The decline in public singing that
characterised the last two quarters of the 1970s was attributed to, among
others, the television, the discothèque and the ravioli restaurant.
Keen to hear Britain’s saloon bars
avoice with revelry again, the NOI teamed up with the BBC to launch a radio
programme, For Pubs And Oil Rigs, and an accompanying book of traditional pub
singalong songs.
For a brief, glorious period, pubs up
and down the width of the land were again arenas of full-throated crooning and
gay serenade. Regretfully, it didn’t last, and by the 1980s most pubs were
silent places full of the tearful unemployed, staring holes in their solitary
pints while the etiolated afternoon surrendered all hope to the sickly grey of empty
evening. Luckily, there was Bananarama.