The 70's and 80's in Ireland

the purple tin

Purple Mountain wrote: »

Kevin Sharkey?

Was he the 'african' priest in Fr Ted who turned out to be fron Donegal?

Kermit.de.frog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC7s17K2uMY

jimmytwotimes 2013

NewbridgeIR wrote: »

Outdoor toilets in primary schools.
If you wanted to use a cubicle you had to obtain the key in advance.
This was held on a rotation basis in different classrooms so you'd have to call around to that particular classroom and say "Can I have the key of the toilets?". Which meant that everyone knew you were going for a sh*t.

To be fair, could have been for a wānk or a pīss too.

JupiterKid

Auntie Poppy’s Storytime...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgHPV1mTqIo

JupiterKid

Lydia Faithful Swordplay wrote: »

Public safety ads and the sheer brutal starkness of them! Where's Grandad? (Water safety along with a bunch of other ones featuring children drowning) and the "Don't stand near a gas heater or open fire wearing a synthetic night dress!"

Scared the crap out of me. There was no pussyfooting around. And they made you do as they said too!

Don’t forget the ones where little Timmy gets horrifically electrocuted whilst climbing an electricity pylon trying to retrieve his frisbee...

Grandeeod

The Cure, Depeche mode in the RDS. Simple Minds in Croke Park in '86 with the Lightening and the long walk home with a massive electric storm raging. Duran Duran in '87 in the RDS on the come back trail. Saw them at the EP last year, some throwback. New Order in the SFX. 7 bands on the up sponsored by 7-Up in the SFX. Was on TV too. Saw Something happens at that. What about Self Aid? So many great Irish Bands on a big stage. All 80's stuff.

JupiterKid

My very first gig was INXS at the (then) Point in December 1990, aged 15. It was like an amazing dream to see my favorite band at the time live.:)

NewbridgeIR

jimmytwotimes 2013 wrote: »

To be fair, could have been for a wānk or a pīss too.

There were urinals for pissing in - didn't need a key for them.

NewbridgeIR

Grandeeod wrote: »

The Cure, Depeche mode in the RDS. Simple Minds in Croke Park in '86 with the Lightening and the long walk home with a massive electric storm raging. Duran Duran in '87 in the RDS on the come back trail. Saw them at the EP last year, some throwback. New Order in the SFX. 7 bands on the up sponsored by 7-Up in the SFX. Was on TV too. Saw Something happens at that. What about Self Aid? So many great Irish Bands on a big stage. All 80's stuff.

The Cure in The RDS remains my favourite gig of all time.

Grandeeod

NewbridgeIR wrote: »

The Cure in The RDS remains my favourite gig of all time.

Massive. Saw them too in the point in '92. A very long set. 3 hours. But I loved the RDS Simmonscourt for all gigs. Saw Frankie Goes to Hollywood there too among others. Who remembers the National stadium for 80s gigs? I did Howard Jones and Clannad.

branie2

On a Sunday on RTE 2, there would have been opera in the afternoon, and a classical concert at night.

NewbridgeIR

Grandeeod wrote: »

Massive. Saw them too in the point in '92. A very long set. 3 hours. But I loved the RDS Simmonscourt for all gigs. Saw Frankie Goes to Hollywood there too among others. Who remembers the National stadium for 80s gigs? I did Howard Jones and Clannad.

The Point '92 gig was excellent as well. Saw them at Hyde Park this summer - brilliant but felt cheated at 2 hours 15 minutes.

National Stadium - saw Suzanne Vega (1986), Pixies (1990), Morrissey (1991) there.

NewbridgeIR

branie2 wrote: »

On a Sunday on RTE 2, there would have been opera in the afternoon, and a classical concert at night.

Festival

and who remembers Cineclub on RTE2 - the chance of nudity

branie2

NewbridgeIR wrote: »

Festival

and who remembers Cineclub on RTE2 - the chance of nudity

I think Cineclub might have shown Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew. No nudity there, I'm afraid.

branie2

The Beatbox with Barry Lang

irishman86

Josiah Greasy Barefoot wrote: »

Both decades were, to my experience, marked by high unemployment and high interest rates.


I wouldn't go back to them for any reason.

Ive heard older people arguing that it was a better time, genuinely want to tell them to shut up
Life now isnt even comparable to those times

branie2

The Sunday World had a section for children in the 80s.

Edgware

branie2 wrote: »

The Sunday World had a section for children in the 80s.

And it did decent pub reviews

branie2

Edgware wrote: »

And it did decent pub reviews

And still does

The Crowman

Dunno if Barry Mcguigan was to blame but the 80's saw an awful lot of guys with tashes

branie2

The Crowman wrote: »

Dunno if Barry Mcguigan was to blame but the 80's saw an awful lot of guys with tashes

Kevin Webster in Corrie in particular.

