Cunts from the Blackstuff

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Yosser Hughes & Alan Bleasdale.

Last night I watched a rerun of a old ‘play for today’ 1980s ‘the Blackstuff.
I remember it from the time and obviously the series it spawned “Boys from the Blackstuff”.

I remember it from young eyes, gritty realism portraying the futile struggle to better ones lot as a working man.

It was fuckin rubbish.

The stand out character is Yozzer Hughes a bully, a nutter, hates woman, and gets all his workmates the sack. Hes no working class hero hes peter Sutcliffe with a tash.

Champagne socialist creator Alan Bleasdale wrote a few things I saw as a youth,

Hes always bleating about the rich, the tories, hes a hypocrite. His kids Timothy &Tamana (good working class names) must be embarrassed by the daft old fucker?

Hes full of shite, gizza job Alan,

Do you pay the maid union rate?

Nominated by: Miserable Northern Cunt 

58 thoughts on “Cunts from the Blackstuff”

  1. I remember telling my dad in the 1980s: “if I have a daughter I’m going to call her Placenta.”

    He thought that was a lovely name, silly cunt.

    Morning all.

  2. Champagne socialist the term itself refers to just about the biggest hypocritical cunt in the civilised world. They want to show empathy to 60 s 70 s and 80 s working class then put them in a damp two up two down one fire downstairs outside bog and feed em bread and lard and cold tea. Fucking shit em. Cunts

  4. Sorry you were disappointed MNC. “The past is a foreign country” as a wise cunt named LP Hartley said.

    Series that are deemed “classic” are, more often than not, just old. It is just marketing jargon, mostly. Very few series stand the test of time, in my view. Unlike film, TV tends to be more throw away, of the moment, so to speak,

    Some series that I think have lasted and are therefore true classics would include, The Avengers (ATV, not the woke Disney superheroes rip-off, and not the earliest couple of series); The Prisoner – my fave of all time; some Dennis Potter (particularly Pennies from Heaven). What those three have on common is the sort of weird parallel universes that they explore. Fuck me, this is all getting a bit “popular
    studies” or whatever that shit is called nowadays.

    If you are looking for political comment TV that has stood the test of time, “Till Death” is still funny. Speight might have been a cunt, but he wrote some great stuff.

    • Twenty, I liked the Willy Russell tv adaption ‘one Summer’ too,
      Dont know if anyone remembers it?
      But im betting now I’d not be so keen?!

      • I do remember and might get a copy as Network have released it.

        Another Dennis Potter that may well still be okay is ‘Blue Remembered Hills.’ Loved it when I first saw it.

  5. Nice that you stuck to programmes by a writer who so accurately depicted your own lifestyle, Miserable. I,of course,used to watch anything by P.G. Wodehouse.
    ……….

    “It is a good rule in life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them,”

  6. Much enjoyed Boys From The Blackstuff series when it first aired in the ’80s.

    It was a ‘must watch’ weekly view at the time, funny and tragic in equal measure, though by the last episode it had got a bit silly and tedious I seem to recall.

    Not seen it since but we have the DVD boxed set awaiting a revisit. Be interesting to see how it’s aged.

    (Make the most of your DVD boxset because the BBC will probably re-release it for a modern audience and call it “Non-Binary Gender Neutrals from the Stuff of Colour” – DA)

  7. Gis a job….something that’s bound to become common now that Boris and his corrupt band of contract handing criminals have basically ruined the country.

    People’s businesses, livings, homes and health are all being given away so a few of Boris’s fat school chums can get rich.

    • The cunts are already rich, but the greedy bastards want more. It seems all rich people do, what they have is never enough.

  8. Boys from the blackstuff reminded me too much of growing up in the 80’s in the North – freezing cold, broke and the only work was cash in hand because jobs just weren’t available.
    But just like Ken Loach Bleasdale has got very rich describing a misery his upbringing will ensure he never experiences.
    Try it for real Alan, then write about that.

    • Yorkshireman to vet: “there’s summat wrong wi’ t’cat”
      Vet: “is it a Tom.?”
      Yorkshireman : “no it’s here in t’basket”.
      The end.

