He was born about half a mile from where I eventually grew up in Edinburgh and I know the area well. Had no idea that's where he was originally from because it's not a typical accent for the area.
He was brilliant Fyfe. I remember him at an old street of cottages in Scotland where their only source of water was a natural spring. Fyfe came out with 'They've been drinking from the well for 40 years and it's Poison !' I nearly choked on my dinner laughing. He was great crak .
Alan Whicker, Cliff Michelmore, Fyfe Robertson..... the list goes on. None of them would be given a chance nowadays in this insanely "woke" world in which we live.
Loved Fyfe on tv. I was 17 years old, fresh to the Army in 1975 when this was made. Far from perfect times, but ‘Beam me back’ anytime compared to what we have now.
I feel exactly the same. Luckily, maybe fortunately, I got out whilst I could and made Western Australia my home. Now, I sometimes have to pinch myself with my lifestyle. Certainly, in my mid to late sixties, I could be in a far worse place. What's happened to the UK has saddened me so much that I find it all unbearable to consider.
No Fwin Way! In 75, I was paid wages so low in the NHS that I couldn't eat for the last few days before payday. I spent my days wiping backsides and washing incontinent old men and changing urine soaked beds. Now I'm old, I spend time on my yacht, or doing anything I want. I don't have to pay a TV licence, I don't have to pay King Charles to anchor my yacht, I don't pay a licence fee to take my kayak into the rivers and lakes, I don't pay tax on my pension and I don't have to "pay and display" every place I pull off the road in my car. Of course I too left the UK as soon as I could get out. Best thing I ever did.
people have always looked back; in the 1970s the 1950s were "great!". In the early '80s, people looked back to the 1960s. the Beatles music was back in the charts, etc.
@@agfagaevart Not really; no-one in the 50's thought a previous era was better; after WW2, everyone had a sense of life being better with all the improvements of western technology in all areas of life making everyone dream of a better future; 50's western society was really the peak of western civilisation; the 70's following on from the 60's upheaval, really had deteriorated since the 50's; of course, the decades since have only seen western society collapse even further.
@@alanmusicman3385but when they were outside they were actually outside not glued to technology I don't use my phone much outside and it's mad how many people are just staring mindless at their phones I'm 26 so I wasn't messed up as much by it
That was the Britain I remember. What a terrible loss. I was much more interested in the country-side as a visitor, but even London was fascinating to me. The museums, churches, and historic buildings! I loved it all. I'm so glad I saw it then.
I vacationed in Britain a couple of times in the 80s. It was before Blair dropped the demographic doomsday bomb. My impressions of Britain was that it didn't have many of the new gadgets found in the New World, but it had a better lifestyle. It was wonderful. Sadly, British leaders sold out the country for personal gain just like the rest of the Western world calling it "progress" and "social justice", or economically necessary. Now we all have these shiny baubles in our homes, at the price of turning our communities into grimy dystopias...this trade was worse deal than when Manhattan was sold for a few beads and a couple of tin pots.
@@paddyanglais91 Did you notice the Tories then? Nope, those Eaton boys and billionaires had nothing but the best interests of the working class at heart. Do you know how much Sunak makes in a day just from interest on capital. More than a GP earns in a year.
Watch him walking down the path on the leaves. A pair of sturdy, well-cobbled, no-brand leather shoes. People just don't dress like that anymore in casual settings. Today he'd be wearing some kind of trainers, casual shoes like Vans or Skechers, or possibly a Goretex walking shoe like Merrell or Karrimor.
I don't think he would. I was only 4 when this was filmed and know very little about him, but he strikes me as someone who just took things in his stride and accepted that you can't fight progress, you don't have to like it, but it's going to happen anyway. Try to make sense of it if you have the time but ultimately, try not to let it bother you too much or you'll go mad. Social media has upped the ante to levels that I bet Fyfe would never have thought of but I bet he'd still just roll his eyes and say, "Lawks alive, would you just calm doon a wee while there, eh?". Ha ha!
i dunno mate. it's a mixed bag. For one thing the pollution was chazilllion times worse as a kid. You clean up some shite and all it does is give people more time to complain about whatever the Daily Mail Faceboook is beetchin about
@ that should be expected. There was less stuff, less packaging. What the film don't show is the stink of IC engine exhaust. Or even the tobacco smoke. It was so bad i remember ladies smothering themselves in disgusting perfume, bcos they had no sense of smell left to ken they put way too much on The past wasn't better. Or worse. Just different
Ah, Fyfe Robertson! That brings back memories of Tonight with Cliff Michelmore, Alan Wicker, Kenneth Allsop and Polly Elwys. Those guys went out into the world and had real reporting fun!
He would be horrified by the way we live now, I was born in 1969 in Nottingham and seeing that footage of the city center and ‘Vicky centre’ brought back so many memories, look how clean and tidy the place looks, no litter, no beggers, no homeless, no drunks, no one wandering around off their face on spice, no constant smell of cannabis in the air, no groups of dodgy looking youths in hoodies, no garish shop front and signage, no endless fast food and vape shops………I could go on and on!! If I was in the Victoria centre with my mum and it was coming up to the hour I’d trot off to the water clock and watch it transfixed, I loved it! I’d be 5 or 6years old, I’d wait there and mum would turn up 10mins later, no worries about adducted or beaten up etc, surely that says everything? You just wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that these days!
I don't think he'd be exactly thrilled if he was in Vietnam England either. Comes across as very entitled. Practially a Utopia compared to the past and what goes on now.
I feel a bit sorry for Fyfe. He's made this thought provoking film in 1975 and rightly getting very angry about society's problems but all most people watching in 2024 are feeling (including me) is this huge sense of nostalgia for 1975!
I would hate to think of future generations looking back at 2024 in 50 years time and thinking life was so much better then. Imagine how bad life in 2074 will be if that is the case!
So true by comparison with today's world. Back then post WW2 the financial and material constraints unfortunately led to much of the architecture of the day that was rushed as a giant sticking plaster with little available and we have been paying the price ever since.
Yes, broken telephone box windows. What a scandal. Even my nieces, in their 20s feel we have let go of, or have lost bits of the past most precious x iain w in glasgow x
If he thought that was bad, he'd be shocked now. The grimness of the mid 70's was paradise compared to what Britain has become today, Swap it in an instant.
nothin changes the sickness in mans heart - sin - but today the provoker satan has been unleashed .... God did the same when Israel turned their back on God, He withdrew His protection & the Romans took their holy city and their land and scattered them, worse was to come in history with the Jewish Holocaust
No you wouldn't "swap it" once the reality hit you; Only THREE television channels, that all sign off at midnight. No late night supermarkets, coz they all close around 6pm so you couldn't do a quick shop after work. no internet. you would miss your iphone, no personal computers. very hard to get a phone in your home from the GPO. and it was damn expensive anyway. yada yada...
@@agfagaevart Haven't watched TV in years, it's rubbish compared to back then. Seldom shop in supermarkets anymore, because the range of health foods has diminished this past 5 years. Most of the food people buy from them is highly processed food full of saturated fats and sugars. Look at the videos of people in the 60's and 70's, not many fat people. Walk down any high street today and most you see are clinically obese. The internet would be a miss though I give you that, but it also has brought it's disadvantages too. Overall yes, things were better back then because people were happier. Today everybody are slaves to debt which they will never free themselves of in their lifetime.
But in many respects it has improved. And I don't quite get how he could be complaining in 1975 when he must still have remembered the war and post-war years. In the video he complains about factory jobs. Today he would be complaining about no factory jobs. He just knows how to complain.
@@ronald3836 There was 3 day week imposed on people a year or so earlier. power cuts. Britain was still recovering from WW2. he had a lot to moan about.
like so many, you have a romantic view of an England that never was - it became an idol. Human nature to have a filter that remembers past nice things, yes even in former authoritarian states,, folks long.... for the bad ol days
Physically lifes got easier for both men and women, generations ago you followed your father in occupation around where I live so you went down the pitt which must have been terrible condtions with the health problems many minors suffer from, and the home life was not better for the stay at home women just washing cloths must have been back breaking work without electricitonic appliances.
