define nostalgia trip

Exploring Nostalgia Tourism: A Comprehensive Guide

Welcome to our in-depth exploration of nostalgia tourism, a unique phenomenon that combines the love for the past with the excitement of travel. In this comprehensive guide, we will delve into the definition of nostalgia tourism, its origins, popular destinations, and its impact on the travel industry. So, grab your passport and get ready to embark on a journey through time and memory!

What is Nostalgia Tourism?

Nostalgia tourism, also known as heritage tourism or retro tourism, is a form of travel that focuses on revisiting or recreating elements of the past. It involves seeking out destinations, experiences, and activities that evoke a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era. Nostalgia tourists are drawn to places that preserve or recreate historical, cultural, or personal memories, allowing them to reconnect with the past in a meaningful way.

Unlike traditional forms of tourism that prioritize novelty and exploration of the unfamiliar, nostalgia tourism is driven by a desire to relive or rediscover the past. Whether it's visiting a historic landmark, exploring a vintage museum, or attending a retro-themed event, nostalgia tourists seek out experiences that transport them back in time and evoke feelings of sentimentality and nostalgia.

Origins of Nostalgia Tourism

The roots of nostalgia tourism can be traced back to the 18th and 19th centuries when the Romantic movement in Europe sparked a renewed interest in the past. Romantic poets, writers, and artists celebrated nature, history, and tradition, inspiring a cultural shift towards valuing the beauty and authenticity of the past. This romanticized view of history laid the foundation for the emergence of nostalgia tourism as a popular travel trend.

In the 20th century, advancements in technology and transportation made travel more accessible to the masses, leading to the rise of tourism as a global industry. As people began to seek out new and exotic destinations, there was also a growing interest in preserving and celebrating the heritage and traditions of the past. This shift in perspective gave rise to nostalgia tourism as a niche market catering to travelers seeking authentic and immersive experiences.

Popular Destinations for Nostalgia Tourism

Nostalgia tourism encompasses a wide range of destinations and attractions that cater to different interests and preferences. From historic cities and heritage sites to vintage museums and retro-themed events, there is no shortage of options for nostalgia tourists to explore. Some popular destinations for nostalgia tourism include:

• Historic Landmarks: Iconic landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, and the Taj Mahal attract millions of visitors each year who are drawn to their rich history and cultural significance.
• Cultural Festivals: Festivals and events that celebrate traditional music, dance, food, and art provide a glimpse into the customs and traditions of different cultures, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the sights and sounds of the past.
• Vintage Museums: Museums dedicated to preserving and showcasing artifacts, memorabilia, and historical objects from a specific time period offer visitors a chance to step back in time and learn about the past in a hands-on way.
• Retro-themed Attractions: Theme parks, restaurants, and hotels designed to evoke the ambiance and style of a particular era provide a nostalgic escape for travelers looking to relive the glamour and charm of the past.

Impact of Nostalgia Tourism on the Travel Industry

Nostalgia tourism has had a significant impact on the travel industry, influencing consumer preferences, destination development, and marketing strategies. As more travelers seek out authentic and meaningful experiences, tourism providers have adapted to meet the demand for nostalgia tourism by offering specialized tours, packages, and activities that cater to this niche market.

One of the key benefits of nostalgia tourism is its ability to support heritage conservation and cultural preservation efforts. By promoting awareness and appreciation for historical sites and traditions, nostalgia tourism plays a vital role in safeguarding the world's cultural heritage for future generations to enjoy.

Furthermore, nostalgia tourism has the potential to boost local economies and create sustainable tourism opportunities in communities that have a rich historical or cultural heritage. By attracting visitors who are interested in exploring the past, destinations can leverage nostalgia tourism to drive economic growth, create jobs, and support small businesses.

From a marketing perspective, nostalgia tourism presents unique challenges and opportunities for tourism organizations and businesses. Effectively targeting nostalgia tourists requires a deep understanding of their motivations, preferences, and expectations, as well as the ability to create authentic and immersive experiences that resonate with their desire to reconnect with the past.

In conclusion, nostalgia tourism offers travelers a unique opportunity to explore the past, connect with their heritage, and create lasting memories that transcend time. By embracing the beauty and authenticity of historical and cultural experiences, nostalgia tourists can embark on a journey of self-discovery and personal enrichment that goes beyond the typical tourist experience.

