I’m a sucker for all things eighties and although I wasn’t a teenager for the whole decade (I was for more than half of it), it was a decade of milestones, memories, excellent music and very bad hair. So obviously, when I came across Tom Harvey’s memoir, The Eighties: A Bitchen Time To Be a Teenager!, I couldn’t resist.

Tom is an ordinary bloke who has written a memoir (just in case you were racking your brain to remember if Tom Harvey was a celebrity in the eighties). His experiences were ordinary (except for the time he was an extra in a movie which included the then unknown Brad Pitt); his progression through school and university followed the normal path; and his home-life was pretty much standard. So you may be wondering why you would bother to read this memoir. Well, it’s fun to read someone else’s take on INXS, Animal House and Cabbage Patch Kids, particularly as his memories spark your own.

Without over-thinking it, I jotted down ten of my own memories from the eighties – these were first things that popped into my head when I thought about my life between the ages of 8 and 17. Continue reading →