  9. Left wing bollocks. The left thrive on dependants, and love to show them how poor they are, both financially and in life choices. Misery means votes.
    Who thinks about politics when life is ok? I don’t mean being rich, I mean being happy with your lot. Some of my happiest memories are from that period, and I didn’t have a pot to piss in, but because I wasn’t reading the Mirror, I had no idea how shit my existence was.
    Fuck off.

    • The Mirror deserves a full on cunting all of it’s own.
      Bullshit, hypocrisy and lies but makes itself out to be more upmarket than The Sun because of having no tits on page 3…

      • There’s a load of tits writing on every other page of The Mirror, might as well have em on page 3 too.

  10. I had moved to Manchester when this came out.
    It were grim oop north. Clogs and curlers. Salford at first but at least we could look down on the poor cunts in Stockport.

    • Ha ha-the 1980’s North, where owning your council house and car made you middle class, going on holiday to Benidorm once a year, Nouveau Riche and living in a detached house, purer class😒
      The worst snobbery you will ever encounter, reverse snobbery👎

    • Hey!
      Ill have you know we got a indoor khazi in 1986!
      Envy of our street we were..😀

      • I bet your new “indoor khazi” was just an old soup tureen that you mistook for a Gazunder.

      • The older boys bullied me for it Dick!
        “Hey you yer cunt!
        You shit indoors?
        Whod you think you are?
        Fuckin prince Charles?!!
        😀

  11. I haven’t seen it in years-is it the original film about getting ripped off by Pie-keys? I remember Yosser chinning a few of those Irish tinkers 👏

    I think it it is sacrosanct in Liverpool-anything by Bleasedale or starring a McGann brother.
    Most television doesn’t stand the test of time: the nations favourite was Coronation Street-our original kitchen sink drama.
    One of the original storylines was Ken Barlow going to University, the famous and Ubiquitous “hark at ‘im an is posh university chums-too goid fer’ Likes of us” bollocks.
    Most tv from that era, centres around class.

    Watch some of Michael Angelis’s other best work (he was Chrissy in The Black Stuff)-narrating Thomas-the-Tank-Engine😀👍.

    We could remake it for the IsAC generation😀.
    Plenty of characters on here, for inspiration 👍

  12. Ricky Tomlinson could have played all the roles and saved the producers a fortune.

    Who gives a fuck what TV land thinks about the working class? Who in their right mind doesn’t wasn’t to escape the working class label and expectations that go with it?

    The program itself was a celebration of victim hood set in the capital of victimsville.

    Anyone who felt that program defined their lives needed to go get a fucking life.

    • ….scousers are mawkish bastards-love to play the “working class hero” card. Never happier than when they are driving away from Liverpool.
      Harry Enfield fucking nailed it👍
      Some tidy birds though 👍

  13. Auf Wiedersen Pet , Good
    Black stuff , Better
    Our Friends in the North , Best

    Wor Gina McKee always gave me the horn. Ditto Cherie Lunghi!

    • The first Auf Weidersehen was epic-I had friends whose dads had to go to Germany for work.

      I can picture our Mis as an Oz type-a people’s poet, a philosopher, a lover and a fighter, a fucking good bricklayer👍
      B&W cunt as Wayne (or his son Wyman-zooming around Germany, tongueing krauts😂

  14. “Classic” TV I suppose makes a big change to “iconic”. Everything is iconic these days, apparently even last nights episode of Pointless. It always annoys me frankly when rich playwrights go slumming (Loach was another) – you can just imagine them all cheering on Dame Kweer because of his “working class” credentials, and Kweer I am sure would enjoy discussing the problems of the day over a nice Moet and a three course dinner. They are so patronising. People like Bleasdale were are and are just soap opera writers with pretentions.

  15. Shocked you mislike anything Northern, MNC. Even if it is from the distant past.
    But sorry to hear your dreams are shattered – chin up, lad! Sending you some virtual Yorkshire pudding & custard to munch on.

  16. Hi lady C, hope your in good health?👍
    Normally champion anything northern or English, but it was truly rubbish,
    Maybe its a age thing?
    But just seemed so ‘socialist’
    So ‘dat bleedin Thatcher’

    I was embarrassed by it!
    Oh well, back to Steptoe & son and Dads Army.😀

    • Yes, I am MNC, thank you!

