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It was the standard for comedians' jokes; British Rail sandwiches (curled up at the edges like Widow Twankey's shoes); BBC Canteen tea served out of a polystyrene or paper cup with the 1980s rhombus-shaped logo on the side; or supporting Michael Foot in the 1983 General Election - they were to the 1980s what the "trainspotting" generation were a decade later. Game show hosts had got it as well: the audience booing when a game show contestant mentioned that he has worked at the Inland Revenue or TV Licensing (I have a friend who works for the now-named, HMRC incidentally); and the deliberate confusion between a barber shop and a carpet superstore - i.e. the word "rug" being a double-meaning word. Even Mike's Carpets, a regional advertiser who got a very rare outing outside the Yorkshire TV region (i.e. south of Sheffield, just like Morrisons supermarkets and Warburtons bread were right up until the early 1990s), courtesy of the 1998 Ads Infinitum Awards, probably wanted to be like them. Wikipedia mentioned that it had a huge "cultural currency" in its day; but then again so do lots of things in life such as going to the pub and watching football.
Yes, I am talking about Allied Carpets; the superstore that nearly every out of town retail park had, although it was mostly B&Q or Toys R Us that people went to. The enterprise was founded by Harold Plotnek as market stalls a la Tesco in the West Midlands back in the 1950s, but by the early 1980s, its advertising was rubbing shoulders with DFS in off-air James Bond film ad breaks from that era, mostly from LWT as YouTube can reveal. Allied was probably the Ikea of the Thatcher-era where if you didn't use the next Bank Holiday Monday to take the family in the Ford Cortina to Alton Towers or go just round the corner to the local park; then one made a beeline to Allied Carpets as a British tradition - Thermos flask and sandwiches not needed, and neither was purchasing a Wilton for the front living room. (I used to confuse Allied as "Aled" as I used to confuse the male Charlotte Church singer's first name with - as a result, I often used to affectionally refer to Aled Jones during his post-Walking in the Air, pre-broken voice era of the mid 1980s, as "Aled Carpets" or "Allied Jones"). Personally, I don't ever remember being inside an Allied Carpets store myself, mostly because the family home had the same carpet on the floor for as long as I can remember, and parts of it were dirty, threadbare and had completely forgotten what a proper carpet shampoo actually felt like.
Why would a knockdown "Axministers, six seventy-five and under, per square yard" bargain basement superstore provide such a cult following? Are carpets that much interesting? Especially when they also sold curtains and beds as well? One would have thought Half Man, Half Biscuit would have given them a mention in one of their songs; it was alluded in the Reeves and Mortimer's song "My Rose Has Left Me"; One Foot in the Grave protagonist Victor Meldew expressing his desire to have his ashes scattered in a branch of the superstore in order to indicate his dissatisfaction against its customer service; a real-life customer tried the same trick in 1997 which was soon dismissed by the High Court. Bruce Forsyth mentioned in his opening gambit on an edition of Play Your Cards Right in 1982 when he officially revealed to the audience (who were presumably the same as last week's, and had really cheered him up), that he had a hair transplant throughout 1981 and as a result, he admitted to wearing a hairpiece. "Allied Carpets have given me all the backing that I need", Forsyth exclaimed, before mentioning that he could do anything with it, including playing golf in windy weather. Brucie even gave Allied a honourable mention nearly a decade later in the Generation Game during the pre-conveyor belt "final" part of the programme; the male contestant playing Tarzan with transparent underwear and a ginger "rug" on his chest. No doubt there would have been a Wogan connection at some point for obvious reasons... I would have been surprised if it had never happened.
