I'm Iain Stirling, and I'm a stand-up comedian.
I've gigged from Melbourne to Bahrain,
and nowhere are the crowds more up for it, more raucous,
and for a stand-up comedian,
more petrifying than here in Scotland.
We love a good night out on the randan.
And we've been taking the party very seriously for years.
So we're about to take a whistle-stop tour
of the decades that shaped our modern night out on the town...
..from the youth scene of the '50s...
..the dodgy dancing of the '60s...
..the nightclubs and culinary wonders of the '70s...
..the, erm...creativity of the '80s...
..and the anti-establishment party attitude of the '90s!
We'll be meeting the people who lived for the weekend.
You would go and feel the bee's knees, or Mr Cool.
The people who made our nights out so big.
They actually said that our music was dirty music,
that we were raising the baser passions of human nature
and leading others to transgress.
CROWD SCREAMS
What do we think, folks? Isn't he good? ALL: Yeah!
Yeah, I like that! I like that.
For one hour only,
this is Scotland's Big Night Out.
The modern big night out first appeared over 65 years ago.
Welcome to the 1950s.
As you can see, they're in black and white.
This is the decade that bridged the gap
between the hard austerity of the war years
and the apparent free love of the '60s.
It's also the decade that gave monochromatic birth
to the modern Saturday night out.
Here's our report, from man in the future Iain Stirling.
Yes, Scotland began the '50s still reeling from World War II.
Mass housing everywhere was crumbling.
Most of us were manual workers, doing 48-hour weeks
and earning around £350 a year.
And food was still rationed!
How did they have the energy to do anything,
let alone go dancing?
It was escapism in the dance halls.
But the '50s was the time
when our teenagers stepped out of their monochrome world
and created the glorious big night out.
It was just a great age to be young.
The main entertainment in the '50s was dance halls.
Frank Ferri's dancing career started in Edinburgh in 1951,
a time when the great old wartime swing bands
were playing their last waltz.
Glenn Miller and various other big bands had a big influence
during the war years, so that kind of music was still lingering.
And when you danced to big bands,
everything was very touchy-feely,
but in a good way.
We were self-taught dancers.
You acquired a degree of skill in dancing.
SWING MUSIC PLAYS
In the early '50s, a far more free-and-easy dance
started to appear in the ballrooms.
It was called the jive.
On the right-hand side of any dance hall, there was always a wee corner
where, illegally, you would have a wee jive.
Now, you couldn't get arrested for jiving,
but you could get thrown off the dance floor.
It may have been the dance choice for a few bad boys and girls,
but it was soon rocketing into the mainstream.
MUSIC: Rock Around The Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets
By the time Bill Haley rocked around the clock in 1954,
the jive dance and rock and roll music
had become dangerously contagious.
Suddenly, it was just like, wham!
All change.
Just jiving. Totally jiving.
When we started at the dancing, it was the start of rock and roll.
We were the first generation for rock and roll.
Maureen Reynolds and her pals first jived to rock and roll
at Robbie's Dance Hall in Dundee.
I just adored it!
And I was totally hooked, I had never seen anything like it.
If things were grey and dreich, it took you out yourself.
It took you into a world that was wonderful,
with the music and the dancing.
In fact, I adored it so much, my mother once said to me,
"I'm going to put your bed in the Palais."
And I thought that would be great,
it would save me having to get the bus or the tram down to it!
It may surprise you to know that teenagers did exist
prior to the 1950s.
They were just ignored.
But this was the decade that some bright spark realised
that these bags of sexual desire and hormones had money to spare
and time in which to spend it.
Authentic '50s teenager Stewart Campbell
was one of Edinburgh's most sought-after Teddy boys.
He danced at the Locarno in Gorgie
and the legendary Palais in Fountainbridge.
Finished work at the bakery, where I was an apprentice.
Home, washed, changed, jump on a bus.
Straight to the Palais.
Stewart's sister Dot followed him from the factory floor
to the dance floor two years later.
If you worked late, you had to go and put your rollers in at work,
so you could go straight to the dance.
You didn't have time to go home.
Just like 80% of all Scotland's schoolkids in the '50s,
Frankie, Dot, Maureen and Stewart left school at 15
to do stuff like make sausages
and pull levers with their bare hands.
They had to pay their board,
but when it came to fashion, they made their money go a long way.
A young man, if he owned three white shirts,
he was lucky.
You only had one suit.
Even the poorest working-class guy
would only get made-to-measure suits.
You might wait six to eight weeks to get the suit made,
and so you were immaculate when you went out.
The girls had all these fabulous clothes
that they hadn't got during the war.
And then, but the men, they became sort of, you know, peacocks,
because they had shoes with thick soles
that were called brothel creepers.
Brothel creepers were too hard to dance in.
I changed to what you call micro-soles,
that were great to dance in.