Atlantic Dawn

I remember the "video man", a lad who would drive around on a Thursday or Friday night with a van full of pirated VHS recordings of the latest cinema releases to rent for the week, quality was absolute sheite, you would see people walking around the cinema.

The Crowman

Yes this is from circa 1990 but it captures that particular 80's Irish moustache man to a tee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h2c5v8IZNA

Oscar Bravo

1980

3rdDegree

Dakota Dan wrote: »

I remember a few people looking down on people that got cancer as if they brought it on themselves and should be ashamed, some mentality that.

That's a bizarre mentality alright. I don't remember that.

Sardonicat

3rdDegree wrote: »

Dakota Dan wrote: »

I remember a few people looking down on people that got cancer as if they brought it on themselves and should be ashamed, some mentality that.

That's a bizarre mentality alright. I don't remember that.

The world "cancer" was never said out loud. It was mouthed " Bad news about Mary, she's riddled with..." mouths the cancer. And they were always "riddled". It was really treated like a shameful thing. Like you could catch it from talking about it.

whitey1

The Crowman wrote: »

Big Nasty wrote: »

John, did you put the cat out?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPsPFnzoAxs

Haha....remember people used to plug the TV put every night before going to bed

whitey1

JupiterKid wrote: »

Lydia Faithful Swordplay wrote: »

Public safety ads and the sheer brutal starkness of them! Where's Grandad? (Water safety along with a bunch of other ones featuring children drowning) and the "Don't stand near a gas heater or open fire wearing a synthetic night dress!"

Scared the crap out of me. There was no pussyfooting around. And they made you do as they said too!

Don’t forget the ones where little Timmy gets horrifically electrocuted whilst climbing an electricity pylon trying to retrieve his frisbee...

Remember the one advising women to get vaccinated against measeles mumps and rubella.

Then they showd a deaf kid (whos mum obviously didnt get vaccinated) and a nun in full garb screaming.....BAH....BAH.....BAH into his ear

orangerhyme

I was born in early 80's and grew up in the rural west. Ireland has changed so much. Here's what I remember:

Cows on the main road blocking traffic, this was common. Only see it on boreens these days.
Absolute bangers of cars on the road. Scrappage scheme in 95/96 changed this.
There was a few horse/donkey and carts also.
Cars packed with kids, up to 10, kids in the boot. No seatbelts.
Hand me down clothes. Noone cared too much about fashion or trends too much.
Lots of mullets and moustaches.
When you went on a road trip you brought sandwiches and flask of tea, and ate it off the boot on the side of the road.
Everyone went to mass. It was a social event really. You had your weekly bath and wore best clothes.
Showers, microwaves, dishwashers, vcrs, electric kettles etc existed but not very common.
Most people had a turf range and a shed full of turf. Horror stories of days in the bog.
Priests were like demigods or rock stars. Very high status in the parish.

Lots of power cuts which were always exciting.
Eating potatoes basically every day. The food was genuinely good.
Lots of political scandals.
The FF v FG rivalry seemed more vicious back then.
The troubles in NI seemed so far away it didn't register that it was happening in the same country.
Was never even in Dublin. Foreign countries seemed so so far away.
People from different countries were very very different. Different music, culture, clothes etc.
Now everything's homogenized.
Boxes of clothes from family in USA which smelled like America.
Quinnsworth for the big shop. Yellowpack was "Tesco value"
Often saw drunks on the street with yellowpack lager.
Pubs were more for men back then. Some pubs had a curtain separating women from men's area.
My cousins would get fruit like apples and oranges from Santa. Not kidding.
Dubs were very different to culchies back then. Way more urban and modern.

You met people at a time and place. Sometimes waited hours due to some mishap.
Kids had unlimited freedom. The word pedo didn't exist.
Visiting people's houses seemed like a big activity. That's what you did at weekends.
Going to restaurants wasn't very common. There wasn't many restaurants or coffee shops.
Only two tv channels. Late late, Eurovision, rose of Tralee, toy show, Irish soccer games were HUGE events. I'd say most of the country watched them.
There seemed to be kids everywhere. Families of 7/8/9 kids were common enough.
No such thing as divorce or separation.
"Corner boys" hung around corners of villages and towns. I think these were lads on the dole.
You never really knew how rich or poor anyone was. Everyone seemed the same.
Lots of old school bachelor farmer types, always in wellies, drove tractor to mass, baler twine holding up pants.
Paradoxically life seemed way more social back then. You made an effort to visit or meet people. You had no distractions and nothing else to do besides socializing.
And when you met people you were very present. Knew neighbors better, relations. Lots of community activities which have died out. Knew everyone in the parish.
There was no drugs and people drank more moderately.
Seaside towns were mental in the summer. The place to be. Lots of people had a caravan somewhere.
You followed an English soccer team but never actually saw them play.
Houses were full of magazines and newspapers.
Some old cottages on the inside looked like they hadn't changed since the 20's. Just an open fire, nothing modern.
Things lasted longer, everything was fixed and repaired.
Everyone was from a "normal" nuclear family. No single moms, divorcess, step dad's, etc. No gay people.
In the cities there was "tribes" though such as punks, goths, grunge, metallers etc. That has completely died out.
You could have long arguments over whether some fact was true or not with no way to verify.
For us in the west everything changed around mid to late 90's. Perhaps 97/98. The early 90's were no different from the 80's really.
New cars, computers, games consoles, mobiles, foreign food, foreign holidays, internet, sky tv, everyone going to college, very little emigration.

