I have always looked dreadful in photographs. Something about me (perhaps my mass) warps the light on its way to the lens. As I have got older it has got much worse so that when I look at photos taken of me now I wonder how the camera has somehow managed to make me look like a balding fat bastard with a leer like a hillbilly serial killer. My only consolation is that I am told that I look worse in real life.
My wife particularly despairs of my lack of clothes sense – but that is unfair. I grew up in the 70s when any clothes designer worth their salt was smacked out on an array of drugs so mighty that they could not help but design clothes whose awfulness made them visible from space.
Things started out calmly enough in the 60s:
The photographic genius that is Mr Partington rated me 3/5 for this performance. This is the look that later came to be known as my “TV face”. Put a sports event on the gogglebox and this is what I end up looking like; complete with dribble. Apart from having had my cow’s lick plastered to my head with dripping and a look that makes it clear that my first and only word is going to be “duh”, there are no real fashion disasters happening here.
Come 1971 and it would appear that I had at least learned to breathe through my nose. Here I can be seen dressed for my first day at primary school at St John’s School in Gravesend. Still recognisably human, it has been all downhill from here. This was probably the last time anyone risked “tousling” my hair.
By 1973 I had sold my tiny pre-pubescent soul to the great god of fashion. For gentlemen in the 70s, hair meant one thing: sideburns (or as my uncle Peter engagingly referred to them: “bugger grips”). Of course, being 6, growing a beard was difficult without the sort of course of hormone therapy that would have left me apine and impotent by age 10. The inventive “gentlemen’s barbers” of 1973 got around this problem by letting the hair grow into “pretend sidies”. Coming at a point at which my teeth were growing in, this created the alluring look I like to call “Village Idiot”. It conjures the unfortunate impression that I am not only the product of an incestuous union but that I might very well be up for a bit of sibling-on-sibling action myself. This is probably what is worrying my sister, who is pictured sat beside me.
It’s 1974 and the wheels have started to come off the sartorial caravan. This is a picture of me and my younger siblings in our grandmother’s garden in Bexhill. My ensemble consists of a pair of battered brown Clarks’ sandals worn, unforgiveably, with a pair of grey socks. (By the way, dear brother, lest you be tempted to mock me please first note your own raspberry knee-length man-stockings). The shorts are my blue “Chelsea” football shorts pulled up to a gonad shattering height. The top is a picture of caribbean life as imagined by a jaded Yorkshire designer whose evenings are spent drinking Worthington E and coughing away at a skinny joint of ersatz cannabis before walking home in the rain. My hair has been allowed to roam free, in the fashion of the time and gives every impression of trying to eat my head.
At least until this point, I have the excuse that I was wearing whatever my mother insisted I wore. Pictured here on the day of my brother’s first communion, you see me beaming with pride. The pride is not because my brother was about to enter the great communion of the saints (dressed in brown and with his knees showing), but because of my super-cool Steve Austin stylee denim suit. Finished with a bottle green polo neck sweater, there was simply no trendier dude on Stafford Close (except everyone else).The look perhaps lacked the Little Jimmy Osmond knee patch, but I had outgrown him anyway. This look said I was prepared to gun you down suckah whilst sliding on my knees across an underlit disco floor; and in the unlikely event that Frinton had closed down the Elderly Resident’s Social Association and opened up a disco (and handed out sidearms to 11 year olds) that is exactly what I would have done.
I need to stop now because the shame is making it hard to type.
Oh god – that’s just brilliant and I demand more. I had to wait til the office was empty to read this because I was laughing too much.
Looks like we grew up over a similar traumatic fashion period.
I can’t… look… away…
The colours…
Haha, brilliant! You look more smiley as the photos go on.
That was just too good. A bit of hummus went down the wrong way, so at least I was able to cover the sound of laughter with that of choking.
I’d like to point out I was laughing with you and not at you.
Nice legs, pity about the gonads.