They had haircuts called D and As, which was up high and at the back.
They were better dressed than us, the men.
Although this male peacockery was happening all over Scotland,
the BBC only discovered it in the early '60s.
An outraged reporter was dispatched immediately
to insult people.
Just what kind of haircut is this you're doing now?
Semicrew. A basic semicrew.
What on earth is this you've got on?
Curlers. Curlers? Yes.
I thought only women used curlers.
Men use them as well. Oh, they do? Yeah.
Well, what kind of haircut is this?
It's a Tony Curtis perm.
A perm and wave? Yes.
Well, look, do you not feel a bit of a jessie?
No, not at all.
You don't? No. Oh, well, I don't know...
You're only jealous because you can't get one.
Well, probably something there.
All right, I'll just have to think about that toupee you promised me.
Well, I'll make one for you.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye, now. Thank you.
The boys were in love with their hair,
but for the girls, it was a love-hate relationship
with a lot of torture thrown in.
I had a pair of tongs which I sometimes used on the cooker.
They were hot, and my mother used to call them
the Spanish Inquisition.
So she said that I would be bald by the time I was 30,
if I carried on with my hair.
So she got me a perm.
They had this great big machine,
and your hair actually frizzled, and then you couldn't bend over
because you had like a Sherman tank on your head, it was so heavy.
But after it was all done, I had my curls.
To my 29-year-old ears,
that sounds like a lot of effort for a night out.
But they say to fully understand someone, you've got to walk -
or dance - a mile in their shoes.
So I'm going to start with these bad boys.
My clobber for a late '50s randan consists of...
..a clean white shirt,
14-inch charcoal-grey drainpipes
and a thumb-length drape jacket with velvet cuffs.
An extreme look for the '50s,
but very popular in Hamilton.
It's all rounded off with a purple silk tie
and the all-important brothel creepers.
I'm starting off, like all young men did in the '50s,
with a swift one in the pub, with my guide and mentor Frankie Ferri.
The only source of alcohol or having a drink was in a pub.
Any other social venue was totally dry.
So, you went to the pub, A, to give yourself some Dutch courage
to dance the steps that you weren't familiar with
or you were having to improvise,
or to give you the Dutch courage to even ask a young lady to dance.
So you'd go out the pub, have a few pints... Yep.
..get that feeling, and then to the dance hall?
And you would go and feel the bee's knees, or Mr Cool, you know?
Well, Frank...
..let's go dancing!
I can see why you couldn't have too much before a '50s big night out.
Imagine trying some of these moves after a few bevvies!
Well, this brings back memories.
What's happening here, Frank?
Well, this is a modern-day interpretation of the jive
that we used to do in the 1950s.
It's a bit clinical for what we used to do. Posh.
It's more like Celebrity Come Dancing style of jiving.
Ours was very raw.
And... You liked it raw back in the '50s!
Indeed, we did! Oh, aye. And plenty of improvisation.
So you were actually doing movements depending on how you felt
and how your body was responding to the music.
Well, I'm very nervous - how do I do that as a dance?
Eh, well...very badly.
What I really need is a substance to calm my nerves
and drive the girls wild with desire.
Wonder if they had that in the '50s?
If you managed to get a bottle of Old Spice, oh, that was ace!
CHUCKLES
You really pulled the birds!
So, if you were wearing aftershave, you'd pull.
And pulling was what it was all about.
Basically, the dance hall was the Tinder of the '50s,
a kind of dating app that allowed you to meet people in real life
and dance with them before you decided whether you liked them.
Sexy, eh?
They had a balcony that went right round the dance hall,
and that was a good place to have a reconnoitre.
There was various areas.
You had an area where you had the sort of wallflowers,
the ones that didn't have a lot of confidence.
And another area, which was couples.
So it would be a good area to scan round and see
somebody that drew your attention.
The guys used to just...eye you up.
And then you'd look at them, as well.
But don't forget, even though they don't look like it
by today's standards, these kids are teenagers.
And boys were as bad at coming forward then as they are now.
We'd stand and wait forever to have a dance.
And then somebody'd come up and ask you and say, "You dancing?"
You'd say, "You asking?"
You'd go. And that was it. If you fancied them.
Oh, hang on, green dress at nine o'clock!
I think I'm getting the eye!
Here goes!
Are you dancing? Are you asking?
I think so, I've had quite a few drinks. Let's go.
I'd say I'm attempting to do the Glasgow jive,
but that would be a lie.
It's more like the hesitant Edinburgh shuffle.
I just liked moving to the music.
It was just great to dance to the modern tunes,
even if you only shuffled around the floor.
I think it's safe to say that in the 1950s,
I wouldn't have got very far with the ladies.
I've no idea what I'm doing.
I've lost it, I'm so sorry.
