Barely a week goes by without some critic or commentator, survey or questionnaire swiping that benighted decade with a knotted leg-warmer.

The Years That Taste Forgot, they have been called, with the fashion, music and politics of the period all getting a pasting.

With a new movie about Margaret Thatcher just about to be released, hostilities are soon to be resumed – with a vengeance.

Mrs Thatcher’s reputation might be more resilient to criticism than, say, Carol Decker’s but even The Iron Lady doesn’t deserve to be Streeped.

The lady is not for gurning. Heavens, even Dustin Hoffman dragging up to play the former PM would have been better than that.

The flak is not going to stop with politics, though. A new survey has also taken a fresh swing at the music of the Eighties, with a record dealer in Guildford, Surrey, claiming it is second-hand vinyl albums from that period that are the hardest to shift.

Ben Darnton, who runs Ben’s Collectors Records, says that the debut albums by T’Pau, Paul Young and Culture Club, all acts who made and lost their reputations in the Eighties, are in the Top 10 of unloved discs clogging up his shop.

He expresses more surprise that it also includes Eighties offerings from Elton John, Rod Stewart, Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond.

“Perhaps the music of the Eighties is just too disposable,” he said, conveniently ignoring that fact that Rod, Elton, Barry and Neil are all still doing very nicely, thank you.

“It’s very much of its time and often has awful production which dates it,” he added, which is certainly not true of Paul Young’s beautifully crafted No Parlez (the one with Wherever I Lay My Hat on it) and Culture Cub’s Colour By Numbers (the one with Karma Chameleon), an album which still sounds fresh and effervescent 30 years later.

http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/294205/Martin-Townsend