The Grumbleweeds made a special guest appearance during a Christmas edition of Bullseye, in which one of them had parodied Back to the Future: "I have just come the year 2085 and I can have seen the future: the Allied Carpets sale is still on" - (of course we obviously know it won't be, as it was wound up some 70 years before). Steve Coogan (being interviewed as himself on Clive Anderson's chat show in 1998), did a Ronnie Corbett impression, improvising as one does, as if he was putting on a pair of black National Health spectacles, getting ready, thus: "Good evening - I can remember my appearance on Clive Anderson quite clearly: it was the one day in the year that Allied Carpets were not having a sale". A Spitting Image sketch featuring the puppets of Julian Clary, Mary Whitehouse, Cliff Richard, and the then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, something like "where did you get that from, Allied Carpets?" Listening to Talk Radio (before it became Talk Sport), a listener called in and mentioned a certain carpet company by name; the next caller online exclaimed: "I just can't help thinking whether that last call was just a plug for Allied Carpets", greeted by laughter. Why hasn't Carpetright been given cult status as Allied? After all, I had kitted out half my old house with the lovely "great to walk on in bare feet" carpet in several rooms.
The fact that it did have a cultural currency in the first place was probably due to the fact that it was well-advertised on television when people are more likely to be at home and see it, and as ITV relies on advertising revenue for surviving; it is a great yardstick to see who and how many people are watching on behalf of the ratings, as well as the fact that they were national. Indeed, was the Yellow Pages for looking to see where the nearest branch of Allied Carpets was, or just to find a second-hand bookshop for a chance to purchase Fly Fishing by JR Hartley? Eight out of ten owners (and not cats, as misquoted, according to those who own felines that consume Whiskas), probably think so. As early as 1976, actor Max Mason, known for appearing in Central TV science programmes for ITV Schools, could be seen operating a "bigger than normal" cash register inside a branch of the store, proving that their carpet range was even better value, almost in Sale of the Century terms back then. By 1984, actor Tom Adams, sometimes with a moustache, was seen in the adverts, on his was from ITC series to DFS territory. Am I just a bit nostalgic rather than "sad" (in a "get a life" sort of way) that I keep playing old Eighties' Allied Carpets adverts on YouTube? (The TSW region one, mentioning "Plymouth's new Allied superstore" from around 1986 was one of my favourites).
Even Cilla Black was promoting the brand in the early 1990s (Surprise, Surprise, pun intended), while Leslie Crowther just happened to be opening a new store in Birmingham on that fateful day that he had that car accident in October 1992 which had changed his life for good. I suppose that it was really the end of an era when they went into liquidation in 2015, although it was "curtains" for them as early as 1985 in a manner of speaking. As early as 1971 the company was floating on the London Stock Exchange and was required by the Asda group by 1978. They had over 180 shops by the end of the 1980s. Asda sold Allied to Carpetland in 1993. Now, they have gone the same way as Woolworths and MFI. What a cultural currency indeed - and all we mostly did was step and walk all over it. All for around four-fifty a square yard - was it worth it, I wonder?
Yes, I am talking about Allied Carpets; the superstore that nearly every out of town retail park had, although it was mostly B&Q or Toys R Us that people went to. The enterprise was founded by Harold Plotnek as market stalls a la Tesco in the West Midlands back in the 1950s, but by the early 1980s, its advertising was rubbing shoulders with DFS in off-air James Bond film ad breaks from that era, mostly from LWT as YouTube can reveal. Allied was probably the Ikea of the Thatcher-era where if you didn't use the next Bank Holiday Monday to take the family in the Ford Cortina to Alton Towers or go just round the corner to the local park; then one made a beeline to Allied Carpets as a British tradition - Thermos flask and sandwiches not needed, and neither was purchasing a Wilton for the front living room. (I used to confuse Allied as "Aled" as I used to confuse the male Charlotte Church singer's first name with - as a result, I often used to affectionally refer to Aled Jones during his post-Walking in the Air, pre-broken voice era of the mid 1980s, as "Aled Carpets" or "Allied Jones"). Personally, I don't ever remember being inside an Allied Carpets store myself, mostly because the family home had the same carpet on the floor for as long as I can remember, and parts of it were dirty, threadbare and had completely forgotten what a proper carpet shampoo actually felt like.