The fact that I'm utterly rubbish
means I have no chance getting this girl up
for the most important dance of the evening.
The difference between a lonely walk home
or the possibility of everlasting romance was the mythical last dance.
They'd wait till the last dance and think, "Oh, I'll go and get her up,"
the ones you'd danced with earlier on, just to get the smooch dance.
Then they'd ask you home, then.
And you'd go courting, then.
You always looked to find somebody to chat them up and,
"Can I take you home?"
They'd either say yes or no, and away you went and...
..whatever!
Whatever "it" was,
"it" usually led to marriage pretty darn quick!
I got married at 17.
So I had a very small window of being a free and fancy
free dancer and enjoying myself.
After that, it was down to the domesticity of marriage.
I just wish I could go back to it.
But unfortunately, I don't think I could even take two steps,
let alone dance around a dance floor.
But I'd love to go back to those days.
Definitely.
As the '50s ended, so too had Maureen's dance hall days.
But in the '60s, her place on the dance floor would be taken
by kids who would redefine themselves with new fashions,
new sounds and new dances.
Well, if you could actually call it dancing.
And frankly,
Frankie wouldn't.
Contact dancing died come the '60s.
Strange phenomenon, it was guys who got up
and just danced themselves, you know.
It was just strange, you know.
But in the early '60s, the dance halls, while not quite
as popular as they once were, still had a tight grip on the dancing.
But a global phenomenon was soon to arrive that would change everything.
In 1960, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters had a minor hit
with Teardrops On Your Letter.
A few months later, a chap called Chubby Checker released a cover
version of the B-side - a little song
about a very simple dance.
# Come on, let's twist again
# Like we did last summer
# Yeah, let's twist again
# Like we did last year... #
Learnt through Chubby Checker saying,
"This is how you do the twist,"
you've got to pretend you got a towel and rub like that,
that's how you do the twist.
And everybody's going, "Oh, that's how you do it!"
Chubby Checker made it a massive hit and very popular.
That's when people stopped dancing together.
Scotland's '50s generation may have hated the twist.
Hell of a wear and tear on shoes, doing the twist.
I mean - how could pretending that you're rubbing yourself
with a towel be real dancing?
But by the end of 1960,
the twist had taken over Scotland's dance halls.
This is Dundee.
This is me in a pub again.
And this is Andi Lothian.
He's going to teach me how to twist.
OK, Andi. I want to give this twist a go.
Good man, good man. Right. What...how do you think I'm...?
How's my action?
Let me have a look.
What do you think? Very good!
That's very good. Yeah? Yeah.
And what do you do with your feet? Am I just doing this?
That's good, yeah. The feet, bit more action with the feet.
What do I need from the feet?
Very good. Bit wider, bit wider. Yeah. OK.
Knee bend occasionally. OK, yeah.
Hey! Now we got it!
What do we think, folks? Isn't he good?
ALL: Yeah! Yeah, I like that. I like that.
One of Andi's unique contributions to the history of the randan
is making it last five days.
In the early '60s, he created this - the Dundee Twist Marathon.
What is a twist marathon?
You twist for days on end.
Maybe 100 people started,
the end of the first day, there are 30 left.
When the BBC heard about a twist marathon, they immediately
sent out that guy who was asking questions at the barber's.
You are married?
What about your family?
Yeah, I've got three in my family.
But he didn't realise just how dangerously contagious
the twist actually was.
Why not join in? Me? Yeah.
All right, let's have a go.
Luckily, he gave up pretty quickly.
The first marathon in 1961 in the West End Palais
was won by Bobby Cannon,
the world's first-ever marathon champion from Scotland.
And they all paid to see him fall down at the end.
They all paid to see him fall down.
And that is the Bobby Cannon,
flat out on the dance floor.
What a champ!
If Andi's only claim to fame was the Dundee Twist Marathon,
he'd be a legend.
But in 1962, he pulled off an even greater Scottish feat.
There's a band we've got to talk about, I guess.
And that is... The Beatles! The Beatles, yeah.
I believe you brought them to Scotland?
I brought them to Scotland in January 1963,
and they played four places, four halls.
And nobody turned up. And I lost money.
I was paying them £40 a night, and I lost money.
They were getting coins thrown at them in places like Bridge of Allan.
The Beatles didn't just lose money in Bridge of Allan,
they also lost a mint in Elgin!
Amazingly, people willingly lined the streets
when the Queen popped up to do a spot of light gardening
a year before.
ARCHIVE: Both the Queen and the Duke planted flowering cherry trees.
But when the Beatles arrived, nobody noticed.
Young nurse Adeline Reid lived right next to where the Fab Four stayed,
and even she didn't go to see them.
I just stepped outside the door, and there's this hilarity going on.
And here was the Beatles, leaning out of the window next door.
Well, I could have just touched them, it was so close.
