It finishes with “Who knows what goes through a pontiff’s mind, in these interesting times.” No sh*t, Sherlock.

The world of Antonioni’s Blow-Up was experienced by about 2000 people in London, while the rest of the country got on with it. the political priorities of the decade were exactly the same as the previous one. Tony Blair is an ignorant provincial git.

And of course most people live by habit and this creates tremendous social inertia – the hippies, the underground, the New Left etc definitely were small minorities, though influential ones in the longer run.

My dad insists he went through the entirety of the 50s and never once saw some Fonzie-like dude in a leather jacket, or a poddle skirt, or a hot rod . . . he claims that was all retroactively foisted on the 50s in the 70s by Happy Days.

Though I do remember the 80s pretty much as it’s portrayed in the media: day-glo colors and plastic and big hair.

Far from this being “news that turns my world upside down”, it’s just a stupid statistical comparison. Ultra-frequent (= weekly) buyers of recorded music always have been comparatively rare, but so what? There is plainly no equivalence – demographic and otherwise – between being a consumer of effectively “disposable” music, and being a television program regular.

The Williams piece does have one huge flaw: HHGTTG wasn’t a creature of the 1980s, but of the late 70s. (The original radio broadcast was in 1978; the first book in 1979.) That ‘chummy exasperation with local authorities’ is Callaghan’s Britain, not Thatcher’s; the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is more Ronco than Innovations. (My big beef with the film is that Marvin is too damn shiny.)

On nostalgia and its discontents, Michael Bywater’s piece is also worth a read, particularly for its insight on how the bloody film project kept dragging Adams backwards for two decades.

Doesn’t mean the movie’ll be any good—might be complete crap, we’ll see.