This week’s set is one of those that proves that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is 1991, and John Major’s government is trying to find something to distinguish itself from the overpowering previous administration of Margaret Thatcher. It was a bit like George Bush following Ronald Reagan - how do you follow an act like that, especially when you’re a grey little man with no distinguishing features apart from a massive philtrum (look it up).
Their main idea was to privatise everything that Thatcher had left standing. She’d privatised everything that was suitable for privatisation - the Major government extended the program to everything that wasn’t. But one of their other, more sensible ideas, was to give more power to parent’s boards of Governors in schools, in an attempt to get parents more involved with the schooling of their children. I conflated the two issues, with a governors board of spivs (look it up) looking to make a profit out of their kids education.
The line about Jumbo Jockstraps (look it up) on Monday wasn’t mine. My original punchline just stopped at 'But first a word from our sponsors'.
The names of the companies on Tuesday were also imposed on me. My original script had business studies sponsored by Polly Peck, an Enron-like company that had just gone bust. It also has 'Englosh Linguage' sponsored by the Guardian, a paper which at that time was famed for its misprints. A rewrite has Geography sponsored by the Flat Earth Society.
Nowadays, of course, everything is sponsored, from the TVs next to the beds of NHS patients where you have to pay to switch off the constant drip feed of adverts, to exercise books in the local school.
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