Fyfe a TV pioneer for 8 years was such a piece of British TV culture through the daily news magazine program "Tonight", with his distictive Scottish accent permiating British living rooms each weekday evening. He shared the program with three other pioneers, Cliff Michellmore, Alan Whicker and Julian Pettifer among others.
What a great character Fyfe is - traditional elderly gent but with a youthful eccentricity in there too. It's a shame guys like this are almost extinct now. It really just shows nothing ever moves forward, just goes round and round, spiralling downwards. Everything he points out is more true today than in 1975 and yet we long for that time now. It's never really about the era, we mourn for the loss of human connection with each passing generation as technology takes over and eventually will make us extinct. Unless we wake up fast!
But we have so many exotic Fast Food shops, Barbers, Vape shops etc to choose from nowadays ! Plus we have all those lovely concrete blocks lining our streets to keep us 'safe' from those poorly maintained vans that seem to keep swerving on to pavements. Progress most indeed !
A very diverse range of vans as well, dare speak against them enriching the pavements and the DVLA will take away your license! And as we all know, staying vigilant of that is just part and parcel of living in big cities 😉👍
They are worse. Our population has grown by nigh on a third (50m-67m) due to immigration. People are living longer, and we are also poorer per capita by any measure. This small island is overcrowded and has been quietly dying.
@@Chris-v6b1n probably is so. It just seems madness to continue to grow our population at this rate, when we are struggling to serve support and take decent careof the existing population.. The cake just is not enough to go around and is finite. Very few are doing very well, the majority are seeing quality of life eroding. It’s a sad state of affairs for all.
@gaycha6589 You're completely right. Were immigration any sort of benefit, the UK would be booming (given that literally no other country in the world except the US took more last year). Instead GDP per capita is falling, and infrastructure is crumbling and insufficient for our population etc.
"It's good to work for an organisation like the BBC where you can criticise your bosses". Good luck with that now, particularly if your boss is from one of the protected and venerated groups.
I unplugged 3 years ago - best decision of my life. Absolutely no news, no TV, no radio, no FB, no social. The only comms I have is youtube & netflix for entertainment, and keeping in touch with family and friends with whatsapp. Takes a bit of getting used to, but when you realise that 1. You can't alter any of the things that are happening 2. If something is going to affect you, it will affect you regardless of whether or not you have been stressing about it.
If he could see it today, I grew up in the seventies, and we all thought it was dire, oil crisis, government crisis, strikes, IRA bombings, immigration, overpopulation. But looking back, compared to today, it was delightful. Housing was a lot more affordable, new cars, although not as reliable, cost in real terms half of today's prices. Travelling by plane was expensive, but there was a lot less laws, regulation, fines and surveillance.
This is a superb piece of television history. Beautifully done. Zoom lenses are a bit out of fashion now, but used to perfection here. His to camera delivery is totally natural. Stunning.
Perhaps one of the most irritating aspects of modern news is the tendency of reporters to constantly gesticulate with their hands and arms am-dram style, in an exaggerated attempt to stress how important this or that point is. Watch Fyfe's hands. Actually, you very rarely see them, as they are, for the most part, folded behind his back or in his pockets. So natural.
The internet didn't become accessible for normal people until the World Wide Web in 1991. What existed before then was generally only used by universities and nerds. Businesses did have the beginnings of e-commerce and electronic banking has existed since 1969, but that was the back end processing only.
Great 👍 another great full documentary upload, absolutely brilliant insight from the past, congratulations to whoever is in charge of this youtube channel..keep up the great work...ps I was born in this year🎉
This would make a great documentary to bring this up to date with a similar reporter but who would compare with Fyfe? So many people saying how much better it used to be but i agree with the start of this one that it really depends on where you are in life. Make the most of today and it will always be the best time. Thanks to BBC Archive for introducing me to Fyfe. What a great man.
It is easy to take things for granted when they work well, and we often don't truly appreciate what we had until it's gone. Subsequent generations can struggle to really understand this (until, of course, they live it themselves). I remember telling a youngster that my parents would leave cash outside for the milkman each week in the early 70s. He didn't believe me. He said the money would have been stolen, and that 'people have always been the same'.
Good old Fyffe. As a teenager growing up in the seventies I didn't appreciate how inciteful he was and I probably did think of him as an old codger. How brilliant to be able to relive these clips on TH-cam all these years later...and realise what an arrogant flibbertigibbet you were🤭 He had a sense of humour too didn't he...I liked the going out of one Marks and Spencer and coming out of another in a different town😂 High streets did look the same in a lot of ways but you also got different cafés and specialist shops that you would seek out in a particular town. I wonder what Fyffe would make of today's high streets...I think he would be saddened by the number of soulless estate agents windows and fast food joints as well as the ever increasing number of charity shops and empty premises for sure...and good luck getting a bus by the way!
Perhaps one of the most irritating aspects of modern news is the tendency of reporters to constantly gesticulate with their hands and arms am-dram style, in an exaggerated attempt to stress how important this or that point is. Watch Fyfe's hands. Actually, you very rarely see them, as they are, for the most part, folded behind his back or in his pockets. So natural.
Fyfe's charm was he could "stand aside" and look at life and construct a commentary that few reporters/commentators could manage today - thoughtful, intelligent and funny ! Good to hear James Alexander Gordon reading the news headlines- a sound of my school days !
I wonder what he'd think of the world today? Those franchised high streets are hanging on by a thread, while everyone buys things online. Looked up the Brighton high street. Marks and Spencer is still there! But Boots is now a Starbucks and the store next door is a Wendy's!
@@yinoveryang4246 Pollution paid its great part as well. Don´t forget all those cars were powered by lead in the gasoline. Mind you they were not being hit with heavy radiation from mobile phone masts!
Is it that the BBC can’t make a programme like this, or is it us that are incapable of watching a programme like this, unable to resist the lure of the comment section and doomscrolling social media when Fyfe takes more than 5 seconds to make his point?
Perhaps one of the most irritating aspects of modern news is the tendency of reporters to constantly gesticulate with their hands and arms am-dram style, in an exaggerated attempt to stress how important this or that point is. Watch Fyfe's hands. Actually, you very rarely see them, as they are, for the most part, folded behind his back or in his pockets. So natural.
In 75, flares meant you didn't have to clean your shoes, Hai Karate, disco and punk arrived, you could still buy Vesta beef risotto, the BBC knew how to make sitcoms, you could go to the cinema, have 40 Embassy, get boozed up, and have change from a fiver, Cadburys Dairy Milk tasted like chocolate, Quality Street was quality, women didn't need botox, Angry Birds eyebrows, Cuprinol tans, and pneumatic lips to look glamorous, and we could all laugh at ourselves.
Now I'm an old codger like Fyfe is here, I see me bemoaning precisely the same things (plus a few new ones - like smartphone addiction, rather than simple use). He lived in Derby when he made this video; me too. The Nottingham he visited was the place I studied for my degree just four years later. Now one of the shopping centres has been all but destroyed, I hear. As an old codger I have improved health-care - so many of the technologies which keep me here were beyond sensible prediction, then. Fyfe does have rose-tints on: crime, street-violence, poverty, child-abuse, abuse of women, racism, etc etc were all rife in the 1970s. They remain with us and crime-clear-ups are lamentable but much improvement has still been made. Nostalgia always glosses-over the past's failings and miseries. Today is so much better in many ways - though worse in others, of course. But we should never simply and ignorantly (through lack of knowledge or forgetfulness) praise all our yesteryears without celebrating today's better things. Though I retain my guilty pleasure of Glam Rock, just that, to quote Mud (Tiger Feet): "your hips swinging out-of-bounds" is now a somewhat dangerous prospect!
Fyfe Robertson should have had a time travelling machine to go visit the towns in the North of England as they are in 2024 compared to how he may have remembered them back in his youth; he may get a shock.
We ALWAYS view the past with fondness, because we've survived it. We are still unsure and insecure of the present and the future, hence the reason we look favourably on days gone by.
