Barbarella and Hot Lips

Funny what you remember when you listen to music.
My last post (Cool and the Gang) got me to thinking about my CB days way back in 1980 (30 YEARS AGO!!!)
I shared an austin 1300 with my sister. It was a shitty brown/green colour, had furry seats and a 5 foot "whip" aerial which allowed me to use my trusty superstar 120 citizens band radio!


They were all the rage back then, and most geeks aged between 14 and 35 had one. At night the airwaves would be full of "1-9 FOR A COPY?" as saddos like me searched the ether for friends that you could chat to or even meet ( this was called rather bizarrely as an "eyeball")


Official and unofficial groups were formed by these CB'ers, and once a week the Prestatyn despots would troll down to a dive in Greenfield for a night's eyeballing complete with too much beer and individualized T shirts with our names ( or handles as they were known as) emblazoned upon them.


My handle was POCKETS! and yes even back in my teenage years I was slightly film obsessed!
as Pockets was the nickname of RED BUTTONS in the film HATARI....I was an unofficial member of the Prestatyn group of teen CB fanatics which consisted of BOGEY MAN and his sister SILVER FOX...., sisters RUSTY NUT and CHERRY BLOSSOM. GREEN GIANT, BLACK SHEEP ( a guy who was a lot older then we were and was,on reflection a bit of a sexual predator), his waspish wife SWEETIE PIE (! no comment) and various other hangers on with the dubious names such as PSYCHO, PONYTAIL , SHADY LADY (pronounced shady laaayyydeee),PEPPERMINT PATTY, SUPERTROUPER and RAMPANT BUDGIE (who was unfortunatly my massive GEEK of a cousin)....


On reflection our social group was fairly benign, but some of the younger girls could have been put a risk from the more full blooded members of the CB fraternity..I am only saying this on reflection as at the time we seemed to have lived in a safer more trusting time......nowadays I suspect that teenage girls would never be allowed the freedom that they had then ( humm mind you we never had the internet then either!!!)


Of course there were icons amid the CB community, those that had been established for months before we came on the scene! Two of these icons were the velvet tongued HOT LIPS and her sister BARBARELLA.

Every time these Talullah Bankhead sounding sex pots came on for a "copy" there was always a clamouring from the more desperate men who had been lying in wait for a hopeful chat or eyeball..... On the radio, I guess , like the internet the imagination can run wild!and with deep sexy and breathless voices even I would imagine that Hotlips and Barbarella ( Babs to her close friends!) were stunning blondes with legs up to their armpits.


LOL..I should have known better.....both girls lived "over the tracks" in Prestatyn and one fellow CB'er one day informed me that Bab's glamorous job as a beauty "technician" was in fact a part time job in a pet groomers..........when we all finally got to meet these two celebrities of the airwaves, we were slightly underwhelmed by the sight of a pair of grossly overweight, heavily made up teenage girls in grey sweat shirts with the words BABS and HOTLIPS undulating over their chests.

The craze lasted a year or so. We teenagers grew up and started work and University.... but it was fun when it lasted