TV Cream

Bric-a-Brac: D is for...

Deely-boppers

They weren't cheap either, you knoiwNever mind Internet ‘virals’ and crazes that get the drowsier variety of broadsheet hack hot under the collar, here was a pointless gimmick that came from nowhere, had no point to it and swept like wildfire through the heart of popular culture and out the other side in a matter of months. And to top it all, people actually paid money for the dubious privilege of being associated with it. Why kids and others old enough to know better would go down the youth club disco with a pair of silver balls on springs clipped to their head remains one of history’s great and tragic mysteries, but bop they did, in their thousands, albeit not for very long before hiding the bloody thing away in a drawer and hoping it was never mentioned again.

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. A Baton

    August 28, 2009 at 8:44 pm

    Dave Lee Travis appeared on Top of the Pops at the height of the deely boppers mania sporting a crash helmet with a pair of small footballs attached to springs on top, claiming this to be “the biggest and the best”.

  2. johnnyboy

    November 30, 2009 at 2:31 am

    They are indeed the scourge of going for a badly needed pint on a Friday evening. First it’s the screeching from outside (if summer and the doors are left open, it gives you time to hastily finish your drink and scarper); the eye-watering glitter of sequined dresses – well, teacloths – as the girls, mazed with too much Jagermeisters and way too old for wearing anything that doesn’t reach your lower ankles, push their way to the bar, always with at least one (usually the betrothed) tied to a helium-filled balloon for increased buoyancy, and when ordering the round, never having a bloody list!

    Ahem….

  3. Matthew Rudd

    January 13, 2010 at 3:45 pm

    Alexei Sayle wore some in The Young Ones. That’s good enough for me.

  4. Lee James Turnock

    July 20, 2010 at 3:31 pm

    Ha ha! I’d forgotten about Alexei Sayle sporting his deelyboppers!

  5. Harold Steptoe

    April 12, 2017 at 9:00 pm

    I had a schoolmate who thought he was the bees knees: because he had a pair of ‘dice’ deelyboppers… He looked a right twat…

  6. Tom Ronson

    November 13, 2022 at 3:49 am

    Gird your loins, because I saw an absolutely hammered hen party staggering out of Mamma Mia! in London’s West End only a couple of months ago, all sporting furry heart-shaped deelyboppers. Where there’s a will there’s a way…

Leave a Reply

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To Top