It wasn’t all plane sailing
HAVE I ever told you about the time I met legendary football manager Brian Clough in a grocery store in Majorca? I haven’t? Oh, you’re going to love this. It’s one hell of a story. It’s the 1970s and I’m on holiday with my parents.
One morning I’m in this shop with my mum – buying, I don’t know, fizzy drinks or something – when who should I spot but, yes, Cloughie!
“Look over there, Mum!” I whisper, barely able to contain my excitement. “It’s Brian Clough!”
To which she replies: “That’s nice, dear. Golly, look at these enormous tomatoes.”
OK, it’s not the greatest anecdote ever. It’s not up there with, say, Peter Ustinov on Parky.
But I’m sure I could have trawled my memory for a few others, had the makers of Channel 5’s HOLIDAYING INTHE 70s:WISH YOU WERE HERE (9pm) got in touch and invited me to share them on the show.
We were flying home from one package holiday when the tour firm (Clarkson’s) officially went bust halfway through the flight, meaning our pilot was told he could no longer land at Heathrow, where our car was parked.And it was 10.30pm! Boy, did we chuckle!
OK, that’s not a great one either. Fair play to this show, it’s got way more informed contributors than yours truly.
It’s got proper travel journalists, aviation experts, tourism specialists, former flight crew, it’s got the chap who launched the Lonely Planet travel guide, it’s even got Anthea Turner. In this second episode, its focus switches from the Mediterranean, to which Brits had begun to fly in huge numbers, to the US, to which Brits began to fly in huge planes. Eventually, that is.
Entrepreneur Freddie Laker was determined to take on the major airlines by offering cut-price, no frills, transatlantic flights.
The major airlines (boo!) were determined to stop him. Hence it took until 1977 for Laker’s low-cost Skytrain service (for example, London to New York for £59) to (sorry, pun unavoidable) get off the ground.
Laker went bust in the early Eighties but at least he’d made his mark and got a gong.The show also recreates the Seventies long-haul flight experience by inviting a few random folk on board an old 747, mocked up to match the planes of that decade.
It doesn’t actually take off and fly them anywhere (this is also low-cost telly, remember) but it does allow them to consider what a transatlantic flight would have been like back then, with no gadgetry or in-flight entertainment.
AS it dawns on them that they would have had to speak to one another, or even – gasp! – read something called a “book”, their horror is almost palpable.