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Another amble through internet links took me from Chortle where someone had chosen Grange Hill’s “Just Say No” as their favourite comedy moment. I enjoyed watching the video again, partly because I realised that those fresh faced young idiots would now be ravaged by middle age. But the joke was on me when I then looked in the mirror. That came as quite a shock. Given that all the people in this video were actors they seem admirably awkward and unable to perform. But maybe they were just embarrassed to sing this song when they knew they were all taking drugs themselves.
I am not saying this is the case but I have heard the rumours about some of the actors smoking weed in the White House toilets when they’d gone out to the States to meet Nancy Reagan who was the figurehead for the brilliant “Just Say No” campaign. I would have got round this if I had been a drug dealer by asking kids if it was true that they did not want drugs. They would have followed this simplistic mantra and then been forced to buy drugs from me. “Don’t take drugs” would have been a more effective song, but even a clever drug dealer could have got around this by saying he didn’t want you to take them, he wanted you to pay. Drug dealers are always one step ahead.
Also the song rather shoots itself in its foot by having the extremely catchy line, “Don’t listen, Don’t listen to anyone else…” and as the cast of Grange Hill are someone else it follows by logic that you shouldn’t listen to what they say and should just make up your own mind whether you say yes or no when offered a drug.
I wondered how many of the young actors in the Just Say No video had gone on to die of drug overdoses. I think it’s probably none, though some of them certainly got themselves involved in drugs and soft porn and in the case of Zammo running a key-cutting business. But in my search for the fates of these gauche and happy young children of the 1980s I went on line to find out where they are now. This site gives a reasonable round up of most of your favourite characters. And of some of the characters you’ve forgotten. And it’s very like checking up on your old school friends because most of them you haven’t seen for a quarter of a century, so it’s just as jarring to see Gonch all grown up as it would be to chance across Paul Cambridge or some other baby-faced teen from your school who is now a chubby or wizened old man. When you haven't seen them in between times. In fact it would be very easy to confuse most of these people with people you were at school with if you bumped into them now. They were so familiar that with a couple of them I was surprised to find out they were Grange Hill characters and not pupils from the Kings of Wessex. They certainly represent our childhoods and our awful fashions and haircuts and regardless of where they are now, it just reinforces how cruel time passing and the transience of youth are. Here we all are, our dreams destroyed and our bodies falling apart and in another blink of an eye most of us will be dead. Where did the time go? Why didn’t I take drugs when I was young? Oh because I believed the Grange Hill gang and Nancy Reagan and thought they’d kill me. But they didn’t tell me that there was no point in living if i didn’t experience things. “Just Have a little try” that should have been the song. “Give it a go”. And have some safe sex while you’re at it. For Christ’s sake don’t wait until you’re practically twenty to have sex and in our thirties to try drugs. Give all those things a bit of a go now while you’re young and stupid and should be making mistakes. Don’t get to 40 and then start behaving like an 18 year old. Do it now. When you’re 18. What the fuck is wrong with you.
That would have been a much more useful song for me, anyway.
Out of all of it seeing Gonch then and now is somehow the most moving testament to human existence and its ultimate wonder and pointlessness that I can think of. We are all Gonch. Don’t try and act like some big star. You are Gonch.
Look at them then, look at them now. It's like they've betrayed their younger selves by growing old. Just as we all have. Why can't we live forever?
The video version of the first episode of the new series of RHLSTP with Katherine Ryan and a shrek is now up on vimeo, youtube and iTunes. We're giving them all away for free this time in the hope that our stupid generosity will persuade you to donate a pound or more to future endeavours. And the series 5 videos are also all up on iTunes for free now. If you can't pay or won't pay then at least spread these links to your friends. The free audio will be going up in the usual places very soon as well.