I would love a re-run of the 1990s. But was that because the 1990s were genuinely better, or was it because I was a young child and look back fondly on a period of no responsibility or worries? And that world was all I knew because nothing 'newer' had come along yet? If I did a re-run of the 1990s, with my current age (late 30s) and current knowledge of life, would I enjoy it? Or would I find it a huge inconvenience because a lot of what I now enjoy doing was either very primitive or didn't exist yet? For example, would I get irritated with not having the internet everywhere all the time and only being able to shop at weekends because there was no "online"? I definitely remember supermarkets in those days being very basic, plastic bread etc. I've grown into quite the foodie and might realise that the stuff I enjoy today just isn't available in the UK back in 1995.
Poor man would, in a heartbeat, turn into a hermit on some uninhabited Scottish Isle had he lived to see a world of 24-hour news, non-stop "content", podcasts and X!
Thank you for posting. I was ten years old back then and I mostly remember the optimism I felt about life. There was an unspoken promise that things would be getting better forever. Learning about our troubled history necessarily had to come with a sense of affirmation that, finally, mankind had found the means and the ways to make this world a more fair and happier place for everyone. That was until Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan came around ofcourse, and unemployment surged. Nobody seemed to be waiting for us young dreamers and unadjusted Mike Leigh characters to join the ranks, and whatever jobs there were, most of them were dull and unfulfilling. Very interesting, and honestly quite disheartening, to see that nothing has changed, fundamentally, in the way we are dealing with the core questions and issues regarding our life in a modern society. Upon seeing this, I found it surprising that already then, people were asking exactly the same questions about what makes the quality of our lives, and even provide some familiar clues as to the answers. Meanwhile, we still seem to be on this steady course towards the end of our affairs as a species, and not too graciously, regarding the occasion. Oh dear, I must be getting really old.
If he could come back to life for just a few days, his heart would break. It goes to show that, fundamentally, government has solved nothing in 50 years and, indeed, has presided over an exacerbation of these issues.
@@ashcross Of course governments must do 'stuff', but what they do and how they do it should really be a bottom-up process as much as possible. I really don't like it when people say something like "Keir Starmer is running the country." No, he's running the government, a different thing. We're not North Korea.
I find it highly amusing that he failed to recognise that the shopping centre he was so taken by would be the death of his beloved High Street. Aside from that, it's pretty much identical today.
They keep telling me that my life is getting better by having so-called "supermarkets" and out-of-town shopping parks, and being able to buy everything under one roof. They tell me that by being able to buy tasteless and hard red things [masquerading as strawberries] at Christmas, my life is immeasurably improved. They even tell me now I should sit at home in a near hermetically sealed, flat-pack identikit house on some monotonous and countrywide-the-same housing estate and order "on line". NO THANK YOU! I will shop at my local independent shops; I shall eat what is in season and that which is grown locally; I shall speak with the shop keepers and not buy my meat in small plastic sarcophaguses, but rather buy from a butcher who knows the provenance of the poor, unfortunate animal I am about to but a part of. I shall grow what I can in my garden and have all my all-pervasive "tech" turned off as I spend hours pottering, digging, planting and weeding; harvesting and nurturing in my modest plot. I shall not be the one to wear "designer" clothes - whatever they are - that the gullible in society buy, but rather my old and worn-out walking boots, my 30+ year old corduroys and my agéd and moth eaten wooly pullover atop my old Tattersall shirt, its collar worn to nothing. I shall have a real life; a life of exercise and reward at what I have grown. I shall be able to pick an apple from my tree and some blackberries from the hedgerow and make a pie drizzled from cream from my local shop and which tastes as it should; I shall be able to make a wooden hulled model boat from a plan and not some kit; I shall go for a walk without my mobile face accessory held out in-front of me staring at a few square inches of screen - my screen will be the ever changing landscape, the passing seasons, the scudding clouds and the singing birds. I shall be the one who notices the swallows arriving and the flocks of starlings; I shall be the one who eats his own food from his garden, and I shall be the one who does not turn-on the massive TV with 500 channels of repeats and spend mind-numbing hours desperately trying to find something, anything ,worth watching. I shall sit by the fireside of an evening watching the logs burn down to glowing embers and read my book until it is too dark, I am the one who will then go to bed as night falls, and I am the one who will be woken by the sun, and I am the one who will be content.
@@DawnSuttonfabfour It is, and you may, but, to save you a journey, why not try finding places near to you? They are out there, but, sadly, they are becoming fewer and fewer, and further and further between. Shops are charging, as are the high streets that once thronged with shoppers busily scurrying from one to the next to buy what they sold; people stood and spoke with each other, and many local village shops used a book to record what you bought, and which you settled at the end of the month - no credit checks, no forms to filll-out, just that old and long-since forgotten thing, trust. The thing missing form the so-called "supermarkets" as they herd you past the paramilitary looking security guard and in through the cattle market gates to an unknown doom of security tagged and heavily surveilled good locked away in boxes lest you should, for once in you life, feel the urge to steal a frying pan or a pack of razor blades. Tomorrow I shall go for a walk. Maybe in the snow, maybe in glorious sunshine and I shall walk into the village and buy from one of the local and indepebdent shops. No security cameras, no tags and that much cherished thing - trust. I shall also meet with friends old and new and spend some time chatting with them before we each go our speratre way.
Just goes to show doesn’t it how people have always seen issues in society and this is from a well respected journalist of the time but even many interviews from the normal man on the street of that time would show a lot of discontentment also. That’s why it’s annoying when so many blinkered people insist that things only went downhill from this or that age (to suit their own agenda) but fact is the gap between the haves and have nots and moral outrage about various trends is not a new phenomena. Actually a great book is ‘Hooligan’ by G Pearson that looks at the fear of moral decline since before Victorian times even against the concept there ever was ‘golden age’. The conclusion seemingly is ‘the good old days’ are any years before what the majority of folks ever even experienced.
He's a few years away from Thatcher. She promised a future where business could do public services better than the government, she was wrong but people bought it because they were already discontented for a decade and wanted an easy answer It's important we learn our lessons from history. But I think we're close to being too late. He's complaining about things we're still complaining about now. Car centric cities, decimated public transport, houses for profit etc
I was born in 1975 when this came out, i have to say things are not getting better now, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, yes we have mobile phones etc now but they are a big destraction and i would probably get a lot more done without them.
@ - I meant they were both ‘Kindly grandfather’ types. I never knew my grandfathers so would have been proud to have either of them. No offence intended.
@ BBC archives: why do you have to make the disclaimer “Of course, the opinions of Fyfe Robertson do not necessarily reflect those of the BBC Archive, much as we dearly love ol' Robbie.”?
Its good that these historical films exist, to show people today how things really were and not the distorted fantasy presented to us in every tv series or film that pretends to be set in these times. Thanks @history debunked !
God, it was so quiet. I remember it. It is interesting how much we're taken up with news now - news of things we can do nothing about, but that doesn't stop us pointlessly worrying and arguing. Meanwhile, we neglect the things in front of us. 15:15 Brighton is a tad different now....
Fyfe's commentry is a useful reminder that change is perpetual and cyclical in nature. Brace yourself, discomfort is coming, always (as well as comfort)!
looking at the Malls now, they just look like another of the planners mistakes... the problem is that we don't see the future coming (& the future keeps coming at us.... faster & faster each time)
He hit the nail on the head when he said in the beginning that age plays a factor. I dare say my grandchildren will feel nostalgic for 2024 one day. 😂 things change.. fact of life. The trick is to seek the good and live each day as if this is the only life you will ever have 😀
Hm I've considered this but the reason is that things will get worse. That's a depressing thought. I like to think we will hit a wall and start reversing, in some (beneficial) ways
I was one of those commuters, travelling in from Bromley when there used to be a direct line into Cannon Street and then a five minute walk to the office. I had a seat all the way there and all the way back. Six months later it was decided to stop the direct line so that we had to change at Grove Park. No seat there and no seat back. Then the scramble to cross to platform one up and over and down the stairs only to see the shuttle pull out before anyone could board. There was only two stops but the driver took great pleasure in taking his empty train back to Bromley knowing we had a 20 minute wait before he returned. My hatred of train drivers then and this was exacerbated during months and months of strikes.