As the travel industry continues to evolve and adapt to changing consumer preferences, nostalgia tourism is poised to play an increasingly important role in shaping the future of travel. Whether you're a history buff, a culture enthusiast, or simply someone looking to relive the past, nostalgia tourism has something to offer for everyone. So, pack your bags, step back in time, and embark on a nostalgic adventure like never before!

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80s Nostalgia: 35 Iconic Images for the Ultimate Nostalgia Trip

3 months ago

80s Nostalgia for everyone who grew up in the 1980's (ibuprofen sold separately)

Alright, fellow time-travelers and aficionados of neon-soaked 80s nostalgia, fasten your seatbelts for a journey that will catapult you straight into the rad world of the 1980s. Today, we're unearthing a treasure trove of retro memories from the era when Walkmans ruled the streets, and leg warmers were the unsung heroes of fashion. Join us as we unveil 35 snapshots that define the very essence of 80s nostalgia—a time when MTV played actual music, and scrunchies were more than just a hair accessory. In this curated collection of time-travel-worthy images, we're serving up 35 visual delights that transport you back to a time when neon wasn't just a color; it was a way of life. From the iconic Members Only jackets to the groundbreaking technology embodied by the Walkman, each image encapsulates the spirit of an era that celebrated cassette tapes and made you solve the Rubik's Cube in style. Get ready for a trip down memory lane where side ponytails and mullets coexisted harmoniously.

Congratulations, time-traveling enthusiast! You've just completed a virtual expedition through 80s nostalgia, a landscape where nostalgia is as abundant as hairspray. Whether you're a child of the 80s, reminiscing about the golden era of mixtapes and acid-washed jeans, or a modern soul intrigued by the quirks of the past, these retro memories have undoubtedly sparked a longing for a time when shoulder pads were a fashion statement, and boomboxes were the ultimate status symbol. And now, as you emerge from this neon-infused time capsule, know that the adventure doesn't end here. There's a plethora of nostalgic goodness waiting for you to explore. Dive into the wonders of bygone eras like the 1990's or unravel the history of iconic classic meme trends. Because, let's face it, in the grand library of nostalgia, every era has its chapter, and the 80s are just the beginning of this rad journey.

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• 1 Architecture
• 2 Cinema and live theatre
• 4 Consumer goods, ephemera and miscellanea
• 6 Food and lodging
• 7 Motorcars
• 9 Seafaring
• 11 Transportation

Nostalgia tourism is a specific form of historical travel which targets an era recent enough to be remembered by people who are still alive today. Most of the time periods remembered in nostalgia travel fall into the twentieth century, with the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression and the post-war era of the 1950s and 1960s being popular themes.

Architecture [ edit ]

Many architectural styles have come and gone over the years. While some of these styles are not commonly used in new construction, many buildings from previous eras still exist:

• Art Deco (from Arts Décoratifs, as featured at the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes in Paris in 1925) was common from the mid-1920s until the World War II era.
• Googie-themed architecture originated in Southern California in the late 1940s, remaining popular into the 1960s.
• Various forms of architectural modernism, such as that created by Frank Lloyd Wright, became popular in the 1920s.

Cinema and live theatre [ edit ]

Cinematic history dates to the 1920s or earlier, where it was a popular form of entertainment before network radio and television, pre-recorded video or Internet streaming. The drive-in theatre or cinepark was common in the 1950s and 1960s, although they are a dying breed today.

Much of the cinema nostalgia centres on individual films , individual performers or specific cinematic styles (such as classic, monochrome or silent film) which no longer exist today. Some films which were originally created as far back as the 1930s remain popular today.

Hollywood , Burbank and Culver City are the home of much of the American mainstream film industry; there are studio tours. Many locations worldwide are noted for a historically-popular film which was shot there or a show which was set there. In many cities, buildings which originally housed a cinema or a live theatre in the heyday of those media have been restored for various purposes.

Cold War [ edit ]

In some countries, such as Russia , a handful of people still hold some nostalgia for the Cold War era in which the Soviet Union and the states under its control (the Comintern bloc) represented a vast, sprawling empire. In the former East Germany, this form of nostalgia is known as Ostalgie .

Some products which were made in the communist East, but disappeared from marketplaces after the fall of the Berlin Wall, have been reintroduced. See Cold War Europe#Heritage .

Additional historic sites recalling the Cold War era are listed at nuclear tourism and Postwar United States .

Consumer goods, ephemera and miscellanea [ edit ]

All manner of ephemera, including products and advertisements for brands no longer manufactured, may invoke some hint of nostalgia.

