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From: Blueskin2
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  • haha evra would get fucked up by him

  • is it me or was the old timer pouring his bitter on his puppet?

  • I first saw this in Literature and i have watched them all.This one here had myself and my Literature tutor stunned. There are so many different hidden messages and themes running in the backround.Amazing clip.

  • @rottweilerfromhell I agree with you.. shake hands was definatly based on Andy Shacklady... . Andy pass away on 10th January 2012 R.I.P Andy... shaking hands with the angles now.

  • @53dianna Shake Hands was a windbag and dangerous he, was a nutter and those youths he approached should have got out of the way.

  • @rojblake82 We all have our own opinions, I respect yours. I new Andy very well and he had a good side as well as a bad side, like all of us!

  • Ive jus got this series 4 crimbo and I luv it! Esp Yosser and shake hands

  • Why does shake hand s have plucked eyebrows ??? Looks like an out of work Drag act .... mind you there was a bouncer in Liverpool called Sadie in the 60's, hard as fook !

  • We obese nation now. We never had that under thatcher !!!! All stick insects then.

  • Just been the blob shop, just like the green man lol.

  • The Green Man still stands., went for a pint there. Unfortunately, the interior has changed beyind recognition.

  • Yeah. The dumb people need to work, or else they will go bonkers. Work will set you free.

  • Good old Yosser

  • a classic :) shake hands ...am i talking too my self ,shake hands ,hahahaha !

  • funny that

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  • one of the best scenes from the Boys From The Blackstuff

  • Who the hell came up with the idea of shake hands?

  • I would suggest that people do not shake hands with Shake Hands. Can we shake on that?

  • What's the significance of the pub scene? It seems totally out of place with the rest of the series and just surreal. Is it supposed to be making a point? :o\

  • Gotta love that man chirping like a bird!

  • Green Man is right, the Middlesborough connection comes from the original pilot when the boys git ripped off by Irish gypsies. Think Shake Hands was played by Ray Navarro.

  • This was actually filmed in the Princess Alice, Albert Road Middlesbrough, most of the series "Boys from the blackstuff" was filmed in Middlesbrough, lot of people thought it was about oil (blackstuff) but it was about Tarmac!

  • I believe the character shake hands was based on Billy Magill who used to drink in the Birknhead house in Liverpool an exstoker with avice like grip when he shook hands and was bald wore a cap and parker coat

  • Anyone that doesn't like this, has clearly had his hands shook by "Shake-Hands"

  • One of the greatest scenes ever written for television

  • Those youths who shake hands is approaching, are silly boys and are wind and water. The scene where the pub landlord is nearly runover, and the driver swears at him is funny.

  • shake hands.....shake hands now......am i talking to myself? thats not nice i like harold, hes my friend....shake hands....ahhhhh. lol, and what does barred out mean? does it mean bared from the pub or something else as when that redundancy group walks in the landlord says there all barred out

  • @cheatingwanker the term 'barred out' means the person is banned (either permanently or temporarily) from entering or drinking in the pub. People are mostly barred out for either fighting or insulting the bar staff!

  • Reminds me of the Two Way Inn in Bognor Regis 1994-95. People from all sorts of backgrounds used to go in and it was like a madhouse.

  • Michael Angelis has got the Scouse stoicism in the face of despair look down to a tee.

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  • gotta like them scousers! shake hands

  • Whisky and dry ginger please!!!

  • this was when pubs were pubs they were great they are shit now all these designer designer/ modern pubs full of poncy, creepy narcissist whimps

  • I love this scene.I showed it to the lads at work and now all you hear during the day in the work shop is "shakeands" ,"pint of bitter please","large brandy please Michael,much appreciated","wishkey and dry ginger" or "I never felt more like singing the blues".

    Terrible times and haunting to watch but fantastically written and acted.

  • one of the funniest scenes in a drama ever, this was quality writing at its best, and fine acting, its so true, in the early 80s, many pubs were like this up north..priceless,

  • 3 people asked Yosser to shake hands...

  • L M F A O !!

  • best tv ever

  • brilliant

  • I've been to pubs like that, some one them in Sunderland had sawdust on the floor and a spitoon in the corner.

    They were great much better than the ghost towns now.

  • Shake Hands!

  • The good old days of 'Thatcher's Britain' with all the yuppies and millionares getting richer and richer, all OUR nationalised industries being sold off to those that could afford to buy shares!!! I know I couldn't afford to at the time and I was one of the lucky ones with a reasonably well paid job!!!

  • When that was filmed I was working in a factory across the road from The Green Man on Vauxhall Road, I was made redundant from that job a few months later.

    Now we are approaching the same situation and I have been made redundant from another job after 23 years..............GIz a job, I can do that.

    You have to laugh or they have won ;-)

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  • Shake Hands. Shake Hands now.