I'm still waiting to hear from those prick union leaders, as to why someone scanning a QR code or running the hoover around while the train is in the depot, deserves a huge pay rise every year and needs to be on more than a soldier or a nurse. I would give them five minutes on TV, talk into the camera, break the fourth wall, address the nation. They have never explained themselves and if they really believe in what they're doing, they would be happy to do that. The government need to grow a pair and stop indiscriminately throwing money at these people.
The 70s were rough for the UK, perhaps with parallels to the last 10 years. In hindsight the 1990s seem like a high point, and you get the sense even 20 year olds are nostalgic about it.
Yeh the nineties were a high point. In 1997 the u.s dropped the glass steagal act which was implemented after the great depression to stop it every happening again. It took only 10 years to destroy everything
Don't know this man (a good Scots man though) because Dad refused point blank to watch the BBC in our house and what Dad wanted to watch is what we all had to watch!!
I grew up in the sixties and seventies... 70s were a mess, and definitely a feeling of things getting worse and worse and end of empire. I have no nostalgia for the dirty rivers and polluted air, waste on the streets, shoddy goods, blatant racism, corruption and ignorance. Rose tinted specs on the whole in the comments. Of course some things were better in a world of half the population.
I also grew up in the 60's and 70's and your right there is undoubtedly a sense of rose tinted specs. Every generation laments for a world 20 or 30 years previously but i think it is more than that. It was a more egalitarian time. The country had assets which were nationalised. The trains, gas, water, electricity. You only needed three times your salary to buy a house and if you couldn't afford one then you could get a council house or rent in the private sector for a rent people wouldn't believe if you told them today. The bank s were deregulated and Thatcher rolled back the state and sold our national assets to the highest bidder. Now we have league tables and targets! Nothing is safe, everything is to be exploited and wealth inequality is growing by the day.
@@pauladamson8577 In 1977 my parents earned less than £2000 (at the time) between them. They lived a decent life in an area of the country which is now desirable and expensive. They bought a ratty, rubbish flat in 1979 for £6000, with a bit of help from my grandparents as it was their first permanent marital home. They moved out in 1985, but the original flat in question was back on the market in 2021 for £475k. The numbers of people in that area who can afford that now? Very small. I don't know who's buying homes like that.
I'm 76 - this only seems like yesterday - time flies. Thanks Simon for recommending this nostalgia.
born in 76? That was a long time ago
Simon’s video now seems to be gone…
@@TP-om8ofI just watched it so it is available
I was his postman in Wimbledon in the 1970s, nice man
Was his flat there?
No you weren't
He was born about half a mile from where I eventually grew up in Edinburgh and I know the area well. Had no idea that's where he was originally from because it's not a typical accent for the area.
"These 8 minutes can't be lived again." Love it.
Simon Webb, thanks for making me watch this video. Greetings from Poland ✌️😎
Agreed!
Godbless you salute 🫡
Please preserve your country, a high-trust Christian society. Theres not many left.
@@genoajames1866
Poland is a Nation of Survivors!
I have high confidence in Poland.
/
Are you talking about History debunked?
Fyfe, what a legend. The beeb had some cracking reporters.
I didn’t realize how tall he was.
He was brilliant Fyfe. I remember him at an old street of cottages in Scotland where their only source of water was a natural spring. Fyfe came out with 'They've been drinking from the well for 40 years and it's Poison !' I nearly choked on my dinner laughing. He was great crak .
'Had' being the operative word!
Alan Whicker, Cliff Michelmore, Fyfe Robertson..... the list goes on. None of them would be given a chance nowadays in this insanely "woke" world in which we live.
Loved Fyfe on tv. I was 17 years old, fresh to the Army in 1975 when this was made. Far from perfect times, but ‘Beam me back’ anytime compared to what we have now.
Exactly the same here.
I feel exactly the same. Luckily, maybe fortunately, I got out whilst I could and made Western Australia my home. Now, I sometimes have to pinch myself with my lifestyle. Certainly, in my mid to late sixties, I could be in a far worse place. What's happened to the UK has saddened me so much that I find it all unbearable to consider.
No Fwin Way! In 75, I was paid wages so low in the NHS that I couldn't eat for the last few days before payday. I spent my days wiping backsides and washing incontinent old men and changing urine soaked beds. Now I'm old, I spend time on my yacht, or doing anything I want. I don't have to pay a TV licence, I don't have to pay King Charles to anchor my yacht, I don't pay a licence fee to take my kayak into the rivers and lakes, I don't pay tax on my pension and I don't have to "pay and display" every place I pull off the road in my car. Of course I too left the UK as soon as I could get out. Best thing I ever did.
I’m looking back to 1975 in the same way he’s looking back to 1955
people have always looked back; in the 1970s the 1950s were "great!". In the early '80s, people looked back to the 1960s. the Beatles music was back in the charts, etc.
men from the ministry - he will have be speaking again this week, giving the news for 1971 - see BBC radio 4 extra
1975 was almost 50 years ago. Wouldn't it be like him looking back to 1925? Or have I misunderstood you?
@@agfagaevart Not really; no-one in the 50's thought a previous era was better; after WW2, everyone had a sense of life being better with all the improvements of western technology in all areas of life making everyone dream of a better future; 50's western society was really the peak of western civilisation; the 70's following on from the 60's upheaval, really had deteriorated since the 50's; of course, the decades since have only seen western society collapse even further.
@@petesmitt
yes they did; people in the 1950s thought the 1920s and '30s were better. The Roaring 20s. He even mentions something to that effect.
Nobody staring at a smartphone. How refreshing.
They were all too busy staring at televisions. Each age has its obsessions. Books, films, radio, TV, phones - get over it.
@@alanmusicman3385they only ever stared at tv in one room. Get over it.
@@alanmusicman3385but when they were outside they were actually outside not glued to technology I don't use my phone much outside and it's mad how many people are just staring mindless at their phones I'm 26 so I wasn't messed up as much by it
@@Budbrothers420 Goi back to the 1980s and earlier it was not at all uncommon for people to be walking along the street reading a newpaper.
@@gaycha6589 Oh, but when TV was new a lot of people used to watch every moment of every day's broadcast.
That was the Britain I remember. What a terrible loss. I was much more interested in the country-side as a visitor, but even London was fascinating to me. The museums, churches, and historic buildings! I loved it all. I'm so glad I saw it then.
You got to see the best of it. Being born in 91 all I have ever known is the devastating impact of Blairism.
I vacationed in Britain a couple of times in the 80s. It was before Blair dropped the demographic doomsday bomb. My impressions of Britain was that it didn't have many of the new gadgets found in the New World, but it had a better lifestyle. It was wonderful. Sadly, British leaders sold out the country for personal gain just like the rest of the Western world calling it "progress" and "social justice", or economically necessary. Now we all have these shiny baubles in our homes, at the price of turning our communities into grimy dystopias...this trade was worse deal than when Manhattan was sold for a few beads and a couple of tin pots.
@@paddyanglais91 Did you notice the Tories then? Nope, those Eaton boys and billionaires had nothing but the best interests of the working class at heart. Do you know how much Sunak makes in a day just from interest on capital. More than a GP earns in a year.
Watch him walking down the path on the leaves. A pair of sturdy, well-cobbled, no-brand leather shoes.
People just don't dress like that anymore in casual settings. Today he'd be wearing some kind of trainers, casual shoes like Vans or Skechers, or possibly a Goretex walking shoe like Merrell or Karrimor.
Imagine what he would think of Britain now? Absolutely horrified.
how much would that London flat be worth now? he could sell up and go wherever he wanted.
I don't think he would. I was only 4 when this was filmed and know very little about him, but he strikes me as someone who just took things in his stride and accepted that you can't fight progress, you don't have to like it, but it's going to happen anyway. Try to make sense of it if you have the time but ultimately, try not to let it bother you too much or you'll go mad. Social media has upped the ante to levels that I bet Fyfe would never have thought of but I bet he'd still just roll his eyes and say, "Lawks alive, would you just calm doon a wee while there, eh?". Ha ha!
i dunno mate. it's a mixed bag. For one thing the pollution was chazilllion times worse as a kid. You clean up some shite and all it does is give people more time to complain about whatever the Daily Mail Faceboook is beetchin about
My first thoughts were how his words are still valid today as they were then. But just look how clean everywhere looks compared to now
@ that should be expected. There was less stuff, less packaging.
