The usually grey docks of London Tilbury were positively glowing as my wife and I approached the cruise terminal on an early morning in May. Not from the sunshine, you understand, but from the amount of neon and Lycra-clad passengers about to board Ambassador Cruise Line’s Ambience – the most I’d seen in one place since Wham! topped the charts.
We stood amongst a sea of passengers in dungarees, technicolour shirts and “Choose Life” T-shirts, ready to step aboard and rewind to what many describe as the most flamboyant decade of all – the 1980s.
I felt wildly underdressed in a plain polo shirt, but we were all there with the same aim: to spend a weekend reliving the decade that brought us MTV, big hair and shoulder pads.
Ambassador Cruise Line isn’t the most obvious choice for a ‘Back to the 1980s’ cruise. Despite the average age of cruise passengers falling, Ambassador usually markets its premium value cruises to the over-50s, many of whom enjoy the bridge and knitting rooms on board. My peers in the travel industry raised an eyebrow when I told them who I would be sailing with.
But unlike Ambassador, which only launched in 2022, I have foggy childhood memories of the music, the fashion, and the food of the 1980s, as I was born two years after the UK won the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest.
That was an anecdote I kept to myself one morning as my wife and I shared a table and slices of toast at breakfast with 1980s pop legend Cheryl Baker, who helped lead Bucks Fizz to that historic Eurovision victory.
A legal dispute over the Bucks Fizz trademark means Baker can’t use the name in performances anymore, but she now tours alongside original band member Jay Aston as well as Nikk Mager and Matthew Pateman as The Fizz, a headline act during our sailing.
During a performance in The Palladium theatre on board, Baker proudly reminded the crowd of her Eurovision success as she belted out a line from this year’s entry with slightly less certainty.
It may be more than 40 years since Baker and Aston topped the charts, but they haven’t lost any of their enthusiasm or energy. My wife and I danced in the aisles to a medley of songs by Queen and Bucks Fizz classics such as “Land of Make Believe” and, of course, the winning Eurovision tune “Making Your Mind Up”, with the trademark skirt rip from their band members wowing the crowd on board.
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And the nostalgia trip didn’t stop there. The entire ship felt like a floating time capsule. Fancy dress spanned generations – Hi-de-Hi!-like yellow coats mingled with guests wearing Top Gun aviators in the bars, swapping stories about visits to chocolate shops, cheese factories and tulip fields on the ship’s stops in Amsterdam and Zeebrugge, while mulleted men channelled Pat Sharp with no sense of embarrassment.
I thought that my George Michael leather jacket, tinted glasses and “Choose Life” T-shirt combo would turn heads, but I was completely outdone by my fellow passengers.
The costumes were strong enough to get some passengers on stage in The Palladium theatre. Fellow headliner and former 1980s punk singer Toyah Wilcox invited a duo of Guns N’ Roses impersonators to play air guitar while she sang “Sweet Child of Mine”, a mash-up more than four decades in the making.
Even dinner got in on the action, with a themed menu of comforting classics from the era. A chicken Kiev brought memories of Saturday afternoon meals before settling down to watch Bananaman or You Bet. For dessert, there was a boozy trifle that positively screamed Christmas, and a tiramisu Viennetta with that perfect “crack” that had my wife and I reminiscing, moony-eyed about the freezer meals of our youth.
While many of the characters and performers we encountered around the ship may have been at their peak while my wife and I were youngsters, nevertheless, this golden age of culture was immense fun to be a part of.
These were the meals our parents served us, the programmes they watched and the bands we heard on the radio during the school run.
Despite initial concerns about the passenger demographic, we as 40-somethings didn’t feel out of place as we spent our evenings at the themed discos dancing along to classics from Bon Jovi and Wham! with groups celebrating their 50th and older birthdays. There were passengers younger than us there too, many trying out a cruise for the first time.
From “Living on a Prayer” to “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”, these songs still blast from party speakers today; they are the songs that make you sing along even if you weren’t there the first time.
It made me wonder though… in 40 years, when my kids are reminiscing about their youth, will they board a 2020s-themed cruise? Which artist of today will still feel current? Will they be having breakfast with Ed Sheeran? Or will the bigger miracle be the UK winning Eurovision again?
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