    I love the insistance of his line lol

  • Ps - the landlord is Sam Kelly - he played Bunny Warren in Porridge - + was in a comedy a few years back called Barbera! ..

  • Great drama this back in 1982 + still stands up as a fine drama today!, thanx for uploading - I urge people to treat themselves to the original play { the Blackdtuff } + the following episodes now available on Dvd !

  • the bloke singing scene the weirdest thing i've clapped my eyes on in a long time

  • The series just got shown on BBC4 in the UK. Parts of Liverpool lokked really depressing in the early 1980's

  • @cobbyone They still do!

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  • "He had no time for his friggin whistling then"

    Does anyone know the landlords name in real life?Master performance of one the truly great scenes in TV history.

  • It's sad really when you take into context whats happened but so bloody funny with its execution yet British pubs were full of people who'd just lost the plot in the 80's. It wasn't just the economy in depression it was the people.

  • i just watched this series for the first time and my girl thinks I've gone off my rocker because I've been muttering "Shake 'ands" all day, ahahaha I just said it again out loud and I heard her scream from the other room

  • @Zen0Ph0bus I just bought this on DVD recently and i love the line "Whisky and dry ginger please"! My wife thinks I'm off me rocker too for shouting this at barmaids in my new adopted country.

  • Can anyone tell me the name of the piece of classical music that played during some scenes with Yosser and his mrs (julie walters). Would love to know for my Dad's sake!

  • @2221dini julie walters isnt yossers wife, shes chrissys wife, which episode are you on about ?

  • this is my local boozer live right facin top pub

  • Remember watching all these :)

  • I lived in Liverpool during this time and still do.

    It was a happy time for me as a teenager growing up.

    This does not reflect Liverpool these actors are NOT from Liverpool.

    At the time we all thought it was great that Liverpool was on TV.

    What we didn't realise was the damage it would cause and the perceptions given.

    Other writers Carla Lane also made money on the back of taking the piss out of Scousers.

    I wouldn't live anywhere else.

    Wasn't as bad as this trash portrays.

  • @pattyheno While I would agree with you about Carla Lane's view of Liverpool I would point out that the writer of Boys From the Black Stuff, Alan Bleasdale, Michael Angelis who played Chrissie Todd, Tom Georgeson who played Dixie Dean and Jean Boht the Employment exchange manager were all from Liverpool. As the series was voted 2nd best drama of the 20th century by TV critics and came 7th out of the top 100 Dramas of the 20th century it can hardly be labelled 'Trash'.

  • @MrsPisaroni The second best? What was the first?

  • @pattyheno if anything this programme has made me respect scousers, i will pay a visit to liverpool one of these days, the bad times are returning, it is just as bad here in london, ide say worse

  • @rabbithog I am a scouser, im only 15 but my parents suffered a bit from what you see in this programme, not as much but everyone suffered from it, a lot of clips shot in here is where they both lived aswell :)

  • @JohnPaulMJ i hope it doesnt happen again but when you have a tory/liberal government who knows lol

  • Great scene If I were a blackbird I'd whistle and sing. Ha ha

  • "Shake 'anz!"

  • Shake 'ands!

  • THIS WAS THE BEST THIS WAS 1982 I REMEMBER WATCHING AS A KID .HOW TIMES CHANGE WHATS ON BBC NOW THE ONE SHOW ,THATS GOTTA BE WORTH 145 POUNDS .

  • "Whisky and dry ginger please!" 5:49

  • Speaking as someone who lives in the ex -industrial town of Baltimore in the USA i am curious as to what people do for a living in Liverpool nowdays. Are there any jobs for working class people?We are in a major recession right no win Baltimore. I work in construction and there are few jobs. Im curious as to whther Liverpool is going through the same thing? BTW,great scene. Too bad they dont sell the DVD over here in America.

  • @georgecmarshall Liverpool is a prosperous city now friend, it was recently the European capital of culture and is brimming with top hotels and restaurants, it will be forever tainted by Thatchers government in way or another but the city is inhabited by people who dont crumble, work is plentiful, well compared to the eighties it is, back then it was a dying spectre of the giant of the ninetenneth century but now its colourful, vibrant and warm. Visit someday. God bless.

  • @georgecmarshall

    Think Detroit and you might get a picture.

    The city has received a great deal of money from Europe, and some large corporations have invested in the City centre, so It looks quite good these days.

    But industry is virtually dead.

    Some slack has been taken up by large retail concerns but the coming strife in this country will hit Liverpool hard.

    You can guarantee that the etonian elite now in charge of the country will ensure that the left-leaning North West will suffer.

  • @26cab40

    Do you really think that NuLabour would have looked after you any better?