What the film don't show is the stink of IC engine exhaust. Or even the tobacco smoke. It was so bad i remember ladies smothering themselves in disgusting perfume, bcos they had no sense of smell left to ken they put way too much on
The past wasn't better. Or worse. Just different
Ah, Fyfe Robertson! That brings back memories of Tonight with Cliff Michelmore, Alan Wicker, Kenneth Allsop and Polly Elwys. Those guys went out into the world and had real reporting fun!
Well done, i could only remember half their names.
Derek Hart....Robin Hall and Jimmy Mac Gregor
That was one of my favourite programmes
@@fredneecher1746 did he mention single mothers..?
Gateshead?@@geordie1032
He would be horrified by the way we live now, I was born in 1969 in Nottingham and seeing that footage of the city center and ‘Vicky centre’ brought back so many memories, look how clean and tidy the place looks, no litter, no beggers, no homeless, no drunks, no one wandering around off their face on spice, no constant smell of cannabis in the air, no groups of dodgy looking youths in hoodies, no garish shop front and signage, no endless fast food and vape shops………I could go on and on!!
If I was in the Victoria centre with my mum and it was coming up to the hour I’d trot off to the water clock and watch it transfixed, I loved it! I’d be 5 or 6years old, I’d wait there and mum would turn up 10mins later, no worries about adducted or beaten up etc, surely that says everything? You just wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that these days!
I was wondering what this particular spot looked like today. Also all those shoppers! It seemed so busy …
I don't think he'd be exactly thrilled if he was in Vietnam England either.
Comes across as very entitled.
Practially a Utopia compared to the past and what goes on now.
I feel a bit sorry for Fyfe. He's made this thought provoking film in 1975 and rightly getting very angry about society's problems but all most people watching in 2024 are feeling (including me) is this huge sense of nostalgia for 1975!
It's almost as if no matter what decade you are in time, people just love to moan about change
I would hate to think of future generations looking back at 2024 in 50 years time and thinking life was so much better then. Imagine how bad life in 2074 will be if that is the case!
Facts. Fyfe had a crystal ball, indeed...
So true by comparison with today's world. Back then post WW2 the financial and material constraints unfortunately led to much of the architecture of the day that was rushed as a giant sticking plaster with little available and we have been paying the price ever since.
Yes, broken telephone box windows. What a scandal. Even my nieces, in their 20s feel we have let go of, or have lost bits of the past most precious x iain w in glasgow x
If he thought that was bad, he'd be shocked now. The grimness of the mid 70's was paradise compared to what Britain has become today, Swap it in an instant.
nothin changes the sickness in mans heart - sin - but today the provoker satan has been unleashed .... God did the same when Israel turned their back on God, He withdrew His protection & the Romans took their holy city and their land and scattered them, worse was to come in history with the Jewish Holocaust
Indeed, where does one start!
@@VickersDoorter Just look at all those illegal i mig rants in the background!
No you wouldn't "swap it" once the reality hit you; Only THREE television channels, that all sign off at midnight. No late night supermarkets, coz they all close around 6pm so you couldn't do a quick shop after work. no internet. you would miss your iphone, no personal computers. very hard to get a phone in your home from the GPO. and it was damn expensive anyway. yada yada...
@@agfagaevart Haven't watched TV in years, it's rubbish compared to back then. Seldom shop in supermarkets anymore, because the range of health foods has diminished this past 5 years. Most of the food people buy from them is highly processed food full of saturated fats and sugars. Look at the videos of people in the 60's and 70's, not many fat people. Walk down any high street today and most you see are clinically obese. The internet would be a miss though I give you that, but it also has brought it's disadvantages too. Overall yes, things were better back then because people were happier. Today everybody are slaves to debt which they will never free themselves of in their lifetime.
It is getting Worse Fyfe...you'd hate it here mate.
He'd be terrified if he was still kicking around.
@@YoBoyMarcus He'd have a few things to say...and he'd know how to say it.
But in many respects it has improved. And I don't quite get how he could be complaining in 1975 when he must still have remembered the war and post-war years. In the video he complains about factory jobs. Today he would be complaining about no factory jobs. He just knows how to complain.
1975: Fyfe Robertson Wonders: Is LIFE Getting WORSE? | Robbie | BBC Archive 1813pm 10.11.24 a terminal cheesecake street...
@@ronald3836
There was 3 day week imposed on people a year or so earlier.
power cuts.
Britain was still recovering from WW2.
he had a lot to moan about.
Good grief. We didn't know how good it was. Pity the poor folks in 2073 looking back at today with fond nostalgia.
The Islamic Republic of Englandstan, you mean?
They won't be looking back at all. They won't even know it happened.
@cjay2 That's dark. Also quite plausible, unfortunately.
I'll be looking down saying: 'Hey, listen, this too will pass. Enjoy your time, nothing and no-one lasts forever.'
@@TheBrummie60
England is a far better place to be, than when I grew up in London, in the 60s and 70s
Oh England, my England. I could weep.
like so many, you have a romantic view of an England that never was - it became an idol. Human nature to have a filter that remembers past nice things, yes even in former authoritarian states,, folks long.... for the bad ol days
@@johnlennox-pe2nq You are incorrect about that, as refers to me.
But your 'royal' family isn't weeping.
@@cjay2 How do you know?
@@DawnSuttonfabfour sorry, any way, but just refering to human nature in generaal
'If you're like me - on the home stretch' 😂
Not heard it put like that before.
Reminds me of a phrase John Shuttleworth used "I'm in God's waiting room"😊
I'm actually filling up 😢watching this. This was my era, I left school in 1975, life is just so different now and not for the good. Oh dear.....
take off the rosy spex, and wipe your eyes.
@@agfagaevart How do you know whether the "spex" (as you put it) are "rosy"?
Physically lifes got easier for both men and women, generations ago you followed your father in occupation around where I live so you went down the pitt which must have been terrible condtions with the health problems many minors suffer from, and the home life was not better for the stay at home women just washing cloths must have been back breaking work without electricitonic appliances.
@@richardmell299 how long ago do you think the 70s were?! Or are you just making fun?
@@richardmell299 Yes, but not by 1975.
Fyfe a TV pioneer for 8 years was such a piece of British TV culture through the daily news magazine program "Tonight", with his distictive Scottish accent permiating British living rooms each weekday evening. He shared the program with three other pioneers, Cliff Michellmore, Alan Whicker and Julian Pettifer among others.
Remember watching this when it was first broadcast. Fyfe was always relevant. Great upload.
It's amazing what he is talking about in 1975 as it still holds water today.
This used to be called common sense. It's illegal to possess it today.
This was a fascinating watch. Fyfe's observations were so true.
Did anyone take any notice at the time I wonder.? Obviously not.
He wouldn't be in the BBC today.
Not unless he wore a dress or had a Mao tattoo!
Yes exactly. Those were the days, Jimmy Saville, Gary Glitter, Rolf Harris.. oh wait..
@@marcfischetti5490 All of them were Idolised by Millions...
@@fryertuck6496 Or was black or Asian!
Of course not. He’s a white middle aged middle class man. One of those oppressive patriarchy
What a great character Fyfe is - traditional elderly gent but with a youthful eccentricity in there too. It's a shame guys like this are almost extinct now. It really just shows nothing ever moves forward, just goes round and round, spiralling downwards. Everything he points out is more true today than in 1975 and yet we long for that time now. It's never really about the era, we mourn for the loss of human connection with each passing generation as technology takes over and eventually will make us extinct. Unless we wake up fast!
An acute observer with a great sense of humour. What struck me above all was his deep humanity.
But we have so many exotic Fast Food shops, Barbers, Vape shops etc to choose from nowadays !
Plus we have all those lovely concrete blocks lining our streets to keep us 'safe' from those poorly maintained vans that seem to keep swerving on to pavements. Progress most indeed !
And Curry! Dont forget that great Modern English Dish...
A very diverse range of vans as well, dare speak against them enriching the pavements and the DVLA will take away your license!
And as we all know, staying vigilant of that is just part and parcel of living in big cities 😉👍
we have so many exotic Fast Food shops, Barbers, Vape shops etc to choose from nowadays !
