Birmingham Teddy Boys

As their club bites the dust are the Teddy Boys of Birmingham finding their creepers out of step with the more popular platform shoe?

The Hideaway Club at Yardley in Birmingham is closing. Where will the city's Teddy Boys go now to soak up the music, fashions and camaraderie of the 1950s? Chris Tarrant speaks to a group of Teds outside the club and discovers that the country's first major post-war subculture still has some life left in it, fifteen years after its heyday! With immaculate hair and sharp suits you shouldn't confuse them with those other fifties throwbacks, the rockers.

The early 1970s saw an upturn of interest in early rock 'n' roll and the Teddy Boy era. A major revival concert took place at Wembley Stadium in 1972 and even before that Vivienne Westwood was appropriating '50s fashions to develop the precursor to bondage and punk. Even mainstream pop culture of the early 1970s drew on Ted fashions: members of successful pop groups Mud and Showaddywaddy wore the archetypical drainpipe trousers and drape jackets of the Teddy Boy.