In my youth the cool hero of choice was The Fonz, played by Henry Winkler in the US TV sitcom Happy Days. He wasn't just cool, he was ice cool. He was the guy who always got the girl, played the hard guy but in reality was an old softie. And Richie Cunningham's mother fancied the pants off him.
So it was with some degree of shock that I turned to page 12 of today's Telegraph to find a picture of him reading a kids' book with Ed Balls. And he looked like the definition of the word 'uncool'. He looked squarer than Richie Cunningham, wearing a David Davis-esque stripey tie.
Somehow I felt old. That part of my childhood died in that picture.
22 comments:
It's the Balls connection which is nauseous.
"In my youth the cool hero of choice was The Fonz..."
Iain, the Fonz was about as cool as Abba in the Seventies- I think what you are forgetting is that he was just portraying what would have been cool in the 1950s in the United States.
Trying to make a Tory cool is like trying to teach a donkey to dance - one is doomed to fail, and it will annoy the donkey.
Please can you put a supermodel or at least a ladies tennis player on the front cover of Total Politics next month.
I am getting quite queasy at the sight of Gordon Brown flashing across my screen
Is this how Labour attempt to 'reconnect' with the country - by doing photoshoots with iconic American tv stars from years ago?
I think their strategists are losing the plot.
Ah but Iain, what would you blog post have been like if it was Cameron himself ;)
I saw the photo and thought it was Malcolm Rifkind. Such are the ravages of time.
The Fonz was ever "**COOL**!!", rather than cool.
And yes to what anon9:17 says about teaching Doctors to dance.
He was an actor playing a part. It was never real, dear. Bit like a NuLab manifesto.
He was good in Arrested Development, too, but I think he's lost the plot.
Anon July 02, 2008 9:17 AM said:
"Trying to make a Tory cool is like trying to teach a donkey to dance - one is doomed to fail, and it will annoy the donkey."
Excellent :-)
However Boris is so cool he's red hot.
Imagine a Fonz of today popping caps in asses and demarndin rez-pek even before he dun ern it.
Saw the "crashers" scene from Big Wednesday yesterday. How innocent - people fighting one-on-one with, shock-horror, fists and the odd table. Now? 5 on 1 (bravely) kicking in the head. Knives. Bottles. A spray from an Uzi in a drive-by resulting in a burning feud going on for a decade.
When is someone going to make it uncool again to be a lying cheating lazy coward? A fish rots from the head, alas, so until this pestilential government is got rid, I doubt much can be done.
p.s. trevorsden: Seconded. I dislike so much the image of "The Elephant in the Room Man". I am not a human being...I AM A SOCIALIST!
Dear anonymous 9.17
So? he was a cool representative of the 50's. he can still be a 'hero' - there no denying his popularity.
As for cool Tories ... yeah well. So how many cool Socialists do we know? Bertrand Russell? Brown? Ruth Kelly? Ah, I know - Margaret Becket, she has a caravan - really cool.
Or 'Yo Blair...'?
Iain are you telling me that David Davis didn't wear the ties you (the arbiter of taste in these matters) picked out for him during the leadership campaign?
That was it!! Were it not for the ties....
I agree with Biggles, tie choices be damned! Balls!! How horrid.
I also agree with trevorsden, 'Flasher Gordon' is really really annoying. Its like those YouTube videos where something really scary suddenly appears on the screen. You do realise that the image of Jonah Brown will kill any chance of the magazine succeeding?
trevorsden - a fair point, but think that Iain finding the 'Fonz' cool, at a time when punk was taking off and the Clash and the Jam were in vogue is an observation which is telling.
As for 'cool' lefties, I was at college in the eighties when 'Red Wedge' was doing the rounds with Billy Bragg and his ilk [in fact Paul Weller may well have re-invented him self to 'cash in', sorry, keep up with the times, on that as well.
To my eternal shame I couldn't see what all the fuss was about, as my 'cool' factor was not unadjacent to zero, as I hadn't progressed from wearing farapress trousers and a tank top...
So I am not claiming to be more 'cool' than Iain, but good grief, even I would not stoop to claiming that wearing those pringle slipover things was remotely trendy..
Fonzy is actually more associated with the sudden loss of credibility than anything else now having created the defining image of a show that has lost its way( When he jumped the shark on water-skis)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
Its hard to remember that Gordon Brown ever had a pre jumping-the-shark period, but the moment it all started to go South for me was Osborne’s announcement on Inheritance tax, …or maybe pussying out of the election…..or maybe the 10p tax fiasco ….or Northern Rock,……bribing the DUP……
Actually he seems to have jumped the entire shark population of the Pacific. Anyway he is well into the period when Fonzy ‘making out’ , started to look like paedophilia . Perhaps they `ll give Milliband his own show , like the pointless Chachi ….he will never make his Mork IMHO.
Woah !
Sorry Iain, but I have to ask: Does anyone care?
Trying to make a Tory cool is like trying to teach a donkey to dance - one is doomed to fail, and it will annoy the donkey.
Ah yes all those cool socialists , Paul Weller( kids at Public School ) , Billy Bragg , ( moved to all white Dorset) … …Looks like the Donkey is waving its hooves in the air like he just don’t care , to me ..Shabba (or something )
Winkler is playing Hook in panto at Milton Keynes this Christmas. Is that cooler?
I loved the 1950s revival in the 1970s. And the 1960s Mods/Rockers revival in the 1970s. And the 1930s platform shoes revival in the 1970s. And the Fonz. I just wasn't too keen on how flared trousers, the cutting edge of hippie cool in the late 1960s and already entering the mainstream in 1968, got so bloody stuck in the 1970s. Still, there wasn't much money about, so it was better not to have to fork out for new fashion I suppose.
Punk had the answer - wear grotty old clothes. Though why we had to rip 'em I don't know.
Iain,
I've just noticed that, on the BBC News website that has covered this story, there is the question:
"For those who remember Happy Days... if Ed Balls was a character in it who would he be? Send us your suggestions"
Was there ever a character as slimy and creepy as Ed Balls in "Happy Days"? I certainly don't remember one...
Henry Winkler, the actor and producer, has aged and moved on reasonably gracefully. There would be no point in his trying to pretend to be what he once was, decades ago.
Even I have gone grey since then, and accepted the change. It is a sign of maturity that we find a new part to play in life. As Captain James T Kirk once put it: "Galloping around the cosmos is a job for the young."
That doesn't mean that we oldies have nothing more to offer -- it has simply changed. There is a lesson in there...
Well, I understand what Iain means even if I don't entirely agree.
Some of you people obviously have no idea of how fun 'Happy Days' was. Beastly snobs.
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