'80s Actual

Tasty, Tasty, Very Very Tasty Bran Flakes, Kellogg's Super Noodles And More...

2012-01-19T00:12:00.011Z

Two ads from 1982 - "Tasty, Tasty, Very Tasty" Bran Flakes and "make mealtimes really new" with Super Noodles.

We've already written about the changing eating habits of the UK public in the 1980s elsewhere on this blog (here). We've examined the wonders of the F-Plan Diet, pasta as an exciting range of dishes, bottled water, courgettes, peppers, the thrill of fancy fillings in baked spuds, star fruits, savoury rice and turkey sausages. We've "humphed" impatiently at nouvelle cuisine and giggled afresh at the Weetabix skinheads. We loved our '80s grub - particularly in the mid-to-late decade when so much changed. And, of course, the 1980s were the era of the foodie!

Memory often plays food writers tricks. 1960s innovations the prawn cocktail and Black Forest gateau only reached the humblest of the humble working class folks in the 1980s. It was around the early 1980s (once more, I won't rely on the Web) that prawn flavoured cocktail crisps were launched and, although I couldn't abide the dish they were based on, I couldn't get enough of the crisps!

The '80s also gave us those lovely Hob Nob biscuits, and the early part of the decade saw Pot Noodles in the ascendancy. Not sure of a UK launch year for these, and won't rely on the web, but I do know they were becoming all the rage and bombarding us with lovely new flavours in the early-to-mid 1980s. And, of course, there quickly followed the imitators (remember Snack Pot? "We put the Snack before the pot"? We do!).

Pot Noodles were becoming the thing to snack on by 1981. We were no stranger to food we needed to re-hydrate, but the idea of re-hydrating then eating straight from the pot - no need for washing up - appealed to many of us and seemed very revolutionary indeed.

This leads me to a personal recollection of mine concerning a school mate (let's call him Steve). Steve had a big fat belly, and used to chortle and say:"That's my beer belly!" Macho nonsense of course - he didn't drink alcohol. He seemed happy being a big lad, until 1981 when, with leaving school staring him in the face, he suddenly decided to become "fancyable". The opposite sex had been steering well clear up to now, and so Steve launched a strict diet to reduce his wobble factor.

One lunchtime, I went to Steve's house to eat my paste sandwiches and have a cuppa with him. He lived just a couple of streets away from our school, so always went home to lunch. It was the time when the Rubik's Cube and illegal CB radio were the big fads (CB was due to be legalised in November '81, but a slackening of controls in the run-up saw the illegal craze running wild) and we discussed these, and then, having reached his house, Steve introduced me to his latest ally in his own personal inch war - a Pot Noodle. This was his lunch, he told me proudly. Zilch calories compared to his usual midday four paste sandwiches and bowl of soup nosh-up.

He prepared his Noodle, I munched glumly on my paste sandwiches. And then it happened. Steve fetched a tub of marge from the fridge, and began to ransack a previously unopened loaf of white bread which had been sitting innocently on the dining table. As if in a trance, he dunked slice after slice of bread and marge in his Noodle, in between slurping it down, and by the time he'd finished there were two slices of bread left in the packet (I checked).

"STEVE!" I gasped. "You're doin' your diet no good at all, mate!"

"'Course I am, Andy," Steve chortled. "Pot Noodle 'n' a couple of slices of bread for lunch... What's wrong with that?"

On the way back to school, he bought himself a Marathon - "That Pot Noodle ain't quite fillin' the gap. One bar won't hurt!"

By altering his usual lunchtime food intake as part of his stomach-reducing diet, Steve had ended up eating loads more than he usually did. I gave up.

The '80s changed my diet tremendously, and there's no doubt I began eating a lot better. Those courgettes, those peppers, those fancy baked potatoes, that carrot cake were delicious!

The supermarkets suddenly seemed to erupt with affordable goodies.

But, of course, whilst scoffing up the carrot cake, meeting real sausages for the first time, indulging in all those fancy salad dressings, and experimenting like crazy with veg and pasta, being a young man about town there were many times when I desired the quick and simple solution to what to have for dinner.

Matthew's turkey sausages, savoury rice and tinned green beans were a mainstay, as were those scrummy mini-pizzas from Bejam. And Bejam did small cube sized blocks of bubble and squeak! Heaven!

"Make Meal Times Really New", said the Kellogg's 1982 Super Noodles ad featured at the top of this post, and I adored them, once more with sausages and green beans. If you overcooked the noodles slightly, you could let them cool a bit then have them in a sandwich. Delicious!

Last week, my wife and I went to our local supermarket thinking about the Big Hair decade. The pasta ranges seemed vastly smaller compared to the mid-to-late 1980s when doing things with pasta was so new and exciting in this country, and we couldn't find a single packet of wholemeal pasta which, in the era 1986-1989, would have been cause for outrage.

A Tesco magazine advertisement from December 1984. Pasta was just becoming exciting in the UK.

We spotted some Super Noodles, tucked away, and suddenly decided we'd have an '80s convenience meal. Sausages and green beans went into our trolley and, that night, we tucked in. Lovely! And so nostalgic...

After the meal, instead of me dashing around showering and gelling my hair and getting myself done up like a dog's dinner for a night out, as I had back in the '80s, I sat in my armchair, with my middle aged spread, and gently drifted off to sleep - which is the norm nowadays.