They were having fun, and of course, with me in the uniform,
they were calling me Nursey and all that sort of names.
And John Lennon leaned across, and he says,
"Hello, Nursey, take my pulse and I'll give you my autograph."
# Love, love me do... #
After paying the band £40 for each performance,
Andi Lothian was out of pocket by £3,600 in today's money.
But he did get to hear the Beatles play their next three singles.
I had never heard music like that.
I flew down to London, met Brian Epstein,
they came to Scotland in October,
and I sold out everywhere.
And I recovered the losses I'd made in paying them £40 a night,
even though I paid them £500 a night.
That's the equivalent, probably, now,
of something like £10,000 a night.
What did you think of your reception in Edinburgh, last night?
Marvellous. Yeah, yeah. Great. Fantastic. Loved it.
Just hope Glasgow is as good.
DISTANT CHEERING Hello.
CROWD SCREAMS
And they were full of ladies going crazy, as well, weren't they?
Ah, interesting story.
Right, OK. In Dundee, cos there weren't enough bouncers,
the St John's ambulance men and some big, young guys, six foot two,
all trying to keep the crowd back.
I get that at my gigs all the time. All the time. I can understand that.
It's an absolute nightmare.
Because the chap next to me then panicked,
he turned to me and he said, "Andi, what's happening?"
And I said, "Don't worry, it's only..." BOTH: Beatlemania!
I like it. In Dundee.
So, there you have it.
Beatlemania, the word was invented in Dundee.
It was indeed, Iain!
Thank you very much, Andi. Appreciate it.
# Oh, Mr Disappointed... #
Scotland in fact had our very own band which was inducing
that kind of mania - The Beatstalkers.
# Mr Disappointed
# Turned up right on time... #
Guitarist Eddie Campbell knows all about
what it feels like to be adored.
They want to get to you and they want to touch you
and they want to kiss you, and it's a real ego boost, believe me.
You know, spotty teenagers, you know,
there are 5,000 girls want to kiss me - oh, yeah!
But they're in danger of trampling you to death.
CROWD SCREAMS
# No matter where this poor guy goes
# Everybody always knows... #
The madness began in George Square, Glasgow in 1965.
# Mr Disappointed. #
We started to play and I think we played the first song,
and the first song did fine.
And the people were going, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah."
And we played the second song,
and towards the end of the second song, the girls started to scream
and started to climb on the stage.
And the stage was in danger of collapsing.
And the policeman said,
"City Chambers - run!"
So, all these people chasing us,
and we got to the doors of the City Chambers,
and all these girls following us, and running round all the corridors,
and they managed to hide us in the Lord Provost's office,
but we were missing a couple of guys.
One of them was the drummer,
and the drummer arrived on the back of a police horse.
Liz Daisley is one of the Beatstalkers' biggest fans,
and she was there.
In amongst it all, screaming and shouting.
There's the photograph,
the fans are all upside down and screaming, they fainted.
And it was just crazy,
because everybody loved the Beatstalkers,
and their songs were fabulous.
And it was all happy days.
As a typical '60s teenager, Liz had to keep up with
the fashions for her big nights out.
Each Saturday afternoon, I would go out
and buy something for that night.
Normally, I would try and do that each week,
so that you didn't want to wear the same thing again the following week.
In the mid-sixties, strange new clothes started to appear
on Scotland's streets.
Coats became shiny,
and everything seemed to become monotone...
..and short.
I just loved the gear.
I loved the black and white gear, I love black and white.
It always reminds me of the '60s, today.
I loved the mini-skirt, cos I was skinny!
Now, I think Liz and her pals looked pretty cool.
But the really cool people were a select band
who were, at one point in the '60s, the coolest people on the planet.
The Scottish mods.
There was about 20 guys and girls in Glasgow who were super cool.
You know, super cool.
Nicky Stewart could even make having a broken-down Lambretta
on the A77 to Troon seem pretty enticing.
I was the coolest dude in the lay-by broken down, you know?
Nicky and his pals were so cool, they'd go to London
just to laugh at the other mods.
We used to go down to London and go by the 100 Club,
and it was just full of, eh...
..guys with Union Jack jackets, naff dressed.
I mean, they were just...nearly a joke.
Of course, dressing well for Nicky and his pals wasn't a joke,
because it was all aimed at getting the one thing all teenagers want.
Very small differences meant you'd get a kiss off a girl.
Very small differences.
There was a wee fashion for a few weeks,
I mean, literally, for a few weeks.
Boys were wearing desert boots,
maybe with red laces, for some reason. Don't know why.
And I remember, I had blue laces for some reason,
and a girl kissed me, just because I had blue laces on!
HE LAUGHS
She was pointing, "Oh, that's great!" A girl kissed me...
So you were quite pleased with yourself before you even went in!
By the end of the '60s, the look for cool kids had changed again.
