blue peter

[mindbullets]

At my school in buckinghamshire during the early/mid eighties,the talk of the school for many months was joey deacon and his friend ernie.just how widespread was this phenomenon ?or was it just my school? (yes i know it was in bad taste but we were just kids!)sorry if anyones offended.

[Joan]

we had joey deacon in Glasgow too

[Tapirman]

I'm rather embarrassed to say that Joey Deacon was a long-standing source of amusement at our school in Essex. For years afterwards we would refer to someone as a 'Joey' if they did something daft.

[j2buttonsw]

http://www.log.dial.pipex.com/joeydeacon/joeyback.
htm and look what the web designer has called the shop owner (Bruce) on this web site: http://www.musiccentre.co.uk/contact_us.htm

[Headtime]

Joey was a national (albeit rather sick - as schoolkids are)phenomena. What was surely meant as a moving series of films on Blue Peter highlighting the life of Joey and his friend Ernie, instantly became the cornerstone of playground taunts across the country..."Jooooeeeeyyyyy", "Oi, you Deacon" etc. I grew up in Devon and the use of Joey's name as an insult was prevalent in our school.

What's interesting is that the concept of Joey has a pretty short time window. Talk to anyone over the age of 35 or under the age of 30, and often the name "Joey Deacon" means absolutely nothing to them.

Interestingly the link that J2buttons posted states that Joey first graced our screens in 1976, which cerainly predates the widespread use of Joey in the early 80's.

[Nelli]

Mindbulletts: I also went to school in Buckinghamshire and remember it. Headtime: as for your 'time window theory' I'm 29 and remember it vividly, maybe Buckinghamshire schools were a bit slow on the uptake! ;-)

[Headtime]

Slow? That's because you're all Joey's in Buckinghamshire!!

[FTVS]

Yep - same in my home town of Portsmouth. We always suspected that Ernie was just making it all up to get on TV.