Friday Night Fights: Though he never would wave goodbye/You could see it written in his eyes

Bahlactus has decreed: It's Black and White Friday Night Fights. And what do you get when you mix black and white? Well, first of all you get that gosh-awful song by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. But you also get the color gray, and is there no place more gray than Northern England? Let's go there now through the magic of 1980s pop music:



But what has a clever lyric hook and a melancholic guitar line got to do with Friday Night Fights, you ask? (Aside from wanting to punch the guys who did this country-fried remake.) Well, for the answer to that, let's travel via British Rail to Hartlepool, Durham in the northeast of England: hometown not only of cartoonist Reg Smythe but of his famous creation, the shiftless but cheerfully violent Andy Capp. No single man personifies the spirit of Friday Night Fights better than a man who gets into frequent brawling matches with his long-suffering wife Flo:


Oh, Andy Capp, you may be an unemployed, shiftless, gambling, alcoholic wife-beater, but no one can deny the tasty appeal of your mouthwatering Andy Capp's Hot Fries:


Bahlactus: he's like Sinatra in a younger day.