      Ah, you are rallying. Good to hear. Carry on, dear boy 🙂

      I’ve fairly given up on comedy. But I saw Stella Street on youtube not long ago and that still raises a laugh. And IaC comments, they makes me laugh more than anything.

  17. Alan bleasdale used to teach my brother English in school many moons ago in Liverpool, apparently he was one of the more tolerant teachers there, caneing was daily or a good pasting off the rugby teacher , copper’s used to give you a hiding in the back of the van if you missbehaved, nowadays it’s all bollocks, boys from the black stuff was funny back in the day and scully too, miss them day’s even though we had fuck all , happy time’s ,I moved from Liverpool year’s ago and then moved back , sucker for punishment

    • I got one of those hiding in the back of the van Bluecunt!😁
      And handcuffed to a police horse.
      Those were the days eh?!!👍👍

  18. Harry Enfield did certainly send it up. A ripe choiceᵃ, even if it was quarter of a century ago, for any aspirant satirist, but undeniably a reasonably workmanlike put-down of precisely this.

    Should we rename the site as “very much indeed wasᵇ a cunt”?

    ᵃ see: youtu.be/QK3VVh06TPY
    ᵇ while I appreciate this total cacka, this utter bizz may well have been afforded a newfound re-rediffusion on Yesterday, ovno, a paraphrasis of Ridley Scott’s Hovis™ could appositely read:

    Boys from the Blackstuff: as irrelevant now as it akways was

  19. Erratum
    &Apologies – that clip was from “Story of the Twos”. Not 25 years ago. Still an old mark

  20. Bleasdale’s GBH was fucking mental. Robert Lindsay as the nasty and fucked up politician and a surprisingly good Michael Palin in a serious role as a have a go hero school teacher.

    I remember Yosser with Graeme Souness. ‘You look like me! Magnum as well!’

    I didn’t mind ‘Black Stuff’, but I preferred the first series of Auf Wiedersehen Pet. That original series set in Germany was ace.

  21. I saw ‘The Black Stuff’ too, and it did look and sound a bit dated, but it was of its time, I suppose.
    I did recently buy the box set of ‘Scully’, a series which as far as I know, never aired again since it was first shown in 1984.
    Pissed myself watching that.
    Yiiis!

  22. Of course it was champagne socialist shit. Like anything ever made by Ken Leech, sorry Loach after Poor Cow and Kes.

    Danny Boyle is the other turdstain committing socialist treason on film. Have a look back at his 2012 Olympic Ceremony wankfest and note the not-so-eerie parallels with the CV shite that’s gone down in 2020. Dancing nurses are the least of it.

  23. Kes for me is one of the best films ever made, couldnt give a fuck if Karl Marx or Hitler directed it,
    To me its a masterpiece.

    “Some money on’t side Billy luv, get yersel some crisps fer yer tea..”😀😀

    • Kes is indeed a masterpiece and one of the best films of all time. I give credit where it’s due, and find it all the more dismaying that his film-making collapsed so vertiginously after into full-on Marxist celluloid shit.

  24. Bernard hill used to live very close to me, he’s an arrogant cunt who was despised by nearly all the inhabitants of my little town here in the east, once in the garden of our local boozer he was snarling and generally be a cunt to my late dog who had cancer, he fucking annoyed me that much i jumped up and threatened to kick the fucking living shite out of him and i’d be waiting outside for the cunt, but our landlord sanchez secretly shuffled the cunt out the back way, i later heard that the cunt had upped sticks and moved to Naaaarge!

    • He was good in Peter Greenaway’s ‘Drowning By Numbers’ mind, even if he was trying to shag Joan Plowright all the way through it.

  25. Threads was a good one. Where the nuclear bomb drops on Sheffield.
    Those Beeb cunts wouldn’t dare show it now.

      • Luton or Rochdale would be a good choice too, CG. For the same reason as yours.

        And if a nuke went off in London, Suckdick Khan would say ‘Nuclear blasts are part and parcel of living in a big modern city’.

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