It went to dressing like the Kinks, dressing like Austin Powers.
It went flamboyant and dandy.
To me, that was the beginning of the end of modism.
A whole new decade of change was on its way.
If the '50s gave us teenagers and teetering tenements...
..and the '60s gave us cool mods and clearances...
..then the '70s gave us hippies and high-rises.
Shiny new towns grew even larger
to welcome the cold and hungry masses of the inner cities.
ARCHIVE: When finished, it will be five times this size,
with room for 5,000 cars to be parked underneath.
And they truly had heroic names
like Irvine, Glenrothes...
..and the mystical Cumbernauld.
People in Cumbernauld were so proud of their brand-new homes
that when the last of them were built in 1977,
one lady thought she might as well invite the Queen around
for a celebratory cuppa.
And there she is again!
The Queen hadn't had a good old nose
around a Scottish person's house for ages.
My husband offered her a cup of tea,
and she said she'd such a tight schedule
that she couldn't possibly accept, although she'd have loved one.
It's a pity the Queen couldn't have freed up any more time,
because what she should have done is stayed for a slap-up dinner -
it would have rocked her world!
In the 1970s, a new type of night out appeared,
although technically, it was a night in.
The dinner party had arrived.
Hello, Kevin. Hi, there. Pleasure to meet you. You, too.
Kevin Geddes was born in the 1970s,
and the decade has made an enormous impression on him.
I mean, he's actually chosen to wear that outfit.
I was forced by the BBC!
In the '70s, food was, like the whole decade,
a real contradiction of colour,
clashing, weird and wonderful food.
But it was mostly about inviting people to your home,
that you were now an owner of and really proud of.
So it was about showing off.
So, showing off. I'm a professional show-off.
Absolutely. Anything you could show off to the neighbours.
Well, we've got some food here, do you want to talk us through
some of this '70s cuisine we have on this table here?
OK, well, this is very '70s.
I would start particularly with the pineapple hedgehog, here.
What is a pineapple hedgehog, Kevin? Well, it's as it says.
It's a pineapple that looks like a hedgehog. Really?
How do they make...so what is going on here?
So the pineapple's the main body...
And then you've got cheese on sticks. That's right.
So it was all about making things look even stranger
than they actually were.
So, it's simply cheese on cocktail sticks, stuck into a pineapple,
with an avocado face and a few olives for a bit of flourish.
You say that like it's the most normal thing you've ever said in your life.
It's perfectly normal to me.
Here's a top tip for your '70s food-themed party -
don't worry about what it tastes like, or what it's made from.
As long as it blends into your orange and brown decor,
you'll be fine!
And finally, I've got to ask, what is this monstrosity down here?
Well, this is something that we'd probably not see
in modern times, but it's bananas wrapped in ham,
baked in the oven with cheese sauce.
So it was the height of exotic foods.
Bananas were seen as something strange and exotic. Yeah.
But also something attainable.
And, again, you'd make them look quite strange,
make them look different, people were wowed by that.
People loved a bit of banana with ham and a cheese sauce. Absolutely.
It's not a combination that we'd see again.
It sounds like the sort of thing you'd come up with
when you were hammered drunk. That's right.
Or in the '70s.
But since we're all about the big night out,
I'm keen to try the bevvy.
Alcohol was a bit limited in the '70s.
You couldn't really get your hands on all the range of beers,
wines and spirits that we can get today. Yeah.
Of course, men would drink Tennent's lager,
or cans of beer.
And compare the ladies that they had on the back.
Why is there...do you know why there's ladies on this Tennent's can?
Because it was men that drank them.
I don't like that at all. I don't like the idea of that.
Those fortunate enough to afford a drinks trolley
also embraced the cocktail culture.
And the most popular cocktail at any gathering was one of these.
So, the king of cocktails in the '70s was a snowball.
And very simply, it's equal parts advocaat and lemonade,
mixed together. Again, probably,
you'd pop a cherry in there on a cocktail stick.
Oh, of course. And have you got any little tips to jazz this up a bit?
Would you have anything else in there?
Sometimes, you can add some lime.
Any garnish, any colour that you could get.
Nowadays, I think people would probably drink it with
a bit of gin to make it a bit stronger.
Oh, a bit of gin. Or brandy, maybe.
Thank you very much. You're welcome.
Mm.
Mm. This really is the king of cocktails.
Now, what if you fancied doing something energetic
after a few snowballs?
It's nice. I like it.
Well, you're in luck because...
..the '70s had more than one gift to give the night out.
That music went on, all the frustration came out
and at last they had what they wanted, yeah.
So here's what a big night out dancing became in the '70s.
Girls trapped in cages trying desperately to get out
and a dress code so eclectic you could get away with looking cool
in a shiny spacesuit.
A night out was all about letting it hang out on the dance floor.
