Express & Star

Mark Andrews: How will we remember the summer of 2020?

A friend pointed out that this week that it is 30 years in the summer since Jon Bon Jovi recorded Blaze of Glory.

Published
1996 was the summer football came home – but how will we remember 2020?

To which I responded, 'never mind that, it is 40 years this since Fiddler's Dram got to No. 3 with Day Trip to Bangor.' Which I'm sure you will agree is a far more important cultural milestone, influencing many subsequent artists. Well the people who made the Anchor butter advert the following year, anyway.

But it got me thinking: 30, 40, 50 years from now, how will people look back on the coronavirus summer of 2020? Will future pop stars, if there is such a thing 30 years from now, look back on the Summer of 20 as fondly as Bryan Adams did on the Summer of 69?

We all know that summer was the best of Bryan's life, and that December 1963 was when the Four Seasons' Bob Gaudio had 'What a Night' with a lady whose name he didn't know. We know the sizzling summer of 1976 came after Brotherhood of Man won the Eurovision Song Contest, that 1996 was the year football came home, that 1989 marked the collapse of the Iron Curtain, and that 1997 was when Tony Blair promised us Things Can Only Get Better. Yeah, right.

Yet potential cultural references to the summer of 2020 are looking a bit thin on the ground. The Olympics, Wimbledon and the Euros have already been put back, meaning it is not going to be remembered as the summer of sport. Eurovision has been cancelled, and the travel industry has ground to a standstill, so there is little chance of it being remembered as the year the nation's youth basked in sizzling sunshine to the soundtrack of cheesy bubblegum pop tracks.

But worst of all is the cancellation of the Turner Prize.

The Turner Prize has always been the people's art contest. While all those stuffy old-fashioned competitions are relevant only to member of a cultural elite who actually have a talent for painting or sculpture, the Turner Prize has always been much more inclusive: it is something any old idiot can win, and very often does.

Take, for example, the 2001 Turner Prize, won by Martin Creed with an empty room where the light goes on and off at five-second intervals. The jurors praised Creed for his 'audacity' – in other words, you don't need to be able to paint, as long as you have plenty of front.

Or plenty of rear for that matter. In 2016, Anthea Hamilton 'stole the show' with a sculpture of a pair of giant butt cheeks every bit as tasteful as Saleem's 'erotic art' in East is East. The same year, Josephine Pryde was shortlisted for entering a toy train set, while Michael Dean's entry was £20,435.99 in 1p coins, accompanied by some spiel about it being 'one penny below the poverty line for a family of four'. In other words, you can enter any old tat as long as you have got the gift of the gab when it comes to explaining it.

But, anyhow, there will be none of that this year, so my cunning plan to enter a giant glass window covered in thousands of kids' paintings of rainbows and NHS slogans (ticks all the right boxes you see) will have gone by the board.

In years gone by, of course, we may have fallen back on television to give a cultural backstory. The 1970s may have been the days of the three-day week, the Winter of Discontent, stagflation and the beginnings of mass unemployment, but at least – providing the power was on – seek solace in the black humour of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? or the gritty reality of The Sweeney. If Mike Yarwood were still doing the rounds, he would be giving us hilarious sketches of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings in surreal situations, but sadly he is not. Now hardly anybody watches television, and who can blame them? Celebrity this, celebrity that, cooking, baking, sewing, wall-to-wall soaps and all those forgettable 'mini-series' that go on for hours, where people just stare at one another wistfully and mumble above the overpowering incidental music.

Therefore, it looks like the only cultural footprint the summer of 2020 will leave on future generations is that of ageing rockers playing their old standards to the backdrop of their leather-bound libraries on a video-conferencing platform.

But there is still one hope, although admittedly it is a long shot. What if Fiddler's Dram were to get back together, and saved the day with a rebooted version of their best (and only) hit, brought up to date to reflect the times we live in:

Didn't we have a luvverly time, when we tried to go to Bangor/ Beautiful day, got stopped on the way, Welsh Old Bill said 'can't come here', and/ On the way back, isolated with Jack, as we wore protective visors/singing a few of our favourite songs as we got turned a-round.

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