economy.

The 1990s was when Ireland finally grew up as a society and a nation.

We were a much, much poorer country back in the 1980s but then again, people’s expectations were far lower than today. People really did have a lot more time for each other and there was a real sense of community in my Dublin suburb growing up than today where no-one seems to know their neighbours.

My OH and I flew into Lisbon earlier today for Christmas and the one thing that struck us were all the young Portuguese adults on that flight going back home for Christmas with their families. These were emigrants working and living in a high-income, high-cost Dublin travelling back home to a poorer Portugal for the holidays.

This was the exact same situation in Ireland 30-odd years ago when it was the young Irish emigrants returning home - my big sister included - for Christmas from far wealthier countries.

Irish cable networks got satellite tv pretty much as soon as it was available. At that time very few people had satellite TV, the systems were outrageously expensive and most UK households didn’t have cable. It was a very accessible window on the world for cities like Dublin, Cork etc .. there was big cable uptake to get access to uk terrestrial tv, so Ireland got satellite tv channels very early and they were widely available, in Stark contrast, at the same time rural Ireland (and even in many large towns) it was very much 2 channel land if you weren’t in reach of UK overspill. So many areas in the southwest and west had no access to anything except RTE.

I often wonder if that had a big cultural impact?

This is from the very end of the 80s and turn of the 90s - local Cork cable tv coverage of Prince in 1990 with footage of ticket sales from Xmas 89. It’s the end of that era, but it gives you a sense of the place: https://youtu.be/IzqNZX7b0Zg - it wasn’t all grim.

Just an interesting clip as it’s big names, stadium production, yet quite unpolished but energetic local tv cable production, rather than Ireland viewed thoughRTE’s sometimes (certainly in that era) very starchy lens, and kinda gives some sense of how things were on the cusp of big changes around the corner in the couple of decades that followed.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120017326#Comment_120017326

By building the likes of Southill and Darndale...

cgcsb

I'm too young to remember but a work friend of mine from the Midlands went to college in Dublin in the early 90s. He commented that the gap between Dublin and the Midlands was a lot bigger then in terms of product availability, fashion and even cultural attitudes. You could get condoms in a vending machine in ucd and couldn't get them at all in his home town. The chain supermarkets like dunnes actually didn't have the same products that were available in Dublin, trends in fashion were noticeably 2 or more years lagging. Even the local cinema didn't have the same selection of films. Basic Instinct wasn't on show, he had to go see it in Dublin. I found that fascinating because his home place is just about 100km from the M50 but I suppose a lot of the trends and product availability are down to the invention of the Internet.

Hotblack Desiato

I was at Prince in Cork in 1990!

Rapidly increasing adoption of satellite TV in rural Ireland in the second half of the 90s was a game changer as far as social attitudes went, imho.

MT-USA was on RTE2 on a Thursday night I think (?) but we always watched the Sunday afternoon repeat. Great stuff. Only lasted a couple of seasons though as Vincent Hanley was dying of AIDS.

MTV was the MTV Europe channel, we got it on cable in Dublin in 1988 or 89, for about a year before that there was a channel called Music Box which went bust. Satellite channels started on Cablelink with two channels, Sky Channel and Lifestyle during the day/Screen Sport at night. Lifestyle mostly had crappy old US game shows but I used to watch Dr Ruth when I got home from school 😁 . Super Channel launched in 1988 and it was part owned by ITV companies, mostly old BBC/ITV shows. The papers were full of OAPs giving out that their bills were going to go up to pay for these channels (they didn't) and the usual "ban this sick filth" brigade.

downburst

Great thread this. One thing about the rent being cheaper in the 80's, well some of the places people rented, they'd be raised at the UN today if they were let now. Talk about cold and dingy flats.

Hobbies were also a big thing. A lot of boys had one or two specialist hobbies of various types, like model making, music, CB's electronics, early computer games, fishing etc. The things the guys owned and saved up for were very precious indeed and often the talk of the area. I remember racing handle bars on some early "racers" were the thing. Great respect for anyone who had a hobby.

I think there was some progress in the 80's in consumer choice, for instance in terms nearly everyone had an automatic front loader washing machine, believe it or not that was not the case in the 70's. Microwaves came in the 80's, frozen food options, I know not a great advance, but for the suffering women of Ireland there was some choice. Some got large fridge freezers. Cars got better, in the late 70's I can recall countless pushing of FIAT's and the likes for neighbours, still happened in the 80's, but less so.

TV was better in the 80's for certain, people have already mentioned Dallas and the like. C4 came along for instance, although not very good at the start. Radio Cassette Stereos and the cassettes themselves, wow, you could copy albums, huge progress that.

I loved the 70's and 80's and really appreciate having grown up in them, I learned a lot of skills that in many ways couldn't be learned today, given the life lessons in the neighbourhood and the freedom we were allowed. It was mad really, large family, no updates to the house since the 60's, make do and all the rest. Very funny characters around.