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
What gold of an essay.
The more things change - the more they don't. 50 years have passed and the problems are identical.
They are worse. Our population has grown by nigh on a third (50m-67m) due to immigration. People are living longer, and we are also poorer per capita by any measure.
This small island is overcrowded and has been quietly dying.
@gaycha6589 "Officially" one third. According to data from supermarkets etc, the real number is way higher.
@@Chris-v6b1n probably is so. It just seems madness to continue to grow our population at this rate, when we are struggling to serve support and take decent careof the existing population.. The cake just is not enough to go around and is finite. Very few are doing very well, the majority are seeing quality of life eroding. It’s a sad state of affairs for all.
@gaycha6589 You're completely right. Were immigration any sort of benefit, the UK would be booming (given that literally no other country in the world except the US took more last year). Instead GDP per capita is falling, and infrastructure is crumbling and insufficient for our population etc.
Except worse.
"It's good to work for an organisation like the BBC where you can criticise your bosses". Good luck with that now, particularly if your boss is from one of the protected and venerated groups.
Which group?
Dog whistle? Be honest about your bigotry or shut up.
Stalinist stooge
I’ve still got that radio and it still works. It’s getting harder to find the massive cube of a battery though.
I unplugged 3 years ago - best decision of my life. Absolutely no news, no TV, no radio, no FB, no social. The only comms I have is youtube & netflix for entertainment, and keeping in touch with family and friends with whatsapp. Takes a bit of getting used to, but when you realise that 1. You can't alter any of the things that are happening 2. If something is going to affect you, it will affect you regardless of whether or not you have been stressing about it.
Spoken like a true Calvinist 😎
It's a nice idea but you must miss out on things you'd enjoy
That’s a cool and liberating approach to things. Modern life is rubbish
And yet here you are commenting ..... so not actually a total Unplug is it ...
@@dino575 do you have learning difficulties? If not re-read the OP, and then maybe review your comment, as it looks a bit daft on your part.
If he could see it today, I grew up in the seventies, and we all thought it was dire, oil crisis, government crisis, strikes, IRA bombings, immigration, overpopulation. But looking back, compared to today, it was delightful. Housing was a lot more affordable, new cars, although not as reliable, cost in real terms half of today's prices. Travelling by plane was expensive, but there was a lot less laws, regulation, fines and surveillance.
And millions unemployed, rubbish on the streets, the IRA terror campaigns. Nostalgia…it ain’t what it used to be.
Look at the video closely. The streets even in London were not crammed packed with parked cars you could park where you wanted on most streets
Not sure about the price of cars but the rest is bang on
@@laurarojas8490 Absolutely. The population of the UK is now approximately that of France, although France is more than double the size.
FEWER laws, LESS regulation, FEWER fines and LESS surveillance.
If i had a time machine i would be there now .
This is a superb piece of television history. Beautifully done. Zoom lenses are a bit out of fashion now, but used to perfection here. His to camera delivery is totally natural. Stunning.
No autocue either.
BS
What prophetic thoughts Fyfe Robertson held even then, which describes humanity so well then and absolutely on the mark for today.
Not seen this presenter ever before before, love his style. Why can't current presenters be themselves, like Fyfe Robinson?
Perhaps one of the most irritating aspects of modern news is the tendency of reporters to constantly gesticulate with their hands and arms am-dram style, in an exaggerated attempt to stress how important this or that point is. Watch Fyfe's hands. Actually, you very rarely see them, as they are, for the most part, folded behind his back or in his pockets. So natural.
Cheers Simon! I hadn't thought about Robbie in a long while....quite the pleasant nostalgia trip watching that. Brought back some memories for sure.
I remember Fyfe Robertson's distinctive voice so well!
"You'll no be having a sale, will ye?"
A GREAT SCOT
Just wait until the internet comes along, mate.
It probably was being designed. email was up & running by 84.
@@laurarojas8490 Not for 99.9% of the population it wasn't
The internet didn't become accessible for normal people until the World Wide Web in 1991.
What existed before then was generally only used by universities and nerds. Businesses did have the beginnings of e-commerce and electronic banking has existed since 1969, but that was the back end processing only.
Great sound quality, where's the microphone? 1975 NHS and TV great for 65 year olds like this man.
Great 👍 another great full documentary upload, absolutely brilliant insight from the past, congratulations to whoever is in charge of this youtube channel..keep up the great work...ps I was born in this year🎉
This would make a great documentary to bring this up to date with a similar reporter but who would compare with Fyfe? So many people saying how much better it used to be but i agree with the start of this one that it really depends on where you are in life. Make the most of today and it will always be the best time. Thanks to BBC Archive for introducing me to Fyfe. What a great man.
That's what I was thinking.The conclusion would be that things then were worse than before and now they are even worse
A similar reporter would never get on the BBC.
Michael Burke is still going I think
'Curmudgeonly' what a beauty of a word
Such seamless editing when he steps from the BBC newsroom back into his apartment.
'But these 8 minutes can't be lived again!' is something we should consider when we're giving people or things our time.
Wow your deep man🤘🏻
My engineer , when I was an apprentice would always say to me " you can't spend thank you " if the customer didn't give him a tip .
@@MichaelWillby He had a point.
It is easy to take things for granted when they work well, and we often don't truly appreciate what we had until it's gone. Subsequent generations can struggle to really understand this (until, of course, they live it themselves). I remember telling a youngster that my parents would leave cash outside for the milkman each week in the early 70s. He didn't believe me. He said the money would have been stolen, and that 'people have always been the same'.
We could left cash outside in the Swedish countryside until the late 1990s.
Nostalgia, the worst enemy of objectivity.
What a fascinating video
I don’t think BBC would dare make a film like this today it would cause to much criticism.
I'm surprised they even uploaded it
Too much is right.
Would have a young bisexual black girl who would wind the story of colonialism in there
They don't have the inclination to.
So why do you think they are playing this now, then?
Good old Fyffe. As a teenager growing up in the seventies I didn't appreciate how inciteful he was and I probably did think of him as an old codger. How brilliant to be able to relive these clips on TH-cam all these years later...and realise what an arrogant flibbertigibbet you were🤭 He had a sense of humour too didn't he...I liked the going out of one Marks and Spencer and coming out of another in a different town😂 High streets did look the same in a lot of ways but you also got different cafés and specialist shops that you would seek out in a particular town. I wonder what Fyffe would make of today's high streets...I think he would be saddened by the number of soulless estate agents windows and fast food joints as well as the ever increasing number of charity shops and empty premises for sure...and good luck getting a bus by the way!
Turkish barbers...
"insightful"
@radioandtvmemories6178 Whoops yes🤭
I remember Fife and from today's perspective his insight is quite profound. UKUK
Wonderful presentation without hysterics. How refreshing.
Perhaps one of the most irritating aspects of modern news is the tendency of reporters to constantly gesticulate with their hands and arms am-dram style, in an exaggerated attempt to stress how important this or that point is. Watch Fyfe's hands. Actually, you very rarely see them, as they are, for the most part, folded behind his back or in his pockets. So natural.
@johnturner1073
Thanks.
It should have been easy for me to carry on thinking I was the only one who noticed, or cared if they did.
"History Debunked" channel brought me here.
Same here 👍
More properly titled "The History You Aren't Supposed to Know" or simply "Forbidden History".
Fyfe's charm was he could "stand aside" and look at life and construct a commentary that few reporters/commentators could manage today - thoughtful, intelligent and funny !
Good to hear James Alexander Gordon reading the news headlines- a sound of my school days !
I wonder what he'd think of the world today? Those franchised high streets are hanging on by a thread, while everyone buys things online.
Looked up the Brighton high street. Marks and Spencer is still there! But Boots is now a Starbucks and the store next door is a Wendy's!
Very Americanized
Found Larry, now need to find Stuart Ashen here somewhere xD
Always nice seeing you pop up Larry
@@vcc947 Like your spelling.
That voice is simply iconic.
Fyfe Robertson talks about being on the home stretch - he died on 4th February 1987, aged 84.