I won't say things were better back then but people definitely knew their extended families, neighbors, community etc better. There was simply nothing to do at home really. Maybe people were less anxious. Life might have had more meaning. I think there's a lot of emptiness, loneliness, isolation in modern society and our individualistic consumer capitalism.

whisky_galore

NewbridgeIR wrote: »

Festival

and who remembers Cineclub on RTE2 - the chance of nudity

Yes! A lot of foreign subtitled stuff and riiiiidin'.

Masala

Kids had unlimited freedom....Yer mother would tell you to go off (rain hail or shine) and not come back til tea-time. would spend days messing in sandpits / around bog holes / derelict houses / farmers sheds etc. parents never looked for us or gave us any warnings about what not to do!!

When u think of it.... there should have been more injuries. Worse I got was falling off a tree and spraining my wrist.

Grayson

branie2 wrote: »

The Ann and Barry school books

who died from diabetes





RTE got it mixed up a while back.
http://www.dailyedge.ie/ann-and-barry-3642359-Oct2017/

Iseedeadpixels

Going shopping in Crazy prices....or was that the 90's?

mikemac2

Sardonicat wrote: »

The world "cancer" was never said out loud. It was mouthed " Bad news about Mary, she's riddled with..." mouths the cancer. And they were always "riddled". It was really treated like a shameful thing. Like you could catch it from talking about it.

No different so to how people used to talk about the consumption (TB)

And if someone in your house had it people would judge you as if you were a dirty family and brought it on yerselves

That’s not for the 70’s/80’s though

Ger Roe

Pirate radio was a big youth culture influence in 70's and 80's Ireland.

It started out with low power AM stations in the 70's that although very amateur, they played pop music that couldn't be heard on RTE at the time (just RTE radio, there was no Radio 2 (now 2FM) until 1979).

By the late 70's and early 80's, ex UK offshore radio people moved in on the scene from Radio Caroline and Radio North Sea International. Initially some of them got involved with the existing stations (Radio Dublin. ARD, Big D etc) but the game changer came in 1980 when ex Caroline DJ's Robbie Dale and Chris Cary set up Sunshine Radio in Portmarnock. Then followed the era of the Super Pirates with Nova, Energy 103, Q102 and others around the country like ABC Tramore, ERI in Cork and later Kiss in Monaghan.

It was a fun time to be young and listening to some of the most exciting radio in the world... here in Ireland.

begbysback

There was no drugs & people drank moderately?

whisky_galore

"No gay people" - even though they were in plain sight in entertainment: Micheal Mac Liammor and the fella in Are You Being Served.

Grayson

Iseedeadpixels wrote: »

Going shopping in Crazy prices....or was that the 90's?

Say Quinnsworth / crazy prices and you're covered. Maybe add in a H Williams to be safe.

iamwhoiam

Kids appreciated toys , they got them at Christmas and Birthdays and then only a few items .
Christmas was special and we got fizzy drinks and Club Milks and a box of Roses !

Grayson

This describes the period 1980 - 1990

eviltimeban

road_high wrote: »

The early 90s was when it all come to a head. All the church scandals we now know were exposed or about to be exposed and the sale of contraception deregulated.

In many ways the 90s kick started the world we live in now, much in the same way the 60s changed what had gone before (post war).

With the 90s we obviously had advancements in technology and IT, the internet, mobile phones etc, but we also had a loosening of the church's power, and more spending money (Celtic Tiger wasn't long to follow).

Everyone knows the 90s really started in 1989 when the Stone Roses came along.

storker

denismc wrote: »

These days Serena Wiliams throwing strops on a tennis court is what passes for news, what dull times we live in.

...and news media actually had to come up with news items, rather than just cut-and-paste pointless rubbish from Twitter.

Franz Von Peppercorn

mikemac2 wrote: »

No different so to how people used to talk about the consumption (TB)

And if someone in your house had it people would judge you as if you were a dirty family and brought it on yerselves

That’s not for the 70’s/80’s though

I don’t buy that people blamed people for cancer. Maybe consumption.


