It's 1982. Britain has been in recession for two years and unemployment has climbed to three million for the first time since the 1930s. The Prime Minister tells her cabinet of vegetables that a quick war over some islands that no one has ever heard of should be enough to avoid defeat at the polls.
A cul-de-sac on the edge of town. A newly built, boxy house with integral garage. The end of a working day and the teatime television is warmed up. A Transit van rattles away from a cul-de-sac on the edge of town where more boxy houses with integral garages are being readied for new shareholders in the nation of home ownership. In the front passenger seat, a weary brickie brightens at the prospect of his evening meal, speculating, to the tune of Que Sera, about the accompaniment to the meat. "Will it be chips or jacket spuds?" he wonders. The driver is barely able to conceal his hostility as his singing workmate raises the alternative prospect of salad or frozen peas. A cats' chorus in the back of the van introduces the possibility of mushrooms and a heavily-accented West Indian labourer pines briefly for impossibly exotic fried onion rings.
As a whole hungry mob meld their voices to roar "you'll have to wait and see", the TV viewer's thoughts turn to the kitchen smells of his own dinner and he wonders why he recognises the Benny-hatted builder in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Quadrophenia, he thinks. Definitely Quadrophenia.
A more patrician accent is now heard, cutting across the proletarian singsong. Calmly, we are told of the introduction of Birds Eye Steakhouse Grills. These are "pure ground beef that you cook like a steak and serve like a steak". To put it another way, they are hamburgers, misshapen and minus the bun. The speaker attempts to inject his voice with twinkly bonhomie as he appeals directly to the working class housewife. To hawk this cheap meat, the advertising agency have opted to use the assumptive close. Purchase is inevitable. Only the side dishes are a matter of question. "What will you give your old man with his Steakhouse Grill?"
The lads, of course, hope fervently for chips.
As a whole hungry mob meld their voices to roar "you'll have to wait and see", the TV viewer's thoughts turn to the kitchen smells of his own dinner and he wonders why he recognises the Benny-hatted builder in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Quadrophenia, he thinks. Definitely Quadrophenia.
A more patrician accent is now heard, cutting across the proletarian singsong. Calmly, we are told of the introduction of Birds Eye Steakhouse Grills. These are "pure ground beef that you cook like a steak and serve like a steak". To put it another way, they are hamburgers, misshapen and minus the bun. The speaker attempts to inject his voice with twinkly bonhomie as he appeals directly to the working class housewife. To hawk this cheap meat, the advertising agency have opted to use the assumptive close. Purchase is inevitable. Only the side dishes are a matter of question. "What will you give your old man with his Steakhouse Grill?"
The lads, of course, hope fervently for chips.
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