Grange Hill

My mum used to stop me watching Grange Hill. For some reason she thought that it was a little subversive. Maybe she thought that I might become a bit of a school drop out like Tucker or indeed a heroin addict like Zammo, or maybe I might eat too much chocolate and end up fat like that fat kid, Roland was it?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/GHTITLES78-87.jpg

When you look back at Grange Hill I try to think if it was realistic, did it really represent the British comprehensives of the early eighties?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_JI83qg3Bo

It always seemed that the students of Grange Hill were either running around the streets on some cross country run, whilst Mr Baxter stood watching and shouting, or they were hanging out in be playground. I don't recall much learning going on.

I remember when I first found out that up in North East London there is actually a place called Grange Hill, its on the tube map. I always wanted to go when I was a kid, to ride the tube there, just to say I had been to Grange Hill. Now I'm a middle aged adult I still haven't made it.

I wonder how Grange Hill would be viewed now if it was re-run on the CBBC channel. Would it be considered hard hitting, would it make it past the modern day Mary Whitehouse censors.

I used to go round my friends house to watch Grange Hill, that ban was easy to circumnavigate, just don't tell my Mum.

Comments

  1. Anonymous14 March 2013 at 18:18

    Greetings from Colorado! I'm bored at work so I decided to browse your site on my iphone during lunch break. I love the knowledge you provide here and can't wait to
    take a look when I get home. I'm shocked at how quick your blog loaded on my cell phone .. I'm not even
    using WIFI, just 3G .. Anyhow, very good blog!

    my page ... naturalgreencoffeereview.net

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sparkly bathroom prevented by natural chemical equilibria

Image
I have had the pleasure of cleaning the bathroom today. I have used a number of different products over the years to find a chemical that will remove the annoying marks from the tiles, taps and shower screen. The hard water means that no matter how clean and sparkly I get the taps, they are only two showers away from being once again covered in the annoying white powder.   Crystals of limescale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kesselstein_k.jpg) There is a lot of interesting chemistry involved in limescale. It is essentially deposits of insoluble calcium carbonate left behind from the hot water. But how does it get into the water in the first place and why doesn't it stay in it? Limescale initially starts as limestone, chalk and other similar sedimentary rocks that formed from the bodies of tiny calcium containing sea creatures that lived in warm shallow tropical seas millions of years ago. See the BBC clip at this learning zone site. Since their formation these rocks have been
Read more

Polka dot, 7 inches, 15 minutes, luke warm

Image
January 2010 and a new craze hit Facebook. Across the social network women started to post colours as their status. Some posted beige, some ivory, some hot pink, some polka dot. For a while people across the world were confused, intrigued, indeed fascinated by what these colours could mean. In fact the colours referred to the colour of the bra the woman was wearing that particular day. This 'craze' was in aid of a breast cancer awareness campaign a fantastic cause and in my opinion a clever and innovative use of Facebook. Over the last couple of days some of the ladies have begun to post a length measured in inches followed by a time in minutes. This has resulted in a status that might read '6 inches 25 minutes'. Oh how amusing...I like a bit of smut but I found these updates strangely annoying. Obviously it doesn't mean what it says and is code for something fairly inane and boring. So slightly intrigued and determined to crack the code I did what I always
Read more

What's Your Station?

Image
One of my most vivid memories is completing my Silver Duke of Edinburgh Expedition in the New Forest one October half term. It must have been 1987 as Mike Smith was the Radio 1 breakfast host and I remember cooking bacon on the Trangia stove, in a field behind a scout hut in Fordingbridge, whilst listening to T'Pau's new single China in Your Hand, it was a gorgeous Autumn morning.  http://asymptotia.com/wp-images/2007/08/Radio_dynamo.jpg I had a red plastic battery operated radio that we listened to as we walked. That radio once got us into trouble on a snowy February in Dartmoor as the magnet in the speaker affected our compass, a rookie error that put us out a couple of miles searching for a postbox on Rough Tor.   Radio 1 was the station to listen to, the new music was heard first on this station, and alongside Mike Smith the line-up included Simon Bates, Mike Read, Simon Mayo and of course Steve Wright. Whilst at Uni I still enjoyed listening to Simon Mayo's breakfast
Read more