My dad has passed away a few years back, but my god looking at what I have to worry about compared to him with so many more children in the house, no idea how the hell he did it.

furiousox

NOBODY ever said or wrote "should of".

I know most of you young folk won't believe me, but it's true.

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120021556#Comment_120021556

I find this point really interesting and I see it on realing in the years and still can't get my head around it.... there was a large number of people looking to ban things (or more often keep things banned) that were none of their concern. Was there some sort of epidemic which prevented people minding their own business or what was the craic? These people are also for the most part still alive today. Have they been cured?

The Cork Multi-Channel system carried Sat1 from Germany, which was let’s just say a lot more liberal than anything that you’d see even on 1980s Channel 4. Locally it was referred to as Channel 18 because it was on that number on the decoder (cable in Cork was encrypted) and somehow it never got any significant pearl clutching, Ned and Maud Flanders style letters to the editor.

I sometimes think Cork City went through a period where it was in a bit of its own bubble, flying below the radar of that Holy Joe Ireland establishment that seemed to inhabit suburban Dublin at the time. I grew up in both places so sort of always had a contrast. That “black box” in Cork in the late 80s was a revelation … loads of channels!

I remember horror stories though from the Dublin suburbs. For example, I’m not baptised and wow .. the fuss that caused! I was taken out of class in school and various teachers and priests tried to “put me on the right path” and so on. Refused access to secondary school and had to go private! It was still run by priests, but apparently if you write them a big cheque, atheism suddenly isn’t a problem…

80s / very early 90s urban Ireland was a weird mix like two parallel worlds. One was the liberal, side amazing bands and artists, avant garde writers, pirate radio, and all of that stuff and things starting to buzz and the other was like a throwback to the 1950s and they coexisted at that time, mostly ignoring each other and staying out of each others hair, except when they managed to step on each others toes…

You’d stuff like Gerry Ryan discussing orgasms, and the mammys of Ireland being scandalised, but listening anyway …

But to say Dublin was liberal at the time is just not the full picture. Late night radio used to be a priest on 98fm and it was a popular show. Unimaginable now lol

Richard Branson even ended up in court got the crime of allowing the sale of condoms in the Virgin Megastore.

In some ways Ireland back then had more in common with some of the publicly pious conservative nutty stuff you see in the US today, only it was very Catholic. But I think I can understand very much what it must be like in an urban bubble of liberalism in some red state with insane politicians discussing the evil of condoms, while you’re flipping through TikTok videos … I’m just very grateful we didn’t get stuck there and did eventually move on and mostly very rapidly when we did get going!

Most of my memories of that era revolve around Zig and Zag and MTV Europe. It’s no wonder I turned out a bit weird lol.

jmayo

For me certain things stand out from the late 70s and 80s.

Entertainment.

MT USA with Vincent Hanley where we could watch vidoes of US based artists like The Cars, Styx, Bryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen.

Not relying on RTE to show maybe a couple of videos or relying on TOTP which RTE only started showing at some stage in 80s.

Huge concerts and massive artists playing likes of Slane.

Other thing that stands out is coming to Dublin and spending hours in Virgin Megastore (weren't they one of first places to sell condoms openly).

U2 suddenly making it huge in US with Joshua Tree was massive proof that we Irish could actually do it.

Live Aid - all down to a belligerent lad from Dublin who rightly called the place a banana republic.

Sport.

Appearance of and then winning in All Irelands by weaker counties e.g Galway, Offaly

Meath and Dublin at each others throats.

Euros 1988 where we looked like we belonged and beating the English.

Barry McGuigan.

Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche dominating in cycling and Nisaan tour of Ireland where you saw the big guys in an international sport.

Dennis Talyor and his mammoth win over the great Steve Davis.

Mayo getting to first All Ireland in 38 years and then of course losing

Live English League matches on RTE Sport Stadium on saturdays

Johnny Giles, Eamon Dunphy and Bill O'Herlihy making even boring matches entertaining in a weird way

Politics - Current affairs

Mountbatten attack and paras killed in Warrenpoint same day (lots of people celebrated that especially)

pope's visit - half the country seemed to have gone

Hunger strikes

Falklands war

Brighton bombing nearly wiping out old thatcher

Enniskillen bombing and Gordon Wilson on Late Late Show

Gibraltar killing 3 PIRA, Stone attack at their funeral and two British soldiers killed at further funeral

Yeah lots of bad news involving Northern Ireland.

haughey telling us to tighten our belts (fooking lying theiving scumbag)

Knock Airport opening - had a 747 before Cork 🤣

they were amazing , people were far happier with feck all

I’m not sure people were happier tbh. It’s easy to look back though a haze of nostalgia. We all do it. Times were tough. I remember the time we got the oil after years of having no central heating switched on…

I also remember basically never going on holidays. Except this one big mad trip to France by ferry which seemed like an epic journey to an exotic land, far far way…

The only very big negative I found was I was given soooo much hassle in school over my non religious upbringing. I genuinely hated school and only think I began to feel properly at home in Ireland when I got to university. It wasn’t minor bullying either - I was dragged out of class, brought to offices and had various priests and lay teachers trying to “intervene” by attempting get my parents to baptise me. I was even told by a priest that if I wouldn’t be able to go to secondary school and my “career” would be over..