If you watch some old footage, Top Of The Pops and stuff,
I love watching them back and just looking at the fashions.
And, OK, even the style of dancing, I suppose.
Bit more freedom to do your own thing,
as they say these days, to throw fancy shapes.
In the '70s, discotheques were being purpose built to
accommodate our need to throw wild and crazy shapes.
But they did take a while to get to Aberdeen.
Way back in the 1970s, wasn't a lot going on in Aberdeen.
Not what you would call sort of disco-wise.
Andy Taylor loved the way disco sounded
and he loved the way it looked.
I remember going into a bar in a green velvet suit
and a pair of black and silver platforms, and the guy behind the
bar looking at me and thinking, "What the hell is he wearing?!"
You know!
Andy made it his mission to spread his love of disco far and wide.
To do that, he became a bit like a Transformer and turned
into that other classic phenomenon of the '70s - a mobile disco.
It was just slap a record on, crank the volume up to 11, you know.
Eventually picked up a bit of Dutch courage to pick up
the microphone and...
HE MUFFLES GIBBERISH
That was it, I was hooked.
By the mid-'70s, the roads were jammed with mobile discos
packed into vans of all shapes and sizes.
Except, that is, on the serene and lovely Western Isles,
where loud music and sensuous dancing was frowned upon.
But then a young woman called Pauline Eggermont drove up to Skye
in her van...
..and she changed everything.
I remember sitting in the van in the street one day in the van
and a knock came to the window and there was two crofters there,
and they looked at us and said, "We're really sorry,
"but could we have a look inside the van?
"We've never seen a discotheque before."
So we leapt out and we opened the doors
and they put their heads in and one turned to the other
and said... RECORD SCRATCHES
.."There's not much room for dancing in there, is there?"
So we just left it at that.
The kids had been watching Pan's People on TV for years.
Now they could be more like them,
and not like this...
TRADITIONAL SCOTTISH MUSIC PLAYS
They used to just go to the local community halls
and do Scottish dances, which are great fun,
but they just wanted some pop music.
# Daddy, Daddy cool. #
Like this.
# Daddy, Daddy cool. #
However, some Skye residents believed disco was
the work of the Devil.
They actually did believe that, I'm not joking!
They hadn't even got over the shocking suggestiveness of dancing
like this...
The Free Presbyterian Church in particular was quite against it,
so much so they wrote us a very damning letter and they
actually said that our music was dirty music, that we were raising
the baser passions of human nature and leading others to transgress.
And, you know, if they'd have just come along
and seen everybody dancing and having a good time...
To be fair, the church elders may have had a point.
Pauline was certainly getting the kids of Skye frisky.
When the music started and the lights flashed and, of course,
it was a little dark, people were very uninhibited.
Lots of friendships were made and there were many weddings actually
that came out from the discos, as well.
By the end of the '70s, we had a modern Saturday night out -
the pub, the club to suit every musical taste
and the dodgy takeaway to soak up all the booze.
When the '80s arrived, it was all about refining the experience
and moving with the times.
And the decade saw Scotland finally moving into a better future
when homosexuality was decriminalised in 1981.
Yes, 1981!
Clubs like the super-cool, super-gay spots of the south opened
all over Scotland,
and the big night out developed a whole new meaning.
The best Scottish gay club ever was in Edinburgh,
and Kizzy Elliot was there.
I was straight for a few years in the beginning of the '80s
and then was able to come out.
I think Fire Island changed my life.
So, Fire Island did far more than copy English gay discos,
and it became famous for the world-class acts that
came to play there.
Mark Adair was in the audience.
Lily Savage did a few things before he was famous.
Eartha Kitt was on a few times.
Hazell Dean was there all the time, I think.
Annie Lennox was big then.
The Communards.
Fire Island was the only place in Scotland where an act
like the Village People could be upstaged by members of the audience.
Some of them thought they were Village People.
I mean, literally, they would have, you know, workmen belts and stuff on
and construction hats on, or carrying a motorbike helmet
with the sunglasses.
Moustaches were very big then.
But not amongst the girls, obviously.
Kizzy went for a far more streamlined look,
especially when performing with a cutting-edge dance troupe.
I wore a pair of gold hot pants before Kylie Minogue did,
in the '80s. They were designed for me
and they went down a storm in the gay clubs.
Yeah, there are a lot of good memories
from wearing those gold hot pants.
Memories we really can't go into in any sort of detail here.
Fire Island also brought a whole new scorching hot sound to Scotland.
# High energy
# Your love is lifting me
# Woo, woo
# High energy
# Your love is lifting me. #
That was my favourite.
That was the beginning of the night.
# Your love is lifting me
# Woo, woo. #
Fire Island was the first club in Scotland where DJs mixed records,
which made it difficult to leave the dance floor.
You could be up there for half an hour
and ready to die before you found a break
where you could get off.