Art and antiques dealers use this as the foundation of a business model, as do flea markets, museums and traders in rare used books, phonograph records, comic books and sports cards. Occasionally an attempt will be made to bring back a once-famous brand which is defunct or a historic marketing campaign (such as signs promoting long-defunct Burma Shave, whose verses appeared along many U.S. Highways from 1926-1963).

In some fields, a presumption exists that a product made "the old-fashioned way" is better; foodstuffs, handicrafts and furniture are common examples. Communities such as the Amish, which never abandoned the old traditional ways, often obtain a premium at market as their work is of better perceived quality. In others, a piece of obsolete technology (such as a vacuum tube radio) is painstakingly restored to working condition simply for old time's sake.

• A Nostalgia and Kitsch Museum ( Nosztalgia és Giccsmúzeum ) operates in Keszthely , Hungary.
• The Museum of Brands in Notting Hill , London, displays thousands of old consumer products and advertisements.
• The Toy Museum in Vadstena (near Östergötland , Sweden) collects toys which were popular in various eras, from the beginning of the 1900s until today.

Fashion [ edit ]

The styles of clothing , textiles and fashion change annually or even seasonally. While the use of period costume recreates various eras, including those depicted in re-enactment, role playing and the pioneer village museums, clothing styles have changed dramatically even within the modern era.

There's a Fashion Museum in Antwerp and an Urban Fashion Museum in Hasselt , Belgium; many large cities like Toronto and Paris have a well-known fashion district.

Food and lodging [ edit ]

While the wealthy robber barons who ran the rail companies of yesteryear have diminished in stature as rail travel has been supplanted by the motorcar , many grand old hotels from the heyday of rail travel remain in operation, often as historic landmarks at the high end of the restaurant and lodging market.

The explosion in motorcar travel in the 1950s led to many lower-cost alternatives.

Roadside diners , which originally were available as prefabricated buildings to be transported by rail for deployment in key highway locations, provided a very basic-level table service long before fast food joints became ubiquitous. Many modern diners rely heavily on 1950s and 1960s nostalgia in their décor and themes. Drive-in restaurants, in which car hop attendants brought meals into a car park so that diners could eat in their vehicles, were a common fad in the 1950s; the concept is largely dead in Canada, but a few remain in the U.S.

Independent motels , an offshoot of the primitive campgrounds and cabins of the Depression era, became common on most of the two-lane highways of the 1950s and 1960s; a few in Wildwood (New Jersey) have been restored to preserve the Googie architectural style of the era.

In an era when intercity telephone calls were costly and Internet access non-extant, most independents relied on visitors (who had no advance reservations) to simply drop in while driving through each town on the main highways. Neon signage, huge billboards, motels with outdoor swimming pools facing directly onto the roadside and the occasional huge fibreglass statue were among the gimmicks used to attract attention; many motorists simply took their chances that the neon sign at the inn would say "VACANCY" instead of "NO VACANCY" when they drove into town and that the accommodation would meet some minimum standard.

Motorcars [ edit ]

Automobiles were subject to frequent redesign, with styles changing annually to make la voiture de l'année look different from its predecessors. Many of the changes were made for marketing reasons, although the underlying technology has improved by leaps and bounds since the "Tin Lizzie" fad of the 1920s. The motorcars of the 1950s were most distinctive, due to visual cues such as tail fins which gradually fell out of style.

While spare parts are difficult to obtain, many fans of historic vehicles have restored the motorcars of yesteryear to operating, showroom condition. There are antique car shows in various communities; there are also many museums devoted to transport or specifically to cars.

• Ford is based in Dearborn , Michigan; the Ford Museum , Greenfield Village and the Automotive Hall of Fame (21400 Oakwood Blvd) recall the history.
• The Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum' s collection includes an original Fabulous Hudson Hornet.
• The San Diego Automotive Museum in California has lots of antique cars on display.
• Oshawa 's automotive history pre-dates the General Motors presence in Ontario; the Canadian Automotive Museum (99 Simcoe Street S) remembers.
• Castlemaine is the self-proclaimed 'Hot Rod Capital' of Victoria, Australia with multiple, small private automotive collections open to the public.

There are multiple itineraries devoted to industrial tourism , including the Motorcities Tour .

