 DATE: Harold mentions to Sam that hes been reading about the Sex  Pistols. Later in the episode Nick mentions to Lindsay that hes  bummed out that John Bonham died a week earlier, placing the date of  the show on 18 September 1980. The Sex Pistols broke up in 1978,  making it highly unlikely that any periodical would pick up a story  on a band two years gone, not to mention that the Sex Pistols bass  player Sid Vicious had died of a heroin overdose more than a year  before the setting of the show.