Clapham Common - References in Popular Culture

References in Popular Culture

It is mentioned in the 1970s television programme Are You Being Served? by the character Mrs Slocombe: "I haven't forgotten being flung flat on me back on Clapham Common by a land mine—and the German Air Force was responsible." to which Mr Lucas ripostes: "All the other times she was flat on her back the American Air Force was responsible."

It is cited in Morrissey's song "Mute Witness":

And her silent words
Describing the sight of last night
4 A.M. Northside, Clapham Common
Oh, god, what was she doing there ?

It is also referred to in Squeeze’s 1979 single “Up the Junction,” which opens:

I never thought it would happen,
With me and the girl from Clapham,
Out on the windy common,
That night I ain’t forgotten.

On the second season of the television comedy Peep Show, the character of Mark Corrigan makes a reference to Ron Davies, stating "This is my moment of madness, my Clapham Common."

It also features in Agatha Christie's story The Adventure of the Clapham Cook.

It is also mentioned in Alan Ayckbourn's play Season's Greetings. In Act I, Scene 1 the character Harvey is a watching a fictional action movie on television and refers to the movie's protagonist when saying, "We could do with this chap round Clapham Common. He'd sort the little bastards out."

Read more about this topic:  Clapham Common

Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:

    If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work
    C. John Sommerville (20th century)

    There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.
    Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)