A couple of the more disruptive boys in the class put red laces in their Dr Martens, because someone had told them that was how you showed your support for the National Front. Jew was an everyday insult and the N-word was in regular circulation. There were no more than four or five non-white kids in the whole school: I can recall one Asian girl finding her art folder had been covered in racist abuse,
But that's a sidebar what was striking about seeing Rivals as a box set was how well Cooper's universe had aged. The chronicles distilled the 80s: the shoulder pads and puffball skirts; the obsession with class, aristocrats sneering at the Technicolored nouveau riche, both ignoring everyone else while they snipped about how warm their champagne was; the sexual politics, with harassment and assault so routine they were practically characters in their own right, a double act you could trust to move the plot along.