1982 was a dark year. Unemployment reached three million for the first time, the Falklands War broke out, Israel attacked Lebanon and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Politics seemed to penetrate every corner of Britain, even reaching the singles charts. When The Clash opened their Brixton gig with ‘White Riot’ – barely six months after the streets outside saw the largest violent protests of the 20th century – the audience exploded in such an orgy of rage that they crushed steel crowd control barriers. The only part of British culture where this global turmoil was roundly ignored was comedy.

Cannon and Ball were touring, selling out the Winter Gardens in Bournemouth. The likes of Bernard Manning and Frank Carson dominated the club circuit. TV sitcoms included Terry and June, Shine On Harvey Moon and Never The Twain – with Donald Sinden and Windsor Davies as rival antiques dealers whose son and daughter marry. Imagine the hilarity when Sinden lit a bonfire to blow smoke over Davies’s garden. ‘Aren’t you being a bit juvenile?’ his son asks. ‘Certainly not,’ Sinden replies. ‘It’s a privilege of middle age. Only children aren’t allowed to be juvenile.’ And this, bear in mind, is the top gag on a Never the Twain fan site.

In a sleazy Soho strip bar, however, a team of young stand-ups had started a weekly night called The Comic Strip. Their humour was a bizarre mix of abrasive politics, intelligent surrealism and old-school slapstick. They attacked the government and they attacked each other. They swore, they ranted and they referenced French art-house cinema. They made comedy urgent and relevant again, in a way that hadn’t been seen since the 1960s satire boom.

The BBC realised something was up, but wasn’t sure how to handle such an explosion of energy. People started looking into the idea of a sitcom written by and starring the scene’s leading lights, but Auntie’s nervousness meant The Young Ones would take a year to move from script to screen. By the time it finally hit the airwaves, it already looked as if the Beeb was playing catch-up. Channel 4’s opening-night schedule featured as its centerpiece an insane Enid Blyton spoof called Five Go Mad In Dorset – written by and starring most of the people the BBC was talking to.