Not being able to say the word is probably a fear of the word - the finality of the word - than blaming the victim.

Franz Von Peppercorn

eviltimeban wrote: »

In many ways the 90s kick started the world we live in now, much in the same way the 60s changed what had gone before (post war).

With the 90s we obviously had advancements in technology and IT, the internet, mobile phones etc, but we also had a loosening of the church's power, and more spending money (Celtic Tiger wasn't long to follow).

Everyone knows the 90s really started in 1989 when the Stone Roses came along.

I actually don’t remember much happening in the 90s. IT Technology wasn’t universal. In fact the 80s though I don’t remember all of it, there were more home computers than the 90s. And games. All died off.

Home computer companies then went bust and the it revolution didn’t become a home revolution until well into the naughties.

And mobiles were well late 90s.

riclad

Serana losing her temper at the us open, mean she was penalised and lost the final match.Thats a big sports story .It,s not fake news or trivia .
As in the daily mail which seems to get lots of articles simply from looking at photos or posts that celebs put on facebook or twitter.
In the 90s you could use modems to acess the web before high speed broadband was avaidable ,many homes had one pc which was used by everyone.
A smartphone bought now is as powerful as a home pc from 1990.

Wibbs

Grayson wrote: »

who died from diabetes

and note she was "mammy" not "mom"...

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

I actually don’t remember much happening in the 90s. IT Technology wasn’t universal. In fact the 80s though I don’t remember all of it, there were more home computers than the 90s. And games. All died off.

Home computer companies then went bust and the it revolution didn’t become a home revolution until well into the naughties.

And mobiles were well late 90s.

True. Like I mentioned earlier I had "the internet" at home in '94 and I knew very very few people who had it, outside people who needed it for business/education. Mates would come and look at it and ooh and aah in wonder. A few had PC's at home by the mid 90's, only the very flush had Apple kit as it was very expensive. PC's were pretty expensive as it was. The Sinclairs, Commodores and the like of the late 70's early 80's home computer rage were in the 100-200 quid mark. Not cheap, but the desktop PC we think of now was at least double that and more likely triple. IIRC an Apple SE30 was nigh on 2000 punts.

Mobiles came from nowhere. From the house brick with an aerial very occasionally spotted in the 80's, then feck all until the mid 90's then by 2000 everyone and his dog had one. I knew a couple of people with pagers for work, but we largely bypassed them here as a private thing, unlike in the US where they were big for a time.

Wibbs

riclad wrote: »

A smartphone bought now is as powerful as a home pc from 1990.

A 2018 smartphone is far more powerful and can do so much more than any home PC from 1990. 2 megs of ram if you were lucky, compared to the gigs on the go now in phones.

ohnonotgmail

Grayson wrote: »

This describes the period 1980 - 1990

Some of those are the price they were when i was in primary school so more 70s than 80's. I think only the 10p one is from the 80's

Franz Von Peppercorn

Wibbs wrote: »

and note she was "mammy" not "mom"...

True. Like I mentioned earlier I had "the internet" at home in '94 and I knew very very few people who had it, outside people who needed it for business/education. Mates would come and look at it and ooh and aah in wonder. A few had PC's at home by the mid 90's, only the very flush had Apple kit as it was very expensive. PC's were pretty expensive as it was. The Sinclairs, Commodores and the like of the late 70's early 80's home computer rage were in the 100-200 quid mark. Not cheap, but the desktop PC we think of now was at least double that and more likely triple. IIRC an Apple SE30 was nigh on 2000 punts.

Mobiles came from nowhere. From the house brick with an aerial very occasionally spotted in the 80's, then feck all until the mid 90's then by 2000 everyone and his dog had one. I knew a couple of people with pagers for work, but we largely bypassed them here as a private thing, unlike in the US where they were big for a time.

That’s generally right but there were no cheap PCs even disregarding Apple until the late 90s. All the cheap commodity home computer manufacturters went out of business. In 1985 the home computers were outselling pcs.

ohnonotgmail

Wibbs wrote: »

and note she was "mammy" not "mom"...

True. Like I mentioned earlier I had "the internet" at home in '94 and I knew very very few people who had it, outside people who needed it for business/education. Mates would come and look at it and ooh and aah in wonder. A few had PC's at home by the mid 90's, only the very flush had Apple kit as it was very expensive. PC's were pretty expensive as it was. The Sinclairs, Commodores and the like of the late 70's early 80's home computer rage were in the 100-200 quid mark. Not cheap, but the desktop PC we think of now was at least double that and more likely triple. IIRC an Apple SE30 was nigh on 2000 punts.

I bought my first new PC in, i think, 97 or 98 from gateway. cost me £3000.