Life expectancy was a lot lower in 1975. Due to poorer diet, dietary advice, and poorer healthcare. Things are definitely reversing though,
@@yinoveryang4246 Pollution paid its great part as well. Don´t forget all those cars were powered by lead in the gasoline. Mind you they were not being hit with heavy radiation from mobile phone masts!
@@yinoveryang4246People were slimmer,ate home-cooked food,walked more
Considering how wonderful this clip is, it's a tragedy that the BBC is incapable in the modern age of making anything remotely as good.
Is it that the BBC can’t make a programme like this, or is it us that are incapable of watching a programme like this, unable to resist the lure of the comment section and doomscrolling social media when Fyfe takes more than 5 seconds to make his point?
@@virtualstatmannot everyone is addicted to attention like the young are .
Paradise Lost infact . . . My heart aches for those days.
What, Endless strikes, rampant inflation, IRA bombing campaigns, power cuts and blatant racism? Great days indeed.
Perhaps one of the most irritating aspects of modern news is the tendency of reporters to constantly gesticulate with their hands and arms am-dram style, in an exaggerated attempt to stress how important this or that point is. Watch Fyfe's hands. Actually, you very rarely see them, as they are, for the most part, folded behind his back or in his pockets. So natural.
In 75, flares meant you didn't have to clean your shoes, Hai Karate, disco and punk arrived, you could still buy Vesta beef risotto, the BBC knew how to make sitcoms, you could go to the cinema, have 40 Embassy, get boozed up, and have change from a fiver, Cadburys Dairy Milk tasted like chocolate, Quality Street was quality, women didn't need botox, Angry Birds eyebrows, Cuprinol tans, and pneumatic lips to look glamorous, and we could all laugh at ourselves.
NO .
Beautifully written!
Spot on, well said!👍🏻
I am sure that some people in 1975 were spouting the same rose-tinted nonsense about 1925
It was Vesta beef curry! Used to have it loads! Even found some in a pound shop a couple of years back and couldn't resist!!
American here, I only just found out about Fyfe Robinson, but now I could listen to this guy for hours. Bless you BBC Archive.
Now I'm an old codger like Fyfe is here, I see me bemoaning precisely the same things (plus a few new ones - like smartphone addiction, rather than simple use). He lived in Derby when he made this video; me too. The Nottingham he visited was the place I studied for my degree just four years later. Now one of the shopping centres has been all but destroyed, I hear. As an old codger I have improved health-care - so many of the technologies which keep me here were beyond sensible prediction, then. Fyfe does have rose-tints on: crime, street-violence, poverty, child-abuse, abuse of women, racism, etc etc were all rife in the 1970s. They remain with us and crime-clear-ups are lamentable but much improvement has still been made. Nostalgia always glosses-over the past's failings and miseries. Today is so much better in many ways - though worse in others, of course. But we should never simply and ignorantly (through lack of knowledge or forgetfulness) praise all our yesteryears without celebrating today's better things. Though I retain my guilty pleasure of Glam Rock, just that, to quote Mud (Tiger Feet): "your hips swinging out-of-bounds" is now a somewhat dangerous prospect!
Wonderful comment, very insightful 👍
Fyfe Robertson should have had a time travelling machine to go visit the towns in the North of England as they are in 2024 compared to how he may have remembered them back in his youth; he may get a shock.
He's Scottish so the North of England didn't figure in his youth...
He would get a shock in Glasgow today.
The deindustrialization
@@laurarojas8490 Not only that...
Really interesting documentary. Some of the new things he protests against are now old traditions much missed.
We ALWAYS view the past with fondness, because we've survived it. We are still unsure and insecure of the present and the future, hence the reason we look favourably on days gone by.
Life is so much better when you´re 20!
I would love a re-run of the 1990s. But was that because the 1990s were genuinely better, or was it because I was a young child and look back fondly on a period of no responsibility or worries? And that world was all I knew because nothing 'newer' had come along yet?
If I did a re-run of the 1990s, with my current age (late 30s) and current knowledge of life, would I enjoy it? Or would I find it a huge inconvenience because a lot of what I now enjoy doing was either very primitive or didn't exist yet? For example, would I get irritated with not having the internet everywhere all the time and only being able to shop at weekends because there was no "online"?
I definitely remember supermarkets in those days being very basic, plastic bread etc. I've grown into quite the foodie and might realise that the stuff I enjoy today just isn't available in the UK back in 1995.
Poor man would, in a heartbeat, turn into a hermit on some uninhabited Scottish Isle had he lived to see a world of 24-hour news, non-stop "content", podcasts and X!
St. Kilda
I had been thinking about the end of that programme not so long ago.
Thank you!
The irony of this is that he’d never get a job with the current day BBC.
Thank you for posting. I was ten years old back then and I mostly remember the optimism I felt about life. There was an unspoken promise that things would be getting better forever. Learning about our troubled history necessarily had to come with a sense of affirmation that, finally, mankind had found the means and the ways to make this world a more fair and happier place for everyone.
That was until Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan came around ofcourse, and unemployment surged. Nobody seemed to be waiting for us young dreamers and unadjusted Mike Leigh characters to join the ranks, and whatever jobs there were, most of them were dull and unfulfilling.
Very interesting, and honestly quite disheartening, to see that nothing has changed, fundamentally, in the way we are dealing with the core questions and issues regarding our life in a modern society.
Upon seeing this, I found it surprising that already then, people were asking exactly the same questions about what makes the quality of our lives, and even provide some familiar clues as to the answers. Meanwhile, we still seem to be on this steady course towards the end of our affairs as a species, and not too graciously, regarding the occasion.
Oh dear, I must be getting really old.
If he could come back to life for just a few days, his heart would break. It goes to show that, fundamentally, government has solved nothing in 50 years and, indeed, has presided over an exacerbation of these issues.
nope!
He would just laugh and probably say;
"in fifty years you've learned NOTHING!"
It’s up to people to solve things, not governments.
@@JMoruzzi How does that work in a representative democracy in which we vote for people to work on these problems on our behalf?
@@ashcross Of course governments must do 'stuff', but what they do and how they do it should really be a bottom-up process as much as possible. I really don't like it when people say something like "Keir Starmer is running the country." No, he's running the government, a different thing. We're not North Korea.
@@JMoruzzi How do people, as opposed to government, resolve issues around immigration?
I find it highly amusing that he failed to recognise that the shopping centre he was so taken by would be the death of his beloved High Street.
Aside from that, it's pretty much identical today.
They keep telling me that my life is getting better by having so-called "supermarkets" and out-of-town shopping parks, and being able to buy everything under one roof. They tell me that by being able to buy tasteless and hard red things [masquerading as strawberries] at Christmas, my life is immeasurably improved. They even tell me now I should sit at home in a near hermetically sealed, flat-pack identikit house on some monotonous and countrywide-the-same housing estate and order "on line". NO THANK YOU! I will shop at my local independent shops; I shall eat what is in season and that which is grown locally; I shall speak with the shop keepers and not buy my meat in small plastic sarcophaguses, but rather buy from a butcher who knows the provenance of the poor, unfortunate animal I am about to but a part of. I shall grow what I can in my garden and have all my all-pervasive "tech" turned off as I spend hours pottering, digging, planting and weeding; harvesting and nurturing in my modest plot. I shall not be the one to wear "designer" clothes - whatever they are - that the gullible in society buy, but rather my old and worn-out walking boots, my 30+ year old corduroys and my agéd and moth eaten wooly pullover atop my old Tattersall shirt, its collar worn to nothing. I shall have a real life; a life of exercise and reward at what I have grown. I shall be able to pick an apple from my tree and some blackberries from the hedgerow and make a pie drizzled from cream from my local shop and which tastes as it should; I shall be able to make a wooden hulled model boat from a plan and not some kit; I shall go for a walk without my mobile face accessory held out in-front of me staring at a few square inches of screen - my screen will be the ever changing landscape, the passing seasons, the scudding clouds and the singing birds. I shall be the one who notices the swallows arriving and the flocks of starlings; I shall be the one who eats his own food from his garden, and I shall be the one who does not turn-on the massive TV with 500 channels of repeats and spend mind-numbing hours desperately trying to find something, anything ,worth watching. I shall sit by the fireside of an evening watching the logs burn down to glowing embers and read my book until it is too dark, I am the one who will then go to bed as night falls, and I am the one who will be woken by the sun, and I am the one who will be content.
