I'm reading Thatcher Stole My Trousers by Alexi Sayle, it's good. He's refreshingly clear-eyed about how rubbish the 70s and early 80s were. I'm especially enjoying his slightly unpredictable obsessions - the state of UK manufacturing, car design, etc.
I was brought up short by one moment - with that shock you sometimes get when you discover something innocent and unremarkable from the past is revealed to be, in fact, the product of a vast and unfathomable conspiracy.
"You could buy your shoes in a multitude of different shops with names like Freeman, Hardy and Willis, Saxone, Trueform, Bertie, Dolcis, Manfield, or Curtess, thinking they were separate entities, when in fact they were all the same, all just fronts for the British Shoe Corporation"
This turns out to be true.
The shoe stores that dotted the high street of my teenage years were owned and controlled by a sinister vast conglomeration. Since my Mum would never spring for the luxury of real Clarks Commandos or real Adidas trainers we would traipse in and out of these various shops, trying to find the least awful imitation, never realising we were just dropping in and out of the gaping maw of the same multi-armed corporate squid. Appalling.