Lesley – that is pretty much my motto.
the laughter is making it hard for me to type. you are a genius – an oddly dressed one, i’ll grant you – but a comic genius none the less (and totally wasted on me learned friends).
you were correct, btw, in your first assumption – it is an invasion of friends from venice … but it looks like i was oddly (and unusually prescient). they’ll feel right at home here in stratford! we’re fine and dry, though, thank you for asking. xxx
I would like to order three Grand Vignettes of the first portrait, please.
Faithful readers want to know if you still pull your shorts up so high. (and speak in falsetto.)
Well, that’s going to make you really easy to spot, I must say. Arf.
Yeah, what in the name of all that is holy was that all about: putting English boys in Clark’s sandals that really looked like girl sandals? Talk about giving boys an identity crisis.
Going to have to lie down in a dark room now, that caribbean t-shirt has given me acid flashbacks.
Oh…. I had to fight the urge to crawl into a fetal ball under my desk whilst reading this…thanks for the painful flashbacks to the 70’s….
I think it was worse in the UK than here…I really do.
My fave party dress at age 6 was Brown. Brown polyester with a YELLOW trim. And it was that thick sweaty polyester.
All my photos of me are with a Purdy hair cut and my turtle neck sweathers pulled out like crazy because I felt strangled.
My mom used to cut down her fancy home made disco outfits to fit me..I had a lot of plaid blazers and waistcoasts.
Eeeeeeeehhh
You are a brave, brave individual.
Those photos made me laugh harder than I have in some time.
Thank you.
I have just about died laughing at these photos. God, Moobs, you know how to brighten a girl’s day, don’t you?
My favourite is the one where you’re in the Chelsea shorts (a likely story, they probably belonged to your sister, or even your Grandma).
I kept your blog open while I went to make breakfast for the kids. Then I came back and laughed even more. Oh, Moobs, I love you.
The lady in the photograph seems to be saying, “Psst, I’m just going to pull your shorts down a bit so that your willy will stop crying”
I can’t *wait* to meet you.
I do hope you’re going to be wearing the caribbean t-shirt and hotpant configuration.
But don’t we all have a whole history of childhood photos like this? 😉
i think anyone alive in the 70’s and have photographic proof of the horrible fashions available, can totally relate.
the most tragic thing about the outfits worn during this period? someone was actually paid money to make us all look like shit.
Rather you than me.
So how old were you when you worked out what your uncle Peter meant about the sideburns? I remember my childhood was full of jokes that I only worked out why they were funny about 5 years later …
You are so cute! The funniest thing to me is the inquisitive WTF look in your eyes in each picture. I guess you were trying to figure it out at an early age.
loved this. Such as sweet boy, my fav was the blue safari suit – very “the professionals” – but that flower t shirt one was a bit “sound of music.”
“gonad shattering heights” – HAHAHAHAH best line ever!!!
Freakin’ hysterical. The pictures themselves would have been comical enough, but the commentary underneath each one really made this piece brilliant! (And “brilliant,” to Americans, is a much more emphatic compliment than to the Irish … and to the British as well? Do you use the term “brilliant”?) Anyway, I laughed out loud – uncontrollably – at so many descriptions you used in this post. Well done, you! (Now, was that British or what?)
Oh. You look handsome in all of those pictures!
I once had a contest with a woman at work. We each brought in a junior high picture then we had our coworkers vote on who was the dorkiest.
Alas, she won. I was looking forward to being Queen of the Girl Nerds
My first reaction was “How could their mum do that to them?” Then I recalled that my son INSISTS (from time to time) on wearing black knee socks with his brown sandals, paired with shiny red shorts and an orange t-shirt. I let him so I can show the pictures later…
Moobs, are you really your mother?
My God, you’re a brave man. A hero, in fact.
I had those red/brown sandals too, but I got into trouble for chewing the straps off when I was bored. But I can’t be blamed, I didn’t have many hobbies when I was 25.
