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Friday, November 23

I love a girl in uniform


Mention the name Jenny Agutter to an Englishman of a certain age and he's likely to go a little soft at the knees and get a faraway look in his eyes, wistfully recalling the night he saw "Walkabout" on BBC2 and felt his adolescent hormones blow a gasket.

In the league table of British totty of the 1970s Jenny was the champion, Manchester United to everyone else's Tranmere Rovers. She had the plummy voice and well-bred poise of the Head Girl of an expensive upper class girl's school but while she sounded frightfully proper she also had a very free-spirited attitude toward the idea of clothes and got them off in almost every movie she was in — she even took her knickers off in "The Railway Children." The fact that she did so while playing a schoolgirl in "Walkabout" and a nurse in "An American Werewolf in London" fulfilled several Englishman's fantasies all at once: the posh bird in a uniform who is a bit saucy underneath the prim exterior. On the one hand you could picture her doing all sorts of nice, outdoorsy girl things like playing netball, riding horses and being terribly jolly hockey sticks, but also imagine her having an illicit fag behind the school gym, flirting with the rough boys from the local comprehensive, zooming off to London on the back of her long-haired boyfriend's motorbike, and getting suave Uncle Roger all hot under the cravat when she stretched out her long legs in the passenger seat of his Jag.

I'm surprised some soppy indie boy hasn't written a song about her but far as I know no one has so these will have to do. Two sides of the Jenny Agutter coin, at least in my head.

Download: Jennifer Juniper - Donovan (mp3)
Download: Mary Of The 4th Form - The Boomtown Rats (mp3)

9 Comments:

At 12:52 PM, Blogger Mick said...

*sigh*
The perfect post. You've said it all really but for anyone who doesn't know she has a lovely cameo appearance on Prefab Sprouts 'Wild Horses'.

 
At 3:17 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not quite all. Logan's Run...

 
At 3:34 PM, Blogger davyh said...

And to think you described this Much Promised Piece in comments at my place as 'posting the Boomtown Rats'. Sir, I think not.

Marvellous!

And may I just add - 'Equus'. Phew.

 
At 5:06 AM, Blogger dickvandyke said...

Awakenings abounded in the button mushroom department nestled midst my Easy jeans circa 75.

Do you think that our being more towards the working class end of the scale enhanced her allure?

 
At 9:24 PM, Blogger whiteray said...

Lovely, lovely . . . my first sight of her was "Logan's Run." I was entranced . . .

 
At 7:21 PM, Blogger SoulStylist said...

When I saw the picture of Jenny I was convinced you were going to give us Prefab Sprout's Wild Horses...which features a sample of Jenny's voice.

Terrific Blog fella.

 
At 8:50 PM, Blogger londonlee said...

I must admit I forgot all about that song. Though Prefab Sprout would seem an obvious contender for the band most likely to have a Jenny Agutter reference in one of their songs.

 
At 9:48 AM, Blogger adam said...

That moment in Logan's Run when she says "let's get out of this wet things". It was on in the middle of the afternoon recently and I was horrified when just before that line they went to an ad break, and when they came back they were dressed again. bastards.

 
At 8:34 AM, Anonymous Acerockolla said...

How many dirty little boys must have pleasured them sleves to the wonderful Ms Agutter during that period.
Well me for sure ;-)

 

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