MENTION an iconic hot chick like Bo Derek and anyone under 30 – no, 40 – will stare at you blankly. And these sexual references are also out-of-date:
Katy Manning in Doctor Who
The actress behind loveable 70s time lord sidepiece Jo Grant will mean nothing to modern audiences who fancied Jenna Coleman and that’s it, but her colourful antics included going out with Jimi Hendrix, posing naked with a Dalek, and being fit. Deserves to be remembered and if there’s a fanbase committed to wanking, it’s Whovians.
Lewis Collins in The Professionals
Good-looking and perhaps the only follower of Thespis to have passed SAS initial training, The Professionals is easy enough to explain. However your lingering feelings for right-wing paranoid fantasy Who Dares Wins, where anti-nuclear protestors are cold-blooded psychopaths who demand a warhead is fired at a Scottish naval base, are decidedly problematic.
Bo Derek in 10
Former model Bo ran along a beach in slow motion in a swimsuit. With braids, which is apparently important. It’s a scene from any single episode of Baywatch, but for 80s boys it was the most wank-banked moment of their adolescent lives. The rest of the film is Dudley Moore in midlife crisis, popping up in your fantasies like a pissed hamster.
David Essex in That’ll Be The Day
Unassuming David was the fantasy par excellence for ladies of a certain age. Hits like Rock On and Gonna Make You A Star made him the One Direction of his day, but with fewer tats and more talent. Still haunts Christmas with his song A Winter’s Tale, like a ghost of wanking past.
Kathy Lloyd of Page 3
Page 3 girls like Kathy became ‘lads’ mag favourites’, and that’s a hideous concept to explain. ‘Lads’ mags had almost-naked women in them,’ you’ll say to sceptical Gen Zers, ‘but they weren’t offensive, because of sexist banter.’ You’ll sound to yourself like your grandad defending The Black and White Minstrel Show.
Jan-Michael Vincent in Airwolf
A pin-up in the 80s, although a show entirely about a combat helicopter had a natural limit on its female fanbase, Jan-Michael’s career imploded due to a serious coke and booze problem, multiple bar brawls and car crashes, and eventually losing a leg. It’s difficult to understand why this behaviour was once necessary to be a sexy wildman.
Linda Lusardi of Page 3
The embodiment of a very 80s fantasy, specifically: you’d go to a nightclub, see a classy bird with big knockers at the bar drinking Babycham, dance together to Wang Chung, then go home in your XR3i for amazing sex and a post-coital John Player Special. None of this can be understood by anyone millennial or under. But it’s your go-to wank even now.