That was beautiful! Thank you❤️❤️❤️
@@annchabassol5804 Thank you, and thank you for you rkind words in this sometimes less than kind world.
May I join you? Sounds wonderful.
@@DawnSuttonfabfour It is, and you may, but, to save you a journey, why not try finding places near to you? They are out there, but, sadly, they are becoming fewer and fewer, and further and further between. Shops are charging, as are the high streets that once thronged with shoppers busily scurrying from one to the next to buy what they sold; people stood and spoke with each other, and many local village shops used a book to record what you bought, and which you settled at the end of the month - no credit checks, no forms to filll-out, just that old and long-since forgotten thing, trust. The thing missing form the so-called "supermarkets" as they herd you past the paramilitary looking security guard and in through the cattle market gates to an unknown doom of security tagged and heavily surveilled good locked away in boxes lest you should, for once in you life, feel the urge to steal a frying pan or a pack of razor blades.
Tomorrow I shall go for a walk. Maybe in the snow, maybe in glorious sunshine and I shall walk into the village and buy from one of the local and indepebdent shops. No security cameras, no tags and that much cherished thing - trust. I shall also meet with friends old and new and spend some time chatting with them before we each go our speratre way.
Nothing stays the same apart from nostalgia.
Ooh, I don't know. Nostalgia isn't what it was.
Just goes to show doesn’t it how people have always seen issues in society and this is from a well respected journalist of the time but even many interviews from the normal man on the street of that time would show a lot of discontentment also. That’s why it’s annoying when so many blinkered people insist that things only went downhill from this or that age (to suit their own agenda) but fact is the gap between the haves and have nots and moral outrage about various trends is not a new phenomena. Actually a great book is ‘Hooligan’ by G Pearson that looks at the fear of moral decline since before Victorian times even against the concept there ever was ‘golden age’. The conclusion seemingly is ‘the good old days’ are any years before what the majority of folks ever even experienced.
Yes!!!
He's a few years away from Thatcher. She promised a future where business could do public services better than the government, she was wrong but people bought it because they were already discontented for a decade and wanted an easy answer
It's important we learn our lessons from history. But I think we're close to being too late.
He's complaining about things we're still complaining about now. Car centric cities, decimated public transport, houses for profit etc
Good comment,there have never been, “good old days “it’s just that we were younger,and blissfully unaware .
I was born in 1975 when this came out, i have to say things are not getting better now, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, yes we have mobile phones etc now but they are a big destraction and i would probably get a lot more done without them.
Thanks Simon.
Fyfe Robertson: The Scottish Jack Hargreaves.
Although Fyfe did have an interest in urban life and Jack doesn't seem to have had. But I get what you mean
bit of an insult as ol' Jack was a posh boy slumming it as a country man.
@ - I meant they were both ‘Kindly grandfather’ types. I never knew my grandfathers so would have been proud to have either of them. No offence intended.
@@AtheistOrphanI get it, yes I do.
@@AtheistOrphan
none taken!
:-0
Man was speaking the future back then.
Things have gotten worse. 1975 seems quite favorable compared to 2024.
Including the usage of gotten.😀 Become worse. Here is your missing U.
I saw his name and remembered watching Tonight with Richard Dimbelby on the BBC as a very young boy and was fascinated with his accent.
@ BBC archives: why do you have to make the disclaimer
“Of course, the opinions of Fyfe Robertson do not necessarily reflect those of the BBC Archive, much as we dearly love ol' Robbie.”?
I used to watch Robbie as a kid back in the 70s think it was on after Star Trek. Great to see it's on TH-cam.
Its good that these historical films exist, to show people today how things really were and not the distorted fantasy presented to us in every tv series or film that pretends to be set in these times. Thanks @history debunked !
I was 13 in 1975, and I'm feeling pretty nostalgic myself.
Fyfe trust me, you never had it so good
God, it was so quiet. I remember it.
It is interesting how much we're taken up with news now - news of things we can do nothing about, but that doesn't stop us pointlessly worrying and arguing. Meanwhile, we neglect the things in front of us.
15:15 Brighton is a tad different now....
Thanks for the time travel
Fyfe's commentry is a useful reminder that change is perpetual and cyclical in nature. Brace yourself, discomfort is coming, always (as well as comfort)!
After all his complaints about modernity I can’t believe he loved shopping malls.
looking at the Malls now, they just look like another of the planners mistakes... the problem is that we don't see the future coming (& the future keeps coming at us.... faster & faster each time)
I remember the odd lady who wore pearls at work in the typing pool, her name was Ruth.
He hit the nail on the head when he said in the beginning that age plays a factor. I dare say my grandchildren will feel nostalgic for 2024 one day. 😂 things change.. fact of life. The trick is to seek the good and live each day as if this is the only life you will ever have 😀
Hm I've considered this but the reason is that things will get worse. That's a depressing thought. I like to think we will hit a wall and start reversing, in some (beneficial) ways
@benoakes01 that's very likely you know.. history does often show a swing from one extreme to the other.. of neither extreme would be good 🤷
I was one of those commuters, travelling in from Bromley when there used to be a direct line into Cannon Street and then a five minute walk to the office. I had a seat all the way there and all the way back. Six months later it was decided to stop the direct line so that we had to change at Grove Park. No seat there and no seat back. Then the scramble to cross to platform one up and over and down the stairs only to see the shuttle pull out before anyone could board. There was only two stops but the driver took great pleasure in taking his empty train back to Bromley knowing we had a 20 minute wait before he returned. My hatred of train drivers then and this was exacerbated during months and months of strikes.
I'm still waiting to hear from those prick union leaders, as to why someone scanning a QR code or running the hoover around while the train is in the depot, deserves a huge pay rise every year and needs to be on more than a soldier or a nurse. I would give them five minutes on TV, talk into the camera, break the fourth wall, address the nation. They have never explained themselves and if they really believe in what they're doing, they would be happy to do that.
The government need to grow a pair and stop indiscriminately throwing money at these people.
I think he could see the positive & negative in all our times !
A wonderful commentator. So gd to hear his voice again.
The 70s were rough for the UK, perhaps with parallels to the last 10 years. In hindsight the 1990s seem like a high point, and you get the sense even 20 year olds are nostalgic about it.
Yeh the nineties were a high point. In 1997 the u.s dropped the glass steagal act which was implemented after the great depression to stop it every happening again. It took only 10 years to destroy everything
If he was around today, he'd a need a week-long show to cite all the issues ! 😅
It’s only now looking back on this that we realise the scale of the disaster that has occurred.
lol
It wasn't perfect back then.
@@barbarahalkyard1901 no but it was ours.
Don't know this man (a good Scots man though) because Dad refused point blank to watch the BBC in our house and what Dad wanted to watch is what we all had to watch!!
I grew up in the sixties and seventies... 70s were a mess, and definitely a feeling of things getting worse and worse and end of empire. I have no nostalgia for the dirty rivers and polluted air, waste on the streets, shoddy goods, blatant racism, corruption and ignorance. Rose tinted specs on the whole in the comments. Of course some things were better in a world of half the population.
I also grew up in the 60's and 70's and your right there is undoubtedly a sense of rose tinted specs. Every generation laments for a world 20 or 30 years previously but i think it is more than that. It was a more egalitarian time. The country had assets which were nationalised. The trains, gas, water, electricity. You only needed three times your salary to buy a house and if you couldn't afford one then you could get a council house or rent in the private sector for a rent people wouldn't believe if you told them today. The bank s were deregulated and Thatcher rolled back the state and sold our national assets to the highest bidder. Now we have league tables and targets! Nothing is safe, everything is to be exploited and wealth inequality is growing by the day.
@@pauladamson8577 In 1977 my parents earned less than £2000 (at the time) between them. They lived a decent life in an area of the country which is now desirable and expensive.
They bought a ratty, rubbish flat in 1979 for £6000, with a bit of help from my grandparents as it was their first permanent marital home. They moved out in 1985, but the original flat in question was back on the market in 2021 for £475k. The numbers of people in that area who can afford that now? Very small. I don't know who's buying homes like that.