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Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 09:27
For most it meant a trip to the Alexandra Cinema in Newton Abbot, where Life of Brian was showing to packed houses.
Ideally, we would have liked to go and see it at the Regent or the Torbay, or the Colony or the ABC, but the management at the Alexandra must have been rubbing their hands with glee at Torbay Council's decision.
The night we went, the old Alex was packed to the rafters and sales of Kia-Ora and Butterkist must have gone through the roof.
People smoked in cinemas in those days, so the atmosphere would have been heady with the tang of Players Number 10s, and the noise levels would have been frightening.
The evening's entertainment began with Away From It All, a spoof travelogue film narrated by John Cleese — a send-up of the cheap and nasty filler movies shown to 1970s cinema audiences to fill the time.
Then came the main feature, and nothing would ever be quite the same again.
In these days of wall-to-wall entertainment TV on 24-hour cable channels, most people would have already seen the best bits on TV before going to the cinema. Pirate copies of the film would have turned up on the internet and the edge would have been taken off the occasion.
Then, the whole thing was new from the moment the credits rolled.
Sketch after classic sketch followed — the stoning, the People's Front of Judea, the hermit, the sermon on the mount, 'Blessed are the cheese-makers', 'Welease Woger', the UFO and, of course, the closing song, after which the audience spilled on to the street singing Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life as they went in search of a pint before closing time.
Endlessly quoted by schoolboys everywhere, the film and its dialogue live on far beyond the confines of the cinema.
Sailors on the stricken HMS Sheffield during the Falklands War sang Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life as they awaited rescue.
"What has the Labour government ever done for us?" asked an MP during Prime Minister's Questions.
Somewhere I have a T-shirt with a picture of the Welsh international footballer Robbie Savage on the front and the slogan 'He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy'.
As high points in popular culture go, it's right up there with the best of them.
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