You would come off the floor and light a fag, cos you could then.
KIZZY: # My head is in a spin, my feet don't touch the ground
# Because you're new to me my head goes round and round. #
And something would come on and you'd be like, "Oh!"
And you'd be back onto the floor again.
# My heart, it beats like a drum. #
While clubs like Fire Island set a new benchmark
for big nights out, the old dance palaces were in terminal decline.
The famous Barrowland ballrooms worried it would face
the same fate as its contemporaries, so they decided
to embrace a new fad from America.
It's roller disco.
That's why I'm wearing this. I've got roller-skates on.
If old dancehalls didn't become roller discos,
another fate was almost certain.
People who once went for the dancin' now came for the bingo.
And it was a lot more popular than roller disco.
Let's face it, roller disco was never going to catch on.
Lager plus Blue Nun plus roller-skates equals a trip to A&E.
However, in 1983, the Barrowland ballrooms were rescued
by a group of local lads.
# Get in, get out of the rain
# I'm gonna move on up to the waterfront. #
In 1983, Simple Minds recorded the video to Waterfront
at the Barrowlands.
It was a turning point for the band,
establishing them on the global scene.
And it marked a breakthrough in what was on offer
for the scintillating night out.
By the end of the '80s, bands like Aztec Camera,
Orange Juice, the Associates, Strawberry Switchblade,
the Cocteau Twins, Altered Images, Josef K, Jesus and the Mary Chain,
Texas, the Bluebells, Deacon Blue, Del Amitri, Wet Wet Wet,
the Skids, Big Country, Primal Scream, and the BMX Bandits,
to name but a few, had formed.
That was all in one breath.
You should be impressed!
And you could say it all began in a weird club for really odd people.
In the kind of earlier part of the '80s, the mid-'80s,
I tended to probably dress a little bit less manly
than quite a lot of guys around that time.
It wouldn't be welcomed by a certain type of element maybe
in certain places, and they would want to, like, threaten you
and perhaps even...
..hit you or something like that.
In 1985, Duglas Stewart found a place he could go that was
full of people who didn't want to hit him.
It was called Splash One, and it was so cool it didn't have DJs
and one of the guys who ran it would go on to be in Primal Scream.
It was curated by Bobby Gillespie and seven of his friends.
They didn't have someone djing, they had people making up mix tapes.
I've been told that I have a particularly strange way of dancing,
where I tend to do this.
I didn't practise in front of the mirror,
I just found that I do a bit of a pointy dance.
And there's Duglas there!
Blond hair and stripey T-shirt doing his pointy dance
in Splash One.
It was a place that felt like very much was made for kind of weirdos
and misfits and outcasts.
The stranger you were, probably the more you actually would feel
at home there.
So, home-grown alternative Scottish music began to make a big splash
in the late '80s.
# And this voice, it's getting louder
# And louder. #
But what most of us were listening to in the early '80s
was music almost as bad as this.
# I have a dream. #
In the real world, our favourite-ever Prime Minister
started the '80s by visiting Shetland to check all her oil
was still there.
ARCHIVE: Mrs Thatcher will be speaking to Scottish farmers
and fishermen, as well as visiting major industrial projects
associated with North Sea oil development.
Then she started selling the council houses that 55% of us lived in...
Now, what about the 24,000 homeless in Scotland?
..before ending the decade by using Scotland as a guinea pig
for the poll tax.
There's my poll tax book
and there's what I'm doing with my poll tax book!
Obviously it was never going to work.
# And I pray
# We hope and pray. #
So, for most Scots, a big night out in the '80s
was all about pure '50s-style escapism.
We all dressed like we were actually in Dynasty or Miami Vice.
And there was one Scottish super club everyone
wanted to be seen in.
I'm here in the bustling heart of the 1980s club scene.
I've got my traditional 1980s suit on and it's by far
the most depressing outfit I've worn so far in this show.
Look like an idiot.
But where is this place at the heart of the '80s pop club scene?
Isn't it obvious?
I'm in Brechin!
That's Brechin in Angus, obviously!
And this is what remains of Scotland's first-ever super club.
Based in the cinema, it was called Flicks,
and Duncan Ritchie was there on the opening night.
It really was amazing because Brechin is pretty much
a one-horse town, and it just kind of blew you away from
what you'd had before.
Brechin in the '80s had a population of around 7,000.
But that probably doubled every Saturday night.
There was people coming in from everywhere.
It wasn't just locals, it wasn't just, like, Forfar, Montrose,
Arbroath people. There were people coming from Aberdeen, Dundee,
Glasgow, Liverpool.
From the moment the doors opened at 8pm, Flicks was jammed with
people getting ready for when the night really started -
exactly an hour later with a super '80s club night laser show.
We usually started by nine o'clock the light and laser show,
which became very famous.
