Alan Coren presents a new four-part series recalling the events, arts and trends of the seventies. With new interviews, archive material and music.

A look at the unstable political climate of the early seventies, with Tony Benn, David Steel, David Owen, Lord Carrington and others.

[Photo caption] The Real Seventies were a heady mix of power struggles, politics and purple sequins, as sported by Donny Osmond

The Real Seventies 9.00pm R2
The publicity material for this programme invites potential listeners to "pull on your platform shoes, dust off the bin liners and squeeze into your boob tube." Now, I'm not going to lie to you, I have not done any of that because, frankly, I'm too busy to get arrested. And in platform shoes I can't get under low bridges. Also, I thought that a boob tube was another shambles on the London Underground. But I do remember the seventies, the decade that occupied the gap between the end of the Beatles and the start of Margaret Thatcher's reign as prime minister (quite a gap, then). It was also the decade of the first big hike in oil prices, a time when everyone knew what the acronym Opec stood for. Alan Coren jogs our memories with this four-part reminiscence, mixing combination of interviews, news clips featuring politicos such as Harold Wilson and James Callaghan and, of course, the popular music of the time.