Music [ edit ]

Many musical styles have come and gone over the years. Some have been short-lived fads (like the disco style of 1970s dance music) while others have evolved to the point where the modern version of a genre differs greatly from earlier works which are remembered as nostalgia. Musical bands or radio stations which play the music of yesteryear are popular among those who grew up when that music was mainstream; the original vinyl records and paraphernalia remain in circulation as used items or memorabilia.

• Jazz has existed since the post- Civil War era, but became popularised in New Orleans and Chicago during the 1920s. The Jazz Track is an itinerary of big band and traditional jazz cities in the United States.
• The big band era of the 1940s was part of the golden age of radio; network broadcasts from New York City reached the nation.
• Rock and roll has its own lengthy history, which goes back to the 1950s. Cleveland , Ohio is known for its Rock and Roll Hall of Fame . Elvis Presley's Memphis mansion Graceland operates as a museum.
• Nashville is the home of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (222 Fifth Ave S). The legacy of singer Dolly Parton is commercialised by Dollywood , a Tennessee amusement park which she founded in 1961.
• Soul and the African-American music of the 1960s is remembered at Hitsville U.S.A , the Motown Museum in Detroit/New Center .

In Uruguay , August 24 (the night before Independence Day) is Nostalgia Night ( Noche de la nostalgia ); nightclubs and broadcasters play oldies music while Uruguayans party the night away.

Seafaring [ edit ]

There are many marine museums with extensive coverage of the steamboats and sailing vessels of yesteryear. Often, a former warship becomes a museum ship; occasionally, a decommissioned ocean liner is transformed into a floating hotel. There are also modern ships built as exact replicas of historic vessels (such as Halifax , Nova Scotia 's famed Bluenose II ).

Occasionally, a historically-authentic steam or sail vessel is painstakingly restored and put back into service.

• Battleship Cove in Fall River (Massachusetts) claims the largest collection of preserved U.S. Navy ships (from World War II onward) in the world; there's also a Marine Museum at Fall River .
• The Belle of Louisville in Louisville , Kentucky is the oldest operating Mississippi River -style steamboat; the PS Waverley on the Firth of Clyde in Scotland is the last sea-going paddle steamer in the world. See Steam#Steamers, ships and boats .
• Newport (Rhode Island) hosts an annual gathering of Tall Ships, historic wooden sailing vessels. Amsterdam , Netherlands holds a similar gathering every five years, Halifax holds a Tall Ships Festival every few years and several other cities hold similar events periodically.

Sport [ edit ]

Much of the nostalgia around spectator sports memorialises the most famous and skilled players of yesteryear. Rarely, one of the original stadiums from the era will still be standing – either still in operation, or re-purposed for other uses as a team moves to a newer venue (which has more space, but typically no history and an annoying pattern of changing names every few years to accommodate the latest corporate sponsor).

There are various Halls of Fame to immortalise the history of the games and the players:

• The Basketball Hall of Fame commemorates Springfield (Massachusetts) as the birthplace of the sport of basketball.
• National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum , Cooperstown , Central New York
• Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame ( Salon de la Fama del Beisbol ), Avenida Alfonso, Monterrey/North Central
• Pro Football Hall of Fame , Canton (Ohio)
• There's a Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto and a smaller collection of ice hockey memorabilia in Kingston (Ontario) .
• Softball Hall of Fame , Oklahoma City
• National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum , 405 West Hall of Fame Avenue, Stillwater (Oklahoma)
• Baltimore County has a museum and hall of fame displaying the history of lacrosse with photographs, memorabilia, displays and videos
• Holyoke contains the Volleyball Hall of Fame

Often, the hometown of a famous player will immortalise a local son who made it big in the big leagues; for example, there's a nine-foot tall statue of Mickey Mantle on a high school baseball field in his tiny home town of Commerce, Oklahoma .

Transportation [ edit ]

While Karl and Bertha Benz first unleashed their infernal machine on German roads in 1886 and the Wright Brothers first launched their strange contraption into the Kitty Hawk skies in 1903, many older forms of transport remained in use for many decades thereafter. Steam trains plied the rails in many regions for years after the first lines began to gradually dieselize or get electrified; ocean liners continued to ply the seas long after air travel became commonplace. Paddlewheel steamboats still invoke a perhaps-idealised view of what travel might have been like on the Mississippi River of yesteryear.