  • I was fortunate enough to be in Liverpool a great deal during the 80''s .Being one of another dying breed , a Merchant Seamen. I had some great mates in "the Pool" and we used to go around town visiting the many great Pubs filled with such amazing characters ,as portrayed by Mr Bleasedale's amazing series.

    To all you who were never so lucky to have been there during those really rather sad times......you dipped out big time !

  • This reminds me of the Staff Social Club for a hospital at which I once worked. Oh Happy days !

  • my god, was britain once like this

    its hell on earth

  • thatchers Britains, soon to be Camerons Britain

  • @montydon21 - Well said sir !

  • @montydon21 Torn between liking the comment and disliking for weeping. FFS. Good luck to my Limey friends. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you all.

  • @montydon21 And the Children Shall Inherit the Earth ,Amen

  • Only now that I watch this in my late 30's, do I see the full significance of this final scene. Me dad used to take me into pubs like this in the mid to late 70s on his way home from work. All along the dock road we knew people like Nasher and Ronnie. I bet there are tonnes of people who don't appreciate the "manager of the Eagle" comment. Sadly the most poignant part has been left out, the demolition of Fairries factory, where my great grandad started work.

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  • Without doubt this was the best drama series ever shown on TV-it was compulsive viewing!

  • god bless shakes mcarthy

  • GO'Ed Shakes la...

  • what a pub

  • This is what is coming again.

  • had to be about then to get the jist of what this was all about..sad if it wasnt so funny, and the boys from the B/stuff was both..Am 44 fae edinburgh, and me and ma mates loved this back in the day, never missed it, like cult tv this was, a laugh in the bleak land tha was GB then, half ma class were then and are now dead, smack done for them!! No hope, the tory mob were on the march to lining there own deep deep pockets..lying cheating, creatin a war to stay in power, FALKLANDS.

  • @buckstoneboy We've got a Tory government now so we'll all be able to relive the 80's real soon....

  • Shake hands actually helped to build the cafe tower, in the sixties he was a builder who worked with my mates dad on it!!! Before he found fame here.....

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  • all these were real people..not fictional characters, apart from yossa,

  • Porbello9, You must be so proud, De Niro had better watch out.

  • thats my uncle shake hands

  • is he still alive shake hands

  • The best drama series to hit our screens.  Nothing has come close to date. Alan Bleasdale's works are supreme.

  • i wish i grew up in the 80s

  • this is what it was like in 80's true but bad

  • why you watching it then dumbass god some people are dum

    Other than that great scene

  • I watched it becoz it was recoemended to me as being really good, so I gave it a chance, since you ask.

    What is "great" about this scene? (genuine question)

  • @richardcadbury Bleasdale has condensed several lifetimes of British pub life into one 10 minute scene.That's pretty great,then there's the black humour,the writing,the acting and the devastating social commentary.Other than that......

  • SUPERSTUFF

  • This could be any boozer in any city in the 80's so true of the times was the Boys From the Blackstuff....

  • @sofakingdrunk66 so true!!!!!!!

  • @sofakingdrunk66 so true!!!!!!!...thats like a typical nottingham pub lmao

  • made me cry so funny but true in the 80s!! mind you would not like to shake hands!!! wonder what the noise is in the backgound?? sounds like a bird??? great series!! true and well written

  • Ha ha! This is so true, you can meet lots od colourful and varied characters in pubs! For instance, I was in my local the other night, and I came across this guy in the back room with a Whippet, so I asked the guy what his (the Whippet's) name was, and he said "Dave"! I dunno, somehow that struck me as very amusing!

  • @mistofoles I went in a London pub in the late 80's and there was a guy in there with a live CROW sitting on his shoulder! You never realise how big and scarey they are till you see one indoors.

  • @lewisner Oh, cool! Wish I'd seen that!

  • Brilliant and 100% true portrayal of life in a Liverpool pub in the 1970s/1980s. Haha the face on Yozzer when Shake Hands confronts him is class!

  • Fair play to ya...I always wondered...I'm originally from ireland but have live in the states, Buffalo, New York, for 20 years...when i was 15 i worked in London on the Buildings for 3 months on my Summer school holdiays...I love to go back there someday again...We were staying in Cricklewood, drinking in the Crown....There is a guy here in Buffalo originally form Liverpoool...I'd especially love to visit your town...Kenny Daglish...Mark Lawernson...Ian Rush... One touch...PURE CLASSS.......

  • OZ IS HARDER THEN YOZZZA

  • Dont talk out of your fuckin ass !

    Oz is a shithouse.

    Let me take you outside and split your fuckin nose down the centre ,then go to your nannas and splat a meat pie on her head!

  • Social commentary at its best. Alan Bleasedale...what a genius! Very relevant now but no-one fights anyone's corner but their own anymore. Thats the greatest endictment of Thatcherism. I'm alright Jack!

