1970’s Billericay Boy

1970’s Billericay Boy is the story of a boy growing to early manhood in the Seventies and transports the reader slap-bang into the middle of a world of ‘bunking’ off school, getting the ‘whack’, smoking Players’ cigarettes at the top of the school field and ‘getting off’ with ‘birds’ at the back of the Archer Hall disco.

The book is as hilarious, moody and sad as the lives of many teenagers of the time were and those who grew up in the era of Raleigh Choppers, Yamaha Fizzies, flared trousers, DM boots and Saturday afternoon football hooliganism will identify with it well. Dripping with nostalgia and peppered with a host of unforgettable characters, the author remembers his first clumsy encounters with girls, the first vehicles he ever owned and the first time he ever got drunk, as well as reliving the pressures and uncertainties of growing up and starting work during one of Britain’s worst economic recessions – all set against a soundtrack of David Bowie, Abba and Johhny Rotten’s Sex Pistols.

Peter Jaggs has written many books about Thailand, most of which have reached bestselling status in their own categories. 1970’s Billericay Boy is different in that it revisits the decade he is convinced led him to run like hell to Asia in the first place. Shocking, sobering and side-splittingly funny, his latest book must surely be seen as an important piece of social history in its own right.