• Aviation history recalls various eras, including the military history of two world wars, the Cold War nuclear era and the civilian "jet set" of an era before budget travel turned flying into a less-pleasant, no-frills but slightly more affordable form of transport.
• Various heritage railways and tourist trains have restored historic rolling stock to service; it's also possible (to varying degrees) to attempt to retrace the path of routes such as the original Orient Express , which ran behind the Iron Curtain to Istanbul until the 1960s. Many museums depict rail travel of prior eras.
• U.S. Route 66 has not officially existed since 1985, but continues to be marketed on the basis of nostalgia. Roadside diners, novelty architecture and neon signs promoting small, independent motels are common themes, along with historic vehicles to appeal to fans of the automobile. There are more than a few ghost towns along the route, as well as the occasional bit of rail history as the 1926 route follows the path of earlier railways, which in turn followed the path of the original native trails.

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Nostalgia tourism

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• Bob Lee 3  

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Nostalgia tourism refers to tourists traveling to a destination with a view to reviving their past. For example, a couple returns to the destination where they had their honeymoon, a grown-up man goes back to the site where he often fished with his father during his childhood, or an immigrant travels back to the town in her home country where she grew up. Nostalgia tourism is about fulfilling the desire to relive bygone experiences and bring back a personal history often filled with joy, happiness, and satisfaction.

Nostalgia is key to learning the derived concept of this form of tourism. The term is originally derived from the Greek nostos , to return home, while algia denotes a painful condition. Taken together, they signify “a painful yearning to return home” (Davis 1979 : 1). However, today, people do not merely reminisce about a place they left behind, but often use nostalgic feelings to express their desire for a particular time in the past (Gammon 2002 ). Hence, it is a state of...

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Davis, F. 1979 Yearning for Yesterday. New York: Free Press.

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Dann, G. 1998 There’s No Business like Old Business: Tourism, the Nostalgia Industry of the Future. In Global Tourism, W. Theobald, ed., pp.29-43. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Gammon, S. 2002 Fantasy, Nostalgia and the Pursuit of What Never Was. In Sport Tourism: Principles and Practice, S. Gammon and J. Kutzman, eds., pp.61-72. Eastbourne: LSA Publication.

Russell, D. 2008 Nostalgia Tourism. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing 25(2):103-115.

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Correspondence to Bob Lee .

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School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

Honggen Xiao

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Lee, B. (2014). Nostalgia tourism. In: Jafari, J., Xiao, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tourism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_286-1

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Received : 22 May 2014

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Published : 12 September 2015

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_286-2

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The Nostalgia Trap

• Stephanie Coontz

The problems with longing for a mythical golden age.

In recent decades we have seen a revival of a pernicious form of nostalgia, or  past-sickness . This is the longing to reproduce an idealized piece of history. Collective nostalgia invariably involves a denial of the racial, ethnic, and family diversity of the past, as well as its social injustices, creating romanticized myths that are easily refuted by anyone willing to confront historical realities. But the cure to the pathologies of past-sickness does not lie in the equally romanticized vision of modernization and innovation we have been offered for the last 40 years — something that might be called  future nostalgia , or  modernization-sickness.  For several decades it’s been clear that the gains of modernization for some have produced substantial losses for others. While the innovations of the past 40 years have opened more opportunities for professionals and affluent entrepreneurs than they have closed off, that’s not the case for many working-class, small-town, and rural men and women. The failure of policy makers and opinion leaders to acknowledge their losses has left the pain of the “losers” to curdle into a toxic mix of nationalism, racism, and conspiracy theories. To cure this outbreak of past-sickness, the winners in this system must stop pretending that the answer is more of the same, with a little more diversity at the top.

Few people today call a doctor when they feel a bout of nostalgia coming on. But for 200 years, nostalgia was considered a dangerous disease that could trigger delusions, despair, and even death. A 17th-century Swiss physician coined the word to describe the debilitating algos (pain) felt by people who had left their nostos (native home). In the U.S. during the Civil War, Union Army doctors reported 5,000 serious cases of nostalgia, leading to 74 deaths . In Europe, physicians anxiously debated how to treat home-sickness and contain its spread.

• SC Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. She also serves as Director of Public Education at the Council on Contemporary Families, a non-profit, nonpartisan association of family researchers and practitioners based at the University of Texas at Austin. Her books include The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap .

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Definition of nostalgia noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

• a sense/wave/pang of nostalgia
• She is filled with nostalgia for her own college days.
• He thought back to his time as a student and felt no nostalgia for any of it.
• I remember it with great nostalgia.
• Nostalgia buffs gathered for the auction of wartime memorabilia.
• She felt great nostalgia for the old way of life.
• She remembers her life as a singer with a certain wistful nostalgia.
• The college reunion was a great nostalgia trip.
• an evening of pure nostalgia
• with nostalgia
• nostalgia for
• a feeling of nostalgia
• a sense of nostalgia

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Glitter: The Popstar Paedophile review – a most sickening nostalgia trip

This relentless documentary takes us back in time to meet the women abused by glam-rock star Gary Glitter as children … and the roadies who tried to stop him (and set his wig on fire) 25 years before he finally got caught

D o you remember – it feels so long ago now – the days when it was a shock to find out that a rich, famous, charismatic man had been using his riches, fame and charisma to rape and abuse women and children and cover it up for years and years?

Glitter: The Popstar Paedophile is the bleakest of nostalgia trips, taking us back to those quaint times, before the public Jimmy Savile revelations, before the R Kelly revelations, before the Rolf Harris revelations, before Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein … I could, unfortunately, go on but I think the point is made.

This 90-minute film tells the story with whose main beats we are now grotesquely familiar. We see the fame, this time via plenty of Top of the Pops footage of the glam-rock star Gary Glitter – real name, the name under which he would eventually be prosecuted, Paul Gadd – the high-energy interviews on the likes of Saturday Scene with Sally James, the more stately stuff with Terry Wogan and other chatshow presenters, and even an episode of This Is Your Life that was devoted to him. And, as with most of the documentaries about British celebrity paedophiles and/or abusers, there is a stomach-churning interview with Savile himself from what looks like the late 1980s, by which time they were both well practised in their depravities and giving new meaning to the phrase “hiding in plain sight”. See also Glitter’s 1980 hit What Your Mama Don’t See (Your Mama Don’t Know) replete with lines like “You insist you’re not to be kissed / ’Cause your mama’s not far away … One more glance, I might take a chance / I’m a desperate kind of man.”

We hear, mainly via the prosecuting counsels, from and about the women who would eventually see him convicted of various sex offences. Woman A suffered an attempted rape by 31-year-old Glitter/Gadd in 1975 when she was eight years old. Two other girls, around the age of 12, were raped by him after concerts, their mamas ushered elsewhere by members of the star’s entourage. There is an incident recounted by music journalist Garry Johnson about two men who were hired to work security for a Glitter gig around 1990 who discovered in one of the boxes they were carrying from his van huge numbers of Polaroid photos of children. They confronted him. He cried and offered them money. They refused it and walked off the job, setting fire to his wig on the way. The bathos of the last act should not obscure the fact that this seems to have been the closest his victims got to justice for the next 25 years.

The film assembles its evidence meticulously, relentlessly and unsensationally, including not just the facts that would end up in court but moments that tell us almost more than the lawyers can. There is the fleeting look of absolute terror in Glitter’s eyes when Paula Yates interviews him on the infamous On the Bed segment of The Big Breakfast and asks of his girlfriends: “Are they very young?” Glitter’s relief when she appears to mean women in their early 20s is palpable.

Despite a 1993 story in the News of the World about him having sex with a 14-year-old (attention focused on the photo she had of him without his wig, completely bald) and the rumours that had been swirling for years, it wasn’t until child sexual abuse images were found on a laptop he took in for repair in 1997 that any charges were filed against him. Woman A added her complaint to the charge sheet but the judge reckoned too much time had passed and dropped her case. Woman B, from the News of the World story, was destroyed on cross-examination, and by the judge’s recommendation that the jury should bear in mind that there are 14-year-olds “who look like girls” and 14-year-olds who “look like sophisticated ladies” and consider which category woman B fell into. Gadd was cleared of offences against her, but the public gallery reeled in shock when he pleaded guilty to all the child abuse image charges.

The film slightly rushes the years he then spent in south-east Asia, free to exploit vulnerable children in poorer countries, and the legal systems that effectively function as an international ring of enablers for paedophiles and other abusers. But it does its job in reilluminating the horrors of the past, which are also the horrors of the present and no doubt the horrors of the future too. We have a little more knowledge, a little more awareness, a little more wisdom. Perhaps we are a little more protective. But, as Glitter et al’s long freedom (and usually nugatory sentences if ever caught) show, these terrible, terrible predators are ever in our midst, and we are no closer to ridding ourselves of them.

Glitter: The Popstar Paedophile aired on ITV1 and is on ITVX now.

The NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood ( Napac ) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331.

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