Simon Hoggart

Emotional ties

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

issue 22 May 2010

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. There is so much demand that the past is constantly creeping nearer to the present. The BBC is running an Eighties season in which it celebrates events that seem pretty close to most of us. Soon it’ll be looking back, misty-eyed, on early 2010, distant days when Lady Gaga was top of the ‘hit parade’, Gordon Brown was prime minister and you could get a pint for £3.75.

This week they showed Worried about the Boy on BBC2 (Sunday) on the early life of Boy George. This was an intriguing programme; neither an old-fashioned biopic (‘Hey, tell you something, that kid can sing!’) nor a rags-to-rags story of a star descending into a heroin hell. What made it particularly sensitive was the relationship between the singer, effete yet ruthlessly determined, and his father.

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