Socks again in our stockings at Xmas
MANUFACTURERS of socks and undies love this time of year as millions of mothers, daughters, nieces, wives and partners ask the same question: ‘What do we get the old gyet for Christmas?”
Why only the ladies, you ask? Well folks, I’ve omitted the male-tomale Xmas pressie scenario, not out of sexism or misogyny, but out of the cold facts of male retail festive chronology.
As I have highlighted in an earlier article, many blokes truly believe that the optimum time to go pressie shopping is between 5 and 7pm on Christmas Eve – between the end of the works booze-up and the last bus home. This article ain’t about you lads - it’s dedicated to you!
So return to the opening paragraph, the question of what to buy the radgie gadgie in your life for Xmas gets easier to solve as they get older; the musical and fashion considerations you might have applied when their eyes were clearer and bellies trimmer, cease to apply.
Back in Christmases past – in the pre-internet, get-off-your-Jacksie days – you had to brave the crowds and personally seek out those burgundy Farah slacks or the Police’s ‘Regatta de Blanc’ LP in blue vinyl; simply nowt else would suffice for the trendy young man in your life.
Not any more, pets. Your ‘grumpy pumpy and lumpy’ bloke’s Crimbow present now requires no imagination, effort or energy at all. It’ll be sox and undies for the auld fella for eternity.
To meet this specialist market, the months up to Christmas see shops stocking brands of ‘dad socks’ and ‘uncle undies’ simply unavailable for the remainder of the year.
They range from dull brown or blue monstrosities made from a fabric so coarse, synthetic and cheap that they must be from surplus stocks once issued to military conscripts of the old Soviet bloc, to lurid luminous and psychedelic Y-fronts that were last sported by some seventies German porn star.
Even the bargain ‘poond’ shops are joining in with 3-packs of socks for the princely sum of only one shiny pound coin! Givowwer! three pairs of socks for a poond? How aaaful can they possibly be?
The last time I heard that war cry was in the mid-eighties, screamed by the dodgy radgies who stood outside the Northumberland Street entrance to Eldon Square.
Their merchandise was something to behold – white, allegedly cotton, sports socks that were all you needed to complement your cherry-coloured Sta-Prest chinos and any pair of brogues or loafers.
Given that a pound bought a lot more 30 years ago than it does today, they were still naff.
You would proudly pull on your Eldon Square entrance specials at the start of a neet oot but by the time you’d reached the Canny Lad or Brahms and Liszt they’d began to unravel. It was like a Geordie Hansel and Gretel – you could actually track a mate’s progress from pub to pub simply by following the trail of unfolding white twine!
The only danger was that, if too many people were wearing them on the same night, the Bigg Market might end up looking like it had hosted a world record Cat’s Cradle attempt.
It was quite revolutionary - you started the night as a white-socked Wham Boy but ended it as a trendy bare-ankled lounge lizard; and your mates never lost track of you, despite the lack of mobile technology.
So let’s get the old white sock sellers out of retirement – your radgie at home would love it!
Mike is performing at the Stand Comedy Club this Wednesday and on Thursday 23rd, Friday 24th and Saturday 25th of November.