I used to just avoid school a lot and ended up changing school multiple times and eventually doing my leaving Cert in a totally private “grind” place, which was fine actually and suited me well - got to hang out in the city centre. But I think for me a lot of media, tv and even early internet (my late teens hit that era) definitely was my “escape” from a certain aspect of 80s / 90s Ireland.

It wasn’t all bad by any means. I’d a great upbringing in what were fun - almost idyllic suburbs, with loads of freedom, friends and it was very enjoyable. I just didn’t quite fit old official Ireland at all.

seekenee

RTE started showing Top of the Pops in 1978 when RTE2 was launched.

cml387

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120021924#Comment_120021924

And they had their own home grown version called "Aimen High", pop acts from home and abroad broadcast in 1975. I doubt anyone remembers though.

JupiterKid

People were most certainly not happier back in the 1980s - rape within marriage was still legal, LGBT were criminalised and largely underground, women (and men) were trapped in abusive and loveless marriages, unemployment was sky high, people really struggled. Income tax rates were extortionate.

A very, very serious alcohol problem masked by our drinking and pub culture - growing up I knew at least three or four families on our leafy suburban street where alcoholism by the father caused misery for the families. Usually not talked about openly but we all knew.

For a child secure in a well-to-do middle class upbringing where my father worked every hour to ensure my mother, sisters and myself wanted for nothing, 1980s suburban Dublin and having a lot of freedom to go around with my mates on our bikes and a boat on the Shannon for the holidays was really great, but I was also aware that in the news every evening you’d hear of another factory closing down, companies pulling out of Ireland due to gombeen economic mismanagement by the politicians in the Dail and Third world infrastructure.

And of course the church interfering in everything and the spineless TDs too afraid or in awe to dare question or challenge them, with a few rare exceptions.

The one thing we got right back then was education and the investment in third level which paid off in the 1990s.

NewbridgeIR

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120021556#Comment_120021556

I was there too. Great concert. Stockton's Wing supporting was a bit incongruous though.

Re: MT USA - ran from 1984 to 1987. Sunday afternoons. The repeat was Thursday or Friday night I think.

I grew up in a small town in the south east. There was a high number of punks in the town (way outside the norm for the population size) which meant getting exposed to bands like The Fall, Wire, Buzzcocks, UK Subs, The Exploited, Pere Ubu, The Ruts etc from early teenage years. I can still see the graffiti down the alleyways and outside the cinema. In the 1990s, one pub started putting on gigs every weekend.

There were over 60 pubs in the town at one point, all open every day. Socialising was serious business then. One of the hotels ran a nightclub, another had one occasionally. There was the odd indie disco in one of the more sympathetic pubs or in the youth clubs.

In terms of television, if you lived in the town you had piped TV - BBC1, BBC2, HTV and S4C. We lived a mile outside so reception was intermittent / poor but I saw a lot of UK programmes in friend's houses after school and at weekends. I had one very good friend who would tape me stuff every week. The widespread cablelink service came at the end of the 1980s.

There were half a dozen video libraries in the town at one stage. One of them was still renting out films from the three UK DPP lists (prosecuted / non-prosecuted / section 3 video nasties) until the early 1990s. I remember when Goodfellas came out on VHS rental in 1991, there was a massive waiting list for it.

Our cinema had one screen. It opened seven days a week until 1976; closed for 10 months and after re-opening in 1977 was weekends only until its eventual closure in March 1990. The last films shown were Casualties Of War and Child's Play (11pm Late Show). When it was open every day it showed a wide variety of films, many controversial like Straw Dogs and later on, Death Weekend and The Brute.

There's a perception that outside the main urban areas was completely backward and a culture void. Definitely not my experience.

bodhrandude

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120021797#Comment_120021797

You forgot the Border Fox in the Politics section, but a very commendable list sir. :) I was living in Ireland from the late 80s and I remember when the border fox was in the news, I remember being in the family car driving out of Sligo town to a crossroads and seeing a Garda with a Uzi machine gun for the first time, after usually seeing maybe one patrol car or Gardai on bikes, the pastoral illusion was shattered. :)

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120021636#Comment_120021636

It was endemic then. Was still very much around in the 90s when Playboy and lads mags became a (legal) thing here, too.

Partly the rosary-swinging oul wans who missed their vocation to become a nun, partly the sex-negative feminists, and we still have that unholy alliance to this day with demonising sex work, TotRL etc

We used to give out about Ian Paisley etc but basically we (well, ~40+yo then) were in our own way a nation of Ian Paisleys. Religious zealotry and intolerance everywhere coupled with absolute terror of the notion that someone, somewhere might actually be enjoying themselves.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120021804#Comment_120021804

Easy to say when you were just a kid then, not the parent worrying about losing their job, mortgage rates at 15 or 20% and a stack of bills (and more kids than you really wanted because no contraception)