Why would a knockdown "Axministers, six seventy-five and under, per square yard" bargain basement superstore provide such a cult following? Are carpets that much interesting? Especially when they also sold curtains and beds as well? One would have thought Half Man, Half Biscuit would have given them a mention in one of their songs; it was alluded in the Reeves and Mortimer's song "My Rose Has Left Me"; One Foot in the Grave protagonist Victor Meldew expressing his desire to have his ashes scattered in a branch of the superstore in order to indicate his dissatisfaction against its customer service; a real-life customer tried the same trick in 1997 which was soon dismissed by the High Court. Bruce Forsyth mentioned in his opening gambit on an edition of Play Your Cards Right in 1982 when he officially revealed to the audience (who were presumably the same as last week's, and had really cheered him up), that he had a hair transplant throughout 1981 and as a result, he admitted to wearing a hairpiece. "Allied Carpets have given me all the backing that I need", Forsyth exclaimed, before mentioning that he could do anything with it, including playing golf in windy weather. Brucie even gave Allied a honourable mention nearly a decade later in the Generation Game during the pre-conveyor belt "final" part of the programme; the male contestant playing Tarzan with transparent underwear and a ginger "rug" on his chest. No doubt there would have been a Wogan connection at some point for obvious reasons... I would have been surprised if it had never happened.
The Grumbleweeds made a special guest appearance during a Christmas edition of Bullseye, in which one of them had parodied Back to the Future: "I have just come the year 2085 and I can have seen the future: the Allied Carpets sale is still on" - (of course we obviously know it won't be, as it was wound up some 70 years before). Steve Coogan (being interviewed as himself on Clive Anderson's chat show in 1998), did a Ronnie Corbett impression, improvising as one does, as if he was putting on a pair of black National Health spectacles, getting ready, thus: "Good evening - I can remember my appearance on Clive Anderson quite clearly: it was the one day in the year that Allied Carpets were not having a sale". A Spitting Image sketch featuring the puppets of Julian Clary, Mary Whitehouse, Cliff Richard, and the then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, something like "where did you get that from, Allied Carpets?" Listening to Talk Radio (before it became Talk Sport), a listener called in and mentioned a certain carpet company by name; the next caller online exclaimed: "I just can't help thinking whether that last call was just a plug for Allied Carpets", greeted by laughter. Why hasn't Carpetright been given cult status as Allied? After all, I had kitted out half my old house with the lovely "great to walk on in bare feet" carpet in several rooms.
The fact that it did have a cultural currency in the first place was probably due to the fact that it was well-advertised on television when people are more likely to be at home and see it, and as ITV relies on advertising revenue for surviving; it is a great yardstick to see who and how many people are watching on behalf of the ratings, as well as the fact that they were national. Indeed, was the Yellow Pages for looking to see where the nearest branch of Allied Carpets was, or just to find a second-hand bookshop for a chance to purchase Fly Fishing by JR Hartley? Eight out of ten owners (and not cats, as misquoted, according to those who own felines that consume Whiskas), probably think so. As early as 1976, actor Max Mason, known for appearing in Central TV science programmes for ITV Schools, could be seen operating a "bigger than normal" cash register inside a branch of the store, proving that their carpet range was even better value, almost in Sale of the Century terms back then. By 1984, actor Tom Adams, sometimes with a moustache, was seen in the adverts, on his was from ITC series to DFS territory. Am I just a bit nostalgic rather than "sad" (in a "get a life" sort of way) that I keep playing old Eighties' Allied Carpets adverts on YouTube? (The TSW region one, mentioning "Plymouth's new Allied superstore" from around 1986 was one of my favourites).
Even Cilla Black was promoting the brand in the early 1990s (Surprise, Surprise, pun intended), while Leslie Crowther just happened to be opening a new store in Birmingham on that fateful day that he had that car accident in October 1992 which had changed his life for good. I suppose that it was really the end of an era when they went into liquidation in 2015, although it was "curtains" for them as early as 1985 in a manner of speaking. As early as 1971 the company was floating on the London Stock Exchange and was required by the Asda group by 1978. They had over 180 shops by the end of the 1980s. Asda sold Allied to Carpetland in 1993. Now, they have gone the same way as Woolworths and MFI. What a cultural currency indeed - and all we mostly did was step and walk all over it. All for around four-fifty a square yard - was it worth it, I wonder?