Alex B Cann column: Nostalgia that's priceless

Do you remember the old toys you used to play with as a child? Tameside Radio's Breakfast presenter Alex B Cann has been reminiscing...

Food nostalgia has been in the headlines a fair bit over these last surreal 14 months. A recent example was old-school corned beef hash, which has seen a marked comeback in popularity amongst younger shoppers. The canned meat sector added an eye watering £24.1 million in sales in 2020. That’s a lot of corned beef!

Other classic favourites which provided a culinary cuddle during lockdown include banoffee pie, bread and butter pudding, Angel Delight and jelly, which has apparently more than tripled in popularity. I guess we’re all looking for a bit of comfort in these uncertain times, although it probably doesn’t always help our waistlines. Stick with this newspaper’s Baking With Burns column for more inspiring ideas!

On Tameside Radio, I’ve been discussing old toys this week, after my nephew discovered the joy of my retro 1970s’ Fisher Price Garage. 

I’ve seen them being sold online for three figure sums, but it brings me far greater delight to see Kayaan enjoy a toy which gave me many hours of enjoyment decades ago.

The Toy Story movies showed the depth of our emotional attachment to items like the slinky, and reduced grown men like me to blubbing wrecks in the multiplex. 

According to website 80s Kids, here are the Top 10 most loved toys of the 1980s, when I grew up:

• Tree Tots Family Treehouse
• Nintendo Game Boy
• Care Bears
• LEGO
• Fuzzy Felts
• Etch A Sketch
• Pound Puppies
• Hungry Hungry Hippos
• The Big Yellow Tea Pot House
• SEGA Mega Drive

Despite a lot of kids now having the world at their fingertips with iPads, I like to think a lot of these traditional items still have enduring appeal. 

I certainly witnessed my nephew being completely immersed in playing with my old garage from back in the day. 

He’s also recently discovered Pinocchio, a movie which is over eight decades old. We’ll gloss over the fact the kids are given cigars to smoke in one scene (this scene would surely not be allowed by censors these days!), but it’s another example of something that has stood the test of time.

I am so glad I grew up before the age of social media and all the other electronic distractions now present for our children. 

If someone wanted to ‘troll’ you in the 80s, they had to chalk a rude message on your back. Or stick a sneaky post-it to your shoes when you weren’t looking.

Or at a push write something rude in your exercise book. Simpler times.

Elsewhere this week, my parents have had their second Covid vaccination and my wife is booked in for her first. 

As we gear up for indoor hospitality and cinemas to hopefully return from May 17, another bit of normal life feels within our grasp once again. I’ve also got my second haircut next Monday, which I’m really looking forward to. 

I hope we continue to appreciate the little things in life, rather than a return to taking them for granted.

I’ve really enjoyed the pictures of people enjoying meals served outdoors in the torrential rain, huddled underneath giant golf brollies. 

One enduring image showed a couple of blokes eating brunch and a pint at a pavement table during a hailstorm. Another featured a family midway through a feast in a storm, next to a roundabout and a set of roadworks. Is there anything more quintessentially English than that?

My heart goes out to India, and the scenes there have been utterly devastating. I hope we can continue to ramp up international efforts, and remember that we’re not safe until everyone has been vaccinated worldwide. 

I sincerely hope the desperation to get on a plane in some quarters doesn’t set us back, as it finally feels like we’ve turned a corner in the battle against this horrible virus and its many mutations.

You can listen to Alex every weekday from 7am to 11am and on the 'Super Scoreboard' show on Saturdays from 3pm to 7pm, on Tameside Radio 103.6FM. 

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