  • @mijahan you hit the nail on the head their

  • pure madness but true

  • Really bad days.

  • @Dragonrdh Yep very bad indeed i fear we have returned to them....

  • Ah Shite not shake hands, scousers are salt of the earth

  • Am I talking to myself?

  • Terrible times eh. Good job all the decent people got together to sort out the bad people of the 80s' The crims and so on. Oh wait ! they did not? Now their children have grown up and are the slaves of the crims children. Sitting in the pubs with them smelling the weed. That sorts it out does'nt it?

  • What is the strange noise going on in this clip...its brilliant

  • it's the guy whistling through his fingers

  • I hope Bernard hill,Alan Bleasdale or Michael Angelis die so they put it back on TV as a tribute.

    Great stuff

  • alan bleasdale modeled the shake hands character from a real life bloke from nethy road named andy shack..he was always causing havoc in the pubs around town..nice fella though when sober..lol

  • @dibbleman accually shake hands was based on billy magill he was my uncle

  • what a buffoon

  • @davidlimond The series is currently rerunning on BBC4 on Sunday nights. You can get BFTB on DVD as well.

  • @cobbyone

    This guy has carefully disguised the name so's not to get it deleted but the entire series including the pilot is on this site

    (youtube dot com/TheGrassArena

  • @davidlimond bloddy hell david

  • I think there was also a line outside the pub, prob not here forlack of  time, when one of the boys says 'do you know that every one of them is classed as sane'.

    I was in a Kirkdale pub the other night and said the same thing myself to my mate as it was bedlam with some real mental characters just like here (but legally sane, (I think) haha), but it was brilliant all the same. Wild horses wouldn't drag the name of the pub out of me cos the landlord's a mentalist too and he might get me. lol

  • Nice one mate.

  • thanks for putting this on

  • theyre all getting pissed on home brew cause they havent the price of a pint

  • this was so true about liverpool at the time. 3 million unemployed,no work every type of person in the pub , all with one thing in common, no work just like now , bring it back to the tv , sad but so true,

  • Its 2.5 million now but everyone has playstations computers, internet.. cos you get housing benefits and more dole and its loads poundland and cheap food...years ago it was about 20 quid a week and thats your lot...

    Its like a state subsidised weath these days

  • this was probably the best episode of the series,a sozzled dummy,shake hands,yozza headbuttind,man through the pub window and singing if i classic stuff.were a blackbird.

  • Too funny for words a Classic

  • Sh1t, I swear I was in a pub as bad as this !!!

  • bernard hill looks like a f***in psycho .

  • pint of bitter boss

  • Christ the Eagle in Huyton !! That was a rough place, I remember all the gangsters running outta there cos they set the place on fire lol

  • No, the Eagle on Vauxhall Road, about a 1/4 mile down from the Green Man! By the mini roundabout with the stupid arty sculpture that looks like an overgrown panpipe!

  • WOW...thanks for the upload...classic scene!

    i was 11 years old when this was aired, i remember the whole family sitting down to watch it every week....great stuff

  • this is british heritage stuff, bring it all back

  • went renshaw last week it was just like this

  • Shake annns

    Pint of bitter boss

    Classic :)

  • ive never felt more like singin the blues when Everton win an liverpool lose ohhhhh everton you got me singin the blues . . . . ive never felt more like singin the blues when Everton win an liverpool lose ohhhhh everton you got me singin the blues
  • Lmao. Spiked Midget!

  • Shake 'ands.....SHAKE 'ANDS!

    If I was a blackbird, I'd whistle and siiing..tweet, tweet, tweet, whistle whistle tweet

  • Large brandy michael much appreciated......

  • Yosser still the hardest man on TV

  • This guy the original Purple Aki?

  • I was brought up in flinders street kirkdale, the green man still exists

    There are many pubs along vauxhall and commercial road that have long gone who had similar characters

    The wonderful land of kirkdale was destroyed in the early 1970's when liverpool council tore down the houses, split communities and sent them to far outposts of Kirkby, Fazakerley and Skelmersdale

    Scotland Road and Kirkdale are a sad distant memory from my childhood

    My parents would cry if they could see it now

  • does anybody know where lorne walker is?

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  • (Something like this message might appear twice because my server went down just as I sent the first version)

    I was five in 1973 when my parents were given a compulsory purchase order on their house in Easby Rd Kirkdale. The community and 100-odd year old houses were destroyed and replaced by souless boxes which 30 years later are now boarded up themselves and awaiting demolition!!! Anyone understand the thinking behind this. The heart of our country was destroyed in the 60s and 70s!!

  • Thoses houses they built are horrible. The ones by the old Pheonix Pub (that's gone too).

  • the BBC should play this series again, its so good and actually sadly almost relevent again

    bring the boys back people need to watch this

  • @itlabs Almost?!