“7 Seconds” — Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry

The world has changed a lot in 30 years. Not always for the better, but let’s be grateful for the things that have improved in the last 30 years ago.

Back in 1989, the British public…or probably, more accurately, our scandal-mongering tabloid press…were aghast that a woman who was evidently heavily pregnant would be performing her latest hit record on Top of the Pops.

Back in Victorian times, women used to enter what was called “confinement”… just feast your mind on all the truly horrible implications of that expression… when their baby started to “show”, as they quaintly termed it.

Being “with child” was considered immodest, so women…at least those in high society…withdrew from public life rather than display an obvious bump. Obviously working class women had no choice but to keep working or they’d have starved in the brutal pre-welfare state world of Victorian England.

But, judging by the reaction from the tabloid press as recently as 1989, apparently pregnant women weren’t expected to advertise their condition then either, especially not on the UK’s biggest primetime pop music programme.

If you’d like to see Neneh Cherry’s “scandalous” appearance on Top of the Pops, performing one of her big hits “Buffalo Stance” you can find that here… https://youtu.be/ToNvjTrNlL8 (For British readers, 30 years ago was also when Steve Wright was trendy, doing the intro…)