A night out in the 80s was not for the faint of heart.
BY NOW YOU WILL HAVE read our statement on the Thurles bypass, and like all sound-minded people, you will have concluded that we are absolutely right, as usual.
But you might also find that you have a lingering question concerning an important cultural matter that we happened to mention in passing. And that question might go something like this:
Gentlemen, what on earth did you mean when you said, “going to the disco for your dinner”?
And I’m glad you asked. ( I speak for myself now, since the other lads are taking the day off.). Because this will help us to get to know each other better. The fact that you are asking this question at all, for instance, allows me to deduce certain things about you.
Firstly, it tells me that you are young. Or at least, you are much younger than I am, which is a good thing for you. Enjoy your youth while you have it.
And secondly, I can deduce with my extraordinary brain that you never had the dubious pleasure of going to a disco in the 1980s. Which again might be a good thing for yourself.
In Ireland in the 80s, you see (and maybe well into the 90s for all I know), if a nightclub wanted a bar extension into the early hours, they were legally required to be serving food on the premises. So when you paid your admission for the disco on a Friday night, you would be handed a meal ticket by the lovely lady on the door, who might also take your jacket and give you another ticket for that. It might be the last time you’d ever see that jacket, but those were the risks you took. We 80s kids lived on the edge.
Anyway, at some point in the evening – perhaps when you had worn yourself out doing Rock The Boat, or maybe when the slow set came on and you wanted to avoid the utter mortification of public rejection – you would bring this meal ticket to the dining hall and exchange it for a dinner.
Of course, I use the word dinner here in a fairly loose sense, because what they put in front of you bore little or no resemblance to what you might be served in an actual dining establishment. Or for that matter, what you might throw together at home, if all you had was a frying pan and a tin of Whiskas. It was a dinner only in the sense that it was food on a plate, but again, that word food would be open to interpretation. To be honest, no one knew what it was. But the main thing is, nobody died. Not that we know of, anyway.
But if you could ignore the assault on all five senses (yes, hearing included – if you listened hard enough, you could hear the cattle pleading for a more dignified end than to be turned into a disco beefsteak), then there was really only one big drawback to going for your dinner in the middle of a Bonnie Tyler ballad. And it was this:
Whatever chance you might have had beforehand of getting The Shift – and the odds were probably against you to begin with – those chances were decimated once you opted for the leather chicken and the powdered spuds and the stuff that looked vaguely like gravy but was almost certainly something radioactive.
Then again, The Shift was always an elusive thing for me, dinner or no dinner. Girls like when you talk to them, apparently, and it is a skill I never possessed as a young man, and one I still do not possess as an old man. I used to try, to be sure, but I tended to run out of chit-chat after about ten seconds. Then I’d panic and blurt out some random fact I had recently learned, just to be saying something. And so it was on one disastrous evening at the No Name Club, when to my utter shock a young lady agreed to a slow dance. Frantic for something to say as we walked around slowly to the sweet soulful sound of True by Spandau Ballet, I had an inspired idea to get the conversation rolling.
“I know this much is true,” I told her with a sly wink. “When male dolphins want to mate, they gang up on a female and kidnap her.”
I hardly need tell you, there was no Shifting done that night.
In my state of utter dejection, I might easily have been tempted to console myself with the free dinner. But as luck would have it, the No Name was a strictly alcohol-free zone, so no bar was required, and therefore no food was served. We must be thankful for small mercies.
I should stop there, on account of my PTSD. But since we are on the subject of 1980s nightlife, I feel it is only right that I close this column by addressing the important matter of woolly jumpers at the disco – a topic I have touched on previously when discussing our cousins from the country.
A man in a jumper, pictured shortly before his arrest.
And I should make it clear that, in fairness to to the culchie savages, it actually was fashionable for a short time to wear such a garment to the disco, for about a week in 1985. Why the hardy buckos persisted with this particular fashion item for another 40 years is anyone’s guess. Maybe something to do with the lingering effects of slurry fumes, who knows?
I myself wore a jumper to the disco once, during this brief period when it was all the rage. It was a brand new number, fresh off the rack in Moran’s, featuring the kind of zany design that was later banned for public safety.
But that evening didn’t end well. For legal reasons I can’t divulge all the details here, but it involved a girl, a slow dance, and a most unfortunate allergic reaction. Which I hasten to add was all her own fault, and I am confident you will take my word for it.
We’ll leave it at that.
CURRENT LISTENING: Duran Duran – Planet Earth (1981)
If you were wondering how we used to dance at the disco, Simon here will give you an excellent demonstration.
Also featuring a bass masterclass by the great John Taylor – though I’m not sure the ladies were ever too concerned with his musical prowess.
Loughtagalla Times 
Leave a comment