Stuart Aikenhead was one of the founders of Flicks.
And as well as the laser show and bussing people from all around,
did you have any guests come along?
We launched Bananarama, the Rick Astleys of the world.
Rick Astley performed in Brechin?
He did indeed, and he was presented with his platinum disc there
as well that same evening. There was a platinum disc and Rick Astley
in the same place... Yeah. ..and that place was Brechin. Yep.
# Never gonna give you up
# Never gonna let you down
# Never gonna run around and desert you. #
If you detect a slight Stock, Aitken and Waterman vibe going on,
you'd be right.
# Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you. #
Flicks appeared on the iconic, or infamous,
Hit Man And Her three times.
Hello, this is the Hit Man! And this is Her!
And tonight it is Flicks in Brechin!
We convinced Pete when he started off the Hit Man And Her show
that Brechin would be a wonderful venue to have The Hit Man And Her.
# Never gonna run around and desert you. #
This was happening in Brechin.
You know, you just couldn't get away from that fact,
and it was just amazing.
# Never gonna make you cry
# Never gonna say goodbye. #
National personalities that were now coming to Brechin -
it really was amazing. I've used that word a number of times,
but it was, it was just preposterous that this was happening in the town.
Every '80s cliche rolled into one glorious nightclub.
It was quite, you know, amazing.
In the '90s, we left behind the cocktails and glitz
and went back to nature for our big nights out.
It's the start of the '90s, a mere 27 years ago.
Not a lot happened in this decade, it was rather dull.
People would rather lose themselves in the countryside
rather than go to a club. Well, some people, anyway.
The atmosphere in the parties back in those days was amazing.
It was completely new music.
Smoke lights, other enhancements, people had a fantastic time.
It was amazing.
The amazingly enhanced illegal parties of the '90s were actually
a side effect of Glasgow's shot at being European City of Culture.
And it was opened by...
Yep, you've guessed it - the Queen again!
The City of Culture in 1990, yeah, was pretty good.
Everywhere had five o'clock licences.
I seem to remember it as a good summer.
The weegies' big night out now lasted till the next morning.
And when they got a taste of that, they weren't turning back.
James "DJ Harri" Harrison can just about remember
being out and about in the early '90s.
You know, it was just, like, a really good time.
Eh...
The age of the rave in Scotland had begun,
and more than ravers anywhere else in the world, we took
the idea of partying in wild locations to the extreme.
One of the parties that we did with Desert Storm was in a place
called Scoraig.
Jamie Cloughley was an adventurous raver back in the day.
The only way that you could get to Scoraig is either a ten-mile trek
over a mountain or by fishing boat.
So we took the fishing boat option.
I don't know whose land it was, but we just had a big party
and it was amazing.
The '90s saw the night out emerge from dimly lit clubs
into the open air.
And it happened all over Scotland,
even here in Edinburgh, of all the places!
In the '90s, the whole world finally seemed to realise
Scotland was great.
At the start of the decade, foreign visitors spent £172 million
just in Edinburgh.
By 1998, they spent 320 million quid.
Most of that extra cash went on crushing themselves under
the Castle in the freezing cold
at the ancient auld Hogmanay celebrations.
Which were made up by Pete Irvine.
I always thought that Edinburgh's Hogmanay was about hospitality
and I think that's why people come,
because it's the Scots at their best.
And the Scots are surprisingly, perhaps, well behaved,
because although there's an alcohol factor, people are
just really friendly in an open kind of way, they kiss you,
complete strangers.
And people from all round the world find that fascinating
and really sort of comforting, I suppose.
And what could be more comforting than a big, drunken Scot
throwing you over his shoulders on Princes Street at Hogmanay?
I'd travel halfway round the world for that.
We invented it, you know.
Hogmanay is a word no-one else has.
Most places, it's New Year's Eve.
Not only that, of course, we have the song for it.
MUSIC: Auld Lang Syne
But seriously, if we've always been good at celebrating
a big night out, it's probably because we're the home
of the world's biggest and best night out,
however we've chosen to celebrate it.
My dad had a couple of hairdresser shops in Govan, and the ladies would
have their hair done for New Year, for their big night out, and they
would have the appointment in the book the year before.
The only way you could get an appointment to get your hair done
was if somebody died.
In the '70s, Hogmanay really meant visiting houses.
They would insist on giving you a drink from their bottle
and then you would have to take one.
I started drinking when I was about 16, on a Hogmanay.
I think it was Newcastle Brown Ale and I think I drank two cans
and I was absolutely blazing.
It made me very confident with the ladies, though.
We'd see the bells in and then we wouldn't be seen for about two days.
That was it.
I'd do it again. Yeah, I'd do it again, definitely.
Well, Frank, let's go dancing.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Any time, mate, any time. || Downloadha.com ||
MUSIC: Auld Lang Syne