The Phonebox Podcast With Emma Conway - Sloppy Snogging In The 90s: Darran Lincoln-Shaw

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Who secretly fancied Joey from Friends and caused a whole heap of trouble at school? Darran Lincoln-Shaw that's who! He joins The Phonebox Podcast this week to chat about his life growing up as a teenager in Scarborough including his flop of a first kiss and much, much more.Go and follow the hilarious Darran on instagram over at The Lincolnshaws.For more of me follow @brummymummyof2 on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok and follow the @phoneboxpodcast account on Instagram for polls and nostalgic fun.If you have any guest suggestions, topics you would like me to cover email [e-mail] and be sure to tag so I can see where you are listening!#90s #90smusic Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everybody and welcome to this week's episode of the Phone Box Podcast with me Emma Conway. How the devil are you? I hope you are having a wonderful week. I say this every week but please could you go and check me out on Brummie Mummy of Two and go and message me on the Phone Box Podcast with guests you want. We're doing polls. Also I want you to tag me where you're listening. I like people tagging me. Somebody once was listening on a horse and I found that very exciting. So tag me where you're listening. We've people tagging me. Somebody once was listening on a horse and I found that very exciting. So tag me where you're listening. We've got another great episode for you today.

And let me welcome to the podcast the wonderful Darren. Good morning, Darren. How the devil are you? Hello, I am fabulous. I will say that. You are fabulous. And where can people find you online

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See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly. Is at the Lincoln Shores. Not to be mistaken for me to living in lincolnshire which is apparently what people think it is my surname i never thought that i think it's the way i say it lincolnshire they're like oh he lives in lincolnshire is lincolnshire nice i live in south wales south wales is, though. The stuff that you put up looks lovely. Best decision we ever did move here.

Oh, that's nice. I'll leave a link in the description to where everybody can find you. So where did you grow up when you were 14? It was not South Wales, I presume. I don't talk about this a lot. When people ask me, where did you grow up? I say York, but I didn't move there until i was 16 well where's this mystery where i actually grew up in scarborough but i don't like one with scarborough

well if you don't live if people are listening to this and they're from scarborough they will probably tell you they've probably told someone that they live in like just outside of Scarborough it's just not a very nice place to live in as a kid it's nice to go visit go to the seaside but as a kid oh it's not the best but yeah it wasn't the best in Scarborough seaside little tiny town of scarves what year was it so when you were 14 1998 that's a great year best year do you know what though every time somebody comes on and tells me what year in the 90s they always say every year is a great year because every year in the 90s it was a great year oh my god yeah it was the era i mean where kids are we living the night is now so i mean and that makes me feel very old but it was the best era ever it was like sort of on the cusp of technology really kicking in and you were just like so free weren't like worried about

the dangers that were around because they weren't advertised anywhere you were just these young free kids with no worries just living our best lives I loved I genuinely loved growing up in the 90s yeah it was it was great what was on your bedroom walls were you allowed posters I was allowed posters but I put I put up posters that I probably, because let me just give you a little brief description of me at the age of 14. I was sort of just realising who I was and that I was this little gay boy. So when I had to have things up on my wall,

obviously it's not the pictures that I probably would have wanted up on my wall, but I used to have posters of friends as in the program or is it your actual friends no like the actual program imagine making posters of your friends and they come around this is sharon and this is paul This is Paul. No, actual friends. Okay. Above my bed used to be this huge, massive poster of Jennifer Aniston. Yeah. Obviously being Rachel. She had the hair, the perfect hair. But every other poster had Joey in it.

Okay. I see where we're going. So Joey was not there as like just part of the cast. He was there because you had a bit of a crush on joey yeah and then i used to i remember one year and i don't know what it was i had to change the poster because the lips of joey had all gone um has she been kissed they've got one down shall we say yeah i used to kiss joey on a night time okay right okay i need to set the scene there's a knock at the door now and you go and answer it Calm down, shall we say. Yeah, I used to kiss Joey on a night time. Okay, right.

Okay, I need you to set the scene. There's a knock at the door now, and you go and answer it, and it's Matt LeBlanc. Would your heart still flutter? Now? At what he looks like now? Let's go back to what he looks like in the 90s. Yeah, young Joey.

I would have probably passed out and been walking off by like i would have died the blood would have rushed were you pretending to your friends you were like oh just jennifer's just so hot yeah my 100 i think i mean we all know what it was like in the 90s okay terrible not to get too deep yeah from the age of about 12 i kind of knew that changing in the football changing rooms with the lads shouldn't really feel like the way that I'm feeling. All the way through secondary school, from like, probably from like the end of year seven, really early on, knew I was gay. Knew I had to hide it, knew I had to show that I liked other people and all my mates were like girlfriended up and I was the one who never had a girlfriend always got picked on for being gay obviously I sound gay but I wouldn't change it no but I think that definitely made me to the person that I am today, how I look at my life now of growing up from when I was a kid.

Yeah. So in the hierarchy of school, were you kind of on the outs a bit or did you have lots of mates? No. Weirdly, I was, like, top dog. Oh. It was like, yeah, it was very weird. I think because I was so scared of people finding out that i was gay i made friends

with absolutely everyone in school so if you took mean girls for example as that is in the height of publicity at the minute yeah i was top dog wearing not wearing pink on a Wednesday you were Regina you were Regina I was Regina George but I hung around with everyone so the jocks the geeks they're like everyone and I wouldn't like allow if someone was getting bullied like I'd jump on that straight away it was I just wanted everyone to sort of have my back even though weirdly no one did because a lot of them when there was bullying and stuff happening no one would dare saying anything because they didn't want to then be targeted as well you know yeah you know it's like and used in humor as a defense mechanism so it was like darren's the class clown if Darren put in as much

of his energy into entertaining the classroom he'd do amazing in his school work so yeah it was very much using my personality and using the humour and being funny and being loud and being everyone's mate so no one

actually looked at me and started asking me questions. You're like a cheeky chappy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like putting up a bit of a, the tears of a clown when there's no one around. That was you. Yeah.

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded or 11 p.m. Eastern. Research and supply. See full terms at canada.cas jackpot is awarded or 11 p.m eastern research and supply see full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com please play responsibly kissing your joey poster so what other questions did you have apart from well secret questions apart from joey who else you're like oh he's a bit of me my p teacher yeah which was terrible I probably can say his name

his name was Mr Pullen and everyone used to make rhymes about his surname about how he used to pull him it was almost like something which was well out of bounds but you'd see him every week

it was like weird if I used to see him in town and stuff i used to be like hiya hello do you know what i mean it's just so embarrassing but i think celebrity wise there wasn't really anybody else out there that really sort of like as good as joe i have my attention tell about a little bit older then it became mark ruffalo oh mark ruffalo is gorgeous he's gorgeous now in anything he does he's just ridiculous and that's the hulk i mean 13 going on 30 that's my favorite variation of mark ruffalo just Just Like Heaven is mine. Oh, that is such a good film.

It's so far-fetched. Look, I know films are really... But the plot is real. I mean, it's never going to happen. Moved into some dead girl's house. Yeah, at the end, you're like... Do you know what? We're going to go... Is it Reese Witherspoon?

I feel like it's Reese Witherspoon. When was that out? That early noughties? I think so. Yeah, it was a lot. It was like Sweet Home Alabama. All those kind of films all came out at the same time, didn't they? And what was the Drew Barrymore one?

Never Been Kissed as well. I don't think I've seen that. Oh, you've got to go and watch that this afternoon. Oh my, it is. But whatever work you've got to go and watch that this afternoon oh my it is but whatever work you're going to do aside and watch never been kissed she goes back to secondary school and she's an adult but she goes back do you know what as i'm saying it there are some issues with the progress she goes back to secondary school she's an adult but the teachers don't know she's an adult i think she's a kid and one of the teachers falls in love with her as as i said bit problematic yeah but still a great film although in the 90s and the early noughties were problematic it was just

what it is what it is one thing that you just said seeing a teacher outside of school is crazy isn't it best thing ever you're like miss yeah miss yeah do you know what i mean as an adult seeing your child's teacher outside of school weird first of all any of my friends by their full name do you know what i mean surname included and i don't be like hello mrs conway no no one does that so when you're oh it's so awkward your son's like yeah you have to be like i can't say the teacher's name but let's just say she's johns because that's a very well known um yeah you're like oh hello you're right it's just like yeah you're not yeah i'm like all right bye mrs jones and then i was like oh god it's just so weird um we have um my children had a lovely um old headmaster and we bumped into him and i was like you've seen it headmaster was even more like yeah at a football match we were like and he was like how you've seen it, Headmaster was even more like, at a football match.

And he was like, how are you doing? I go back to, I'm a kid. Did your teachers, maybe this was like, I don't know if it was a Birmingham thing. Do you remember teachers just used to go to the pub at lunchtime in the 90s on a Friday? Yeah. Friday, primary school.

You see them all coming back from the pub. No, I was there. Potentially, but i never saw that yeah i mean we'll be doing that now and at prom they all got absolutely off their faces drunk dancing well we weren't allowed a prom why because we were really naughty basically the year our school ended, the school changed their name and became a sports college. But we had a call to into assembling. And it was the first year they were ever going to start doing proms. Because obviously we were going Americanized.

So we all got called in and our school was in between two towns they basically hated each other so we all got put into this room to say that we're getting a prom and it erupted like we were all at the end of our years it was like lads fighting lads chairs getting thrown out everywhere me being the gay that i was was on the stage swinging from the curtains like i mean as you do and then as i take this a massive so do you remember remember them big white stage boxes that were hollow you used to like stack them yeah to make all different variations of stuff yeah yeah yeah so i'm like stacked a few of them up because there was already one laid down on the floor. Stacked a few of them up so I could like proper take a run up on this curtain.

Yeah. So imagine this, running up. Launching. Jumps off the stage. Literally last foot just peels off the stage. Door opens. It's the headmaster. And I'm like this. You're like Tars on it through the air. Honestly, it's the headmaster. And I'm like this.

You're like Tars on it through the air. Honestly, it was so embarrassing. We all got told to sit down, explain that we were going to be having a prom. That's not happening anymore. We were all like in the last midst of our exams. Yeah, our term got ended early. We all got sent home. We only got told to come back into school to do our exam.

And that was it that was you your fault you ruined it the end of like school the stuff that we used to do at school just was yeah the hygiene i think as well because of the era that we lived in it's completely different to now i mean i would I genuinely would hate to be a child of today. Would you? It would not. Oh my God, Joanne. It wouldn't fit your personality.

No. Moving on from Joey. So we know you like Friends. What music did you like? You've not mentioned any music, any classic 90s tracks. Obviously all the cheese. Yeah. But weirdly, I had vinyls if kids don't know what

they are they're little plastic things that you bought on a record player tony braxton oh love it unbreak my heart song got that over and over again whitney houston celine dion think twice Houston, Celine Dion, Think Twice. Oh, yeah. All the fist clenching and everything. Yeah, that's a great song. Yeah. Honestly, I used to love it. And I used to have it on full blast. And then Michael, George Michael, I used to listen to his album all the time.

And I cannot for the life of me remember what song it is. But the cover of it was just black and white. And it was like a side profile of him yeah but the one song that i used to listen to over and over and over again was called dupe do you know this and it used to go like this i used to listen to that on a vinyl over and, and I used to call it Doop Doop song. Yeah. It's actually called Doop by Doop, is the person. Doop by Doop.

And my vinyl player used to have a, like, times two speed on it. So it was well fast. So to listen to that, like the Chipmunks. I tell you what, if I was your parents, I would have killed you. That would have driven a bit of madness so at what point did did nobody know you were gay you were duping you were screaming celine you know what i used to do as well when i was a kid right when i used to listen to celine dion

i used to tie dusters into my hair knock them into my hair like i had pigtails and i used to go like i had some long wig on and no one was like i think he might be gay i think if i was a child of today i'd be on i'd be on drag race or something because i would have yeah you would do but with dusters in your ear comes to just a lot or something you'd be like okay what kind of um fashion faux pas did you have kappa tracky bottoms that popped all the way to the top i know the ones so when you were doing non-school uniform day which you have to pay 50p for and i remember getting them ripped off at the beginning of lunch and I didn't get them back until the end of like the last lesson so I probably went and me being me was like can you go remember the teacher saying to me going go to lost property and go get a pair of trousers I was like I'm not putting on some other person's pair of trousers I don't think so I just walked around school and just in my pants

like what are you gonna do and no one was like. You're a T-Trap, isn't it? Like, what are you going to do? And no one was like, well, we're going to exclude you or we're going to remove you. They were just like, well, there goes Pants McGee. I got asked by my science teachers to go to the last property and get a pair of trousers. Otherwise, you're going to be going to St. Ted and the headmaster's office. So I went to Drama and looked through their fancy dress box and i put on a long floor length

floral like tiny little floral skirt as a as an ex-teacher you sound a bloody like an actual nightmare i was you told me to put something. And then I went back to the science class and he was like, what do you think that is? And you were like, cool. And he went to me, if you want to wear a skirt, go sit with the girls. I went, all right. So I sat with the girls.

You're like, okay, that sounds good to me. You, oh my God, you sound like the stuff of, but everyone got to the staff room and they're like, you never guess what isn't today. You turned a bit of Lenny's skirt. I wonder why they put poppers on trousers. What was the point of the poppers, do you think? No idea.

Like, why would you, and first of all, why would you do it right up to the waistband? Yeah, I thought they just came to the knees. That's almost like a Magic Mike pair of trousers. No, they didn't. Do you remember when Kappa came back out? Like, what, five years ago, I think Kappa came back out. Then they put out the poplar trousers.

They went up to, like, the thigh and then stopped. Not in the 90s. Lessons were learned from the 90s. And I remember wearing a pair of white denim jeans in the 90s as well. And I wore them with rock pots. Yeah. Do you remember them? Yeah.

And then the second class was like art class and for the rest of the day I wore red. Basically some lad came around with, you know the squeezy tubes of paint? Yeah. And just squirted them all over my white jeans thinking it was hilarious. Obviously me being me was like,

this looks cool. So I just went on there. did you go to Grange Hill were you really in Grange Hill were you really like Zamo from I don't understand the story you're telling me is is a life story of me yeah I used to I was just like I didn't care I was just like, I didn't care. I was just like, you're not going to let that affect what red jeans, red paint, I was so hot. Do you know what I mean? I would have loved it. I'd have died.

I'd have cried my heart out if that had happened to me. Because everyone would have been like, you've got your period. With all the paint like dribbling down the back of my white jeans. Okay, talk to me about first snogs. What was it like? Oh God, it was with a girl. Yeah. And I remember a girl. Yeah. And I remember we clashed teeth.

Oh, God. Oh, it was hideous. And I was just like, I don't even know why I'm doing this. No. So we had like our school and at the back of our school, we had weirdly a pub and they had like a sports field that we used to do our sports day stuff on it was very weird but yeah i was like i remember being behind the field there was like this little shed

thing we all used to go behind there and all my mates used to like snog their girlfriends and stuff and then i was like sort of like peer pressured into snogging this girl i mean if this girl ever listens to this from the clashing of the teeth she'll know that i'm talking about her yeah and yeah it was hideous for both of us she hated it i hated it consequently i'm gay she's now a lesbian no way yeah um it was the worst yeah it was just rank like i never wanted to do it did you do it to just get like just to be like well look you know like i'm straight like yeah yeah oh my god 100% yeah it was like yeah i'll kiss her do you know what i mean they're like oh you don't kiss because

you're gay you don't kiss because you're gay i was like no i'm not but then obviously just because it wasn't really like kissing someone because you fancied them, it was almost like, I'll show you, I'm not going to. And then you were just like, what? My first guy, which is years and years and years and years later, that wasn't even amazing either. It was like, just like, no one wants this first kiss malarkey. No, just get, no one, we've only had one that had a nice first kiss

everybody's first kiss has been grim yeah it's just like weird it's weird it is weird it's not like the films is it it's not like it's not what you expect it to be it is a little bit disappointing there's kind of no practicing you can snog your arm as much as you want you can kiss your joey poster as much as you want that's probably why i classed tea yeah you're used to a hard wall i'm used to this cold hard surface oh my god it's so terrible is it but i know you talked about you wished you you're glad you grew up in the 90s but if you're growing up now do you think you still would have had to kiss a girl or would you think you could have been a bit more open yeah it's the only thing that I love about the generation of today like I don't really like many generations that are older than the kids

of today because there's still quite a lot of homophobic people there's lots of races there's lots of people my era and older that are still set in their really old archaic ways where kids of today most kids of today because obviously there's still people of my era that are raising these kids but there is the kids of today especially like my sister who's 22, 21, 22, her era is just like accepting. They're like, can't say this, she can't say this. Like they're so like accepting. That's the only word I can really say.

It's like they are just happy that you're happy and everyone can be themselves. And if I was a kid of today, that is probably the only thing that I would be so grateful for, that I wouldn't have to hide who I was and took so long to realise who I actually am. And I think as well, because of being an adult and you're still, you deal with trauma from being a kid, I'm still dealing with trauma from what stuff that happened to me as a kid for being gay but then the reality is like if that was happening of today would be

completely different like i remember my sister being at a second school and one of her friends coming out as gay and i was just like really touched and really like it made me quite emotional because i was just thinking i wish i had the balls to do that as a kid. I wish I had the balls as a kid to say to my friends, I'm gay. Because life would have been a completely different, it would have led completely different. There would have been so many different paths I would have gone down,

but I didn't do a lot of stuff because I didn't want, like, I really wanted to get into acting. I really wanted to be on TV. I really wanted to be on the stage, but I didn't want to do any of that because I grew up on a council estate in the 90s where you got told you had to be a builder or a bricklayer or, like, you needed a man's job.

So I never did anything that I wanted to do when I was a kid. And I'm only now sort of just experiencing stuff that I actually really liked doing as a as a adult that I really would love to have done as a kid yeah so it makes sense yeah no it makes perfect sense but you like the it just that element but the rest you are glad you grew up in the 90s yeah I think so because I just think like the world and it is social media, the world is, you know everything about everything. When we grew up as kids, you were kind of sheltered from a lot of stuff because you didn't watch the news. You didn't have something in your hand 24-7 telling you absolutely every terrible thing that's going on in the world.

Like, you were kind of sheltered from all that sort of stuff. Even though it went on and there was bad things that happened in the world, you're sheltered from it. But then again, that technology is scary for a lot of things. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? No, 100%. I know what you mean.

And we were sheltered. When we were younger, if my mates went out without me, I didn't know. They just went out. But now you can see where people are all the time and this is happening they're taking a selfie here and i worry for teenagers i think that's but that might be a me issue but i think i worry that makes them a bit anxious feeling like i remember as a kid when i wanted to go out we knew that the telephone box for the top shops and we used to ring the telephone box who's down there.

And if your mates were down there, you'd pick it up. If the phone box rang, you knew it was one of us lot. So you'd pick up and be like, hello. And our parents used to ring it. So that's where we used to hang out. And our parents used to ring the telephone box and I'd answer them like, Naomi, your mum says you've got to go home. Your tea's done. Like, that was our...

And I think Snapchat is probably one of the worst for the kids. It's got mapped locations where your friends actually are. Yeah. Like, when I was a kid, we were poor. We never went on holiday as a kid. Like, it just physically couldn't happen. So when I went on the six-week summer holiday, I used to go back to school and I used to lie.

Oh, yeah. I'd be like, oh, yeah, I've been on holiday, I've that been here you won't be able to do that now they'll be like no i saw on snapchat you were at sun yeah yeah that does worry me a little bit so if you could go back to darren then and tell him something what would you tell him it's okay to be you yeah like allow don't worry about anybody else just just be you, because when you finally get to the stage where you realise who you are, and that person is going to make you the most happiest person ever, and things are going to come from that, because that things you never expected, like, I never expected to have a kid, I grew up thinking that would never happen I got told if I

when I came out that you'll never get married you'll never have children like and all of that sort of stuff is happening so I think if I ever had to say anything to myself my younger self was ride it out allow yourself to be to be who you are and you'll get everything you ever wanted because weirdly i have absolutely everything i've ever wanted to have and that is a family so yeah that would be what i would say oh lance thanks so much for coming on the podcast and telling us all your tales and guys thanks so much for listening to another episode of the phone box podcast as i said go and check me out on social media go and check darren out on social media and I will see you next week for another episode and say goodbye Darren

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