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One Saturday in '77
A kaleidoscopic Technicolor acid trip through punk’s year zero through the eyes of a grizzled TV executive.
The bare monochrome cover belies the psychedelic innards that take the reader through a land of carnival folk, failed funk stars and the fresh corpse of the king of rock’n’roll. TV producer Doug Sellers’ attempts to draw together the disparate strands of his personal life while dealing with the toxic egos of four burgeoning child stars and a roster of c-list guests. Will the gamble of booking 50% of The Monkees and Billy Idol pay off? Is there too much about elephants? Who is that guy who claims to know Marty Feldman?
It’s a 70s fever dream so vivid you can feel the glass dimples on the bottle of Lucozade through the crackly clear plastic orange wrapper. You’re sick and sweating cold beads of fear. There’s caked snot on the pillowcase. The cotton wool is seeping from a tear in your lurid polyester kid’s blanket. And you know deep down, you’re still going to school tomorrow.
One Saturday in ’77, a very small portion of London’s children sat down to watch an episode of a doomed television programme. Unbeknownst to them the show was to be an exploration through hundreds of years of humanity’s failure to live up to its own expectations. Encompassing the great famine of Ireland, the siege of Paris and the defeat of the Black Flag pirates in Indochina, the show would go on to have a terrible consequence for at least one person that day. And for almost everyone else, it would mean absolutely nothing.
The bare monochrome cover belies the psychedelic innards that take the reader through a land of carnival folk, failed funk stars and the fresh corpse of the king of rock’n’roll. TV producer Doug Sellers’ attempts to draw together the disparate strands of his personal life while dealing with the toxic egos of four burgeoning child stars and a roster of c-list guests. Will the gamble of booking 50% of The Monkees and Billy Idol pay off? Is there too much about elephants? Who is that guy who claims to know Marty Feldman?
It’s a 70s fever dream so vivid you can feel the glass dimples on the bottle of Lucozade through the crackly clear plastic orange wrapper. You’re sick and sweating cold beads of fear. There’s caked snot on the pillowcase. The cotton wool is seeping from a tear in your lurid polyester kid’s blanket. And you know deep down, you’re still going to school tomorrow.
One Saturday in ’77, a very small portion of London’s children sat down to watch an episode of a doomed television programme. Unbeknownst to them the show was to be an exploration through hundreds of years of humanity’s failure to live up to its own expectations. Encompassing the great famine of Ireland, the siege of Paris and the defeat of the Black Flag pirates in Indochina, the show would go on to have a terrible consequence for at least one person that day. And for almost everyone else, it would mean absolutely nothing.
179 pages, Paperback
Published March 9, 2021
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September 28, 2026My friend wrote this. Unfortunately he’s dead now.
Pretty impressive to write a book though innit.
I saw him so clearly in this
Pretty impressive to write a book though innit.
I saw him so clearly in this
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review