Mike – you must be pretty limber then!
Don’tsayitforChrist’ssakedon’tsayitpleasepleasepleasedon’tsayit.
Dude, in ’74 your Mom was hot!
Ohbuggershitdamnyou’vebloodygoneandsaidit!
🙂
and you mocked my musical memories…
Genius blog entry. That deserves some sort of blog award.
I certainly think it deserves an award for bravery.
Hopefully not a Purple Heart.
*imagines Moobs surrounded by empty bottles, shouting at his computer in Tongues*
….
I did take them off, yes.
(I also chewed the plastic nacelles off my Starship Enterprise and terrified my parents by swallowing them. This was earlier than 25.
When I go, I think it’ll be through chewing something I shouldn’t have).
You’ve got that Angus Young thing going on in that last one.
Sarah – that’s my brother. He is about to rock and salutes you.
I am DYING OVER HERE!! Oh whew…thank you for this. This is gold.
I happen to think that you are quite adorable. Especially the sideways camel toe thing. That’s extremely endearing…and edgy.
You are hilarious Moobs. And so brave for sharing.
I think everyone wore their pants at “gonad shattering heights” in the 70’s. I did too, except for the gonad part. That’s one fashion that I hope never returns.
As a child of the 70’s, I have disturbing childhood fashion photos in glorious technicolour too.
I had bright yellow knee-high wooly socks – but at least I’m a girl!
I doubt we’ll see anyone else as brave in the rest of the Blogosphere…..
Oh, the 70’s. Such a scary time for us all. Why is it that we didn’t realize it at the time?
Didn’t we realize the horribleness of polyester? Did no one own a comb or a brush in those days?
It’s good to know that it was as bad on the other side of the big 70’s pond…
LMAO. Oh my god I’ve missed you.
I need to get up the nerve to post some, what I like to call, “Brady Bunch Fashion photos” myself. My mom cut my bangs on picture day when I was in 3rd grade. Apparently she was intoxicated by the looks of the divet she left right in the middle. Good times….
This is the funniest thing I have read in quite a while. It brings back fond memories too.
I should like to report that on the evidence of Saturday night, his sartorial have risen dramatically. He scrubs up well these days.
Who nicked my ‘standards’?
(Come to think of it – don’t answer that, moobs.)
Who nicked my ‘standards’?
(Come to think of it – don’t answer that, moobs.)
1971 was the birth of your cynicism and ironically the year of my birth. The slight sneer says to me, “I don’t trust you.”
But somehow your lack of distrust was not put into good use a short three years later when you happened up that Yorkshire designer and his beautiful blouse. By the way, is that a pink collar?
Moobs if you weren’t my brother and if I didn’t love you enormously, I’d have to string you up by the tiny amount of gonads that remained after such a long period of tear-inducing short-hoicking.
Where did those photos come from? I don’t even ever remember seeing them before? Are you sure they’re genuine? Are you sure you haven’t been photoshoping them?
I bet if the truth be told I was actually the cool brother, dressed in matching warm hues, and you’ve touched my pics up to pretend that I’d wear raspberry socks. Preposterous…
I love the fact that even in your baby photo you’re giving that ‘What you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?’ look that has become your trademark…
These photos are hilarious!!
The one of you and your (lesser favoured) siblings in the projectile floral pattern is truly classic. It has brought a gigantic smug grin to my face as I comfortably sit here in the knowledge it was ‘before my time’ and thankfully I did not have to wear that.
Fortunately for me, but not for others, I, as evidenced in my extensive collection of baby photos, preferred to swan around in my ‘birthday suit’ so was rarely snapped in horrendous clobber. Although, I don’t know which is more embarrassing when my family take great delight in showing my naked baby snaps off to my love interests over a nice ‘get to know the family’ supper.
At least I never wore that t-shirt though Moobs! Will be keeping that for my private blackmail collection! Boo-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa