The Secret Of My Success – is unlimited

Need a lift?: looks like this elevator is engaged

Here at George’s Journal, we’re all about celebrating the good, the bad and the ugly of retro culture. There’s nowt wrong with nostalgia. And here’s a great example, because this 1987 Michael J Fox-starring, bargain-bin classic comedy encompasses all three – it has its good parts, it has its bad parts and it has its, frankly, ugly parts. Well, it does celebrate ’80s yuppiedom like it’s going out of fashion.

But, if like me, you’re always up for a bit of The Foxmeister, then it’s also an utterly infectious, very funny, feelgood blast. John Hughes could have made this movie. Only he didn’t, Herbert Ross did instead.

Plus, this was, like, my favourite flick when I was 12 – well for a month or two, at least – in which case, it remains one of my all-time guilty pleasure faves.

Sofa so, good: but things are getting complicated for our hero

And, for the sadly uninitiated, here’s six of the best scenes from The Secret Of My Success:

– Michael J Fox changes in the lift only for it to open when he’s halway through – thus he sports a muscle-man pose, throws his trousers out to his secretary and asks her to ‘take them to the cleaners’

– Fox arrives for his first day in the mailroom of a big Noo Yawk money firm and is taken through his job role by an a*sehole of a small-time boss. He asks the boss what he should call him, the boss replies, ‘you call me god…’

– After bedding a ‘wife of the company’, Fox and she are having a post-coital chat only for the husband to arrive home. Fox doesn’t realise what’s happening at first, so there’s a pause before he dives for his clothes and puts his t-shirt on over his checked shirt

– Fox barges into a meeting late, only to discover his uncle/ the boss of the company is there (who employed him in the mailroom, but doesn’t know he’s posing as an executive), so our hero covers his face, muffles ‘Oh god, nosebleed, get ’em all the time!’ and scarpers out of the room

– A Carry On-style, ‘bedrooms and hallways’ scene, in which all the main characters try to sneak into each other’s room for some rumpy-pumpy. It all ends in tears of course, during which Fox accuses cute heroine Helen Slater of indulging in ‘James Bond time’ with him – cool

– And the very best of all… Fox conducts a couple having sex in the apartment next door to his grotty one – and it’s perfectly in sync, of course – at the climax of which he opens his can of pop, which, yes, does go pop

So, see, now you’ve no excuse not to find out for yourselves the secret of its success. Enjoy, folks…

George