It all seemed a bit sad. 21st Century Andy can revive '80s food, but 21st Century Andy is not '80s Andy - with all his youthful vigour and dodgy fashion sense - and '80s Andy is not coming back...

Never mind. The memories are very sweet. We'll definitely be having Super Noodles again.

Nick Berry - Every Loser Wins: EastEnders Stars In The Pop Charts 2

2012-01-13T22:10:00.001Z

Here's Nick Berry, EastEnders Simon Wicks (or "Wicksy"), all togged up in his 1980s gear with a very classy motor.

Simon was, apparently, the son of Pete Beale (Peter Dean) and dad doted on son, until Simon's mother, wicked witch Pat (Pam St Clement), turned up in 1986. She couldn't resist spilling the beans to Simon's proud dad that he wasn't Simon's dad at all. The storyline puzzled me as I always thought that Nick Berry bore something of a resemblance to Peter Dean, and assumed that was partly the reason he'd been chosen for the role.

Simon worked in the Vic, yuppie pub the Dagmar, played the piano, and had a very busy (and, of course, fraught) love life.

Actor Nick Berry became a TV heart-throb overnight. This was one lucky man: he'd been involved in a car crash a few years before EastEnders and, not wearing a seat belt, had been thrown through the windscreen.

Despite suffering a fractured skull, he made a complete recovery.

Here's Nick, complete with designer stubble, on the cover of that record. Every Loser Wins was number one in the pop charts on the day I got the key to the door - my 21st birthday. Actually, I'd had my own key to my own door for several years, but 21 was still special. And this was number one.

I'm very fond of much that went to make up the 1980s, although sometimes I wonder why... Karma Chameleon was at number one on my 18th birthday, and this on my 21st. There were times when the decade was just too, too cruel!

Speaking of Every Loser Wins, Nick Berry was good enough to admit later: "My singing on it was awful."

Oddly enough, back in 1986, I recall actually liking the song.

But I would never admit that to anybody who knows me. Not that I'm a snob, of course.

Perish the thought!

BBC Cashes In On EastEnders...

2012-01-12T17:08:00.002Z

DOSH! DOSH! DOSH! Auntie Beeb - AKA the BBC - had a very nice not-so-little earner going on in the mid-to-late 1980s - courtesy of that brash new soap EastEnders! You could buy all sorts of EastEnders goodies - simply squillions of things - even a novel detailing Andy and Debs's back story - so how would real life beer fans fancy paying out for some of the brews sold over the bar at the Queen Vic? Cut to 1988 newspaper article:

The Beeb is planning to make millions by selling Dirty Den's bitter all over Britain.

Flooding the market with EastEnders' ales is the latest plan in a BBC campaign to milk Albert Square for every last penny.

Already the top soap is bringing its bosses more than £1 million profit a year.

But that could be more than doubled as the cash-thirsty corporation gets set to rival the top brewers.

Insiders at BBC Enterprises - the selling arm of the BBC - have revealed that executives are now searching for the right company to make the beer.

Among the BBC brews set to be stacked on the shelves in pubs, off-licences and supermarkets are Churchill ale, Luxford and Copley Strong Bitter and Melbourne Star lager - all sold in Den's pub.

The beer would join scores of EastEnders' spin-offs already taking the world by storm. For all over the globe people are raving about the goings-on in Albert Square.

Besides the actual programme, the BBC is selling EastEnders' underwear, mugs, T-shirts, cut-glass, calendars, stationary, records, books, videos and will soon launch an EastEnders' board game.

Sue Osman: "'Ere, Ali, if they're gonna be sellin' Den's beer, wot about my bacon sarnies? Why 'aven't the BBC been in touch with us?"

Ali Osman: "Do you really wanna know, Sue?"

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T22:07:00.003Z

1980s memories galore here - from screencaps to snippets from magazines and newspapers, with a few other bits and bobs chucked in. Click on the image to enlarge. To all those celebrating, here's to 2012! And for all those feeling like a challenge after the excesses of New Year's Eve, we've pulled out our 1980s quiz. Enjoy.

See you again in 2012. xxx

The BIG 1980s Quiz

Test your knowledge of this fast moving and dramatic decade with our quiz. The answers can all be found within this blog and are also listed at the bottom of this post, together with a fun guide to how you rate as an '80s expert.

1) Who ate cannibals in 1982?

2) An illegal craze of 1980 and 1981 was legalised in November 1981. What was it?

3) Who advertised Everest Double Glazing in the 1980s?

4) Which famous BBC soap opera began in February 1985?

5) An obscure Hungarian toy was renamed and re-manufactured in 1980, and became a huge craze. What was it?

6) Hello! Which computer was released in early 1984?

7) Invented by an Englishman in Switzerland in 1989, this has had a massive effect on computing ever since. What is it?

8) You put them on your head in 1982.

9) An election in 1980 altered the course of the decade. Who and where?

10) Often referred to as a brick, this was unveiled in America in 1983 and hit the UK in 1985. What was it?

11) Beattie's grandson got a what in 1987?

12) Which small creatures from a vegetable abode invaded the UK in 1983?

13) Fill in the blank: "Just one titchy bit of toast, we've gotta put 'em straight - we're the ____."

14) Which popular music genre was born in Chicago in the early 1980s?

15) "Shiny, shiny, bad times behind me..." - who sang that?

16) Which exciting new car hit the road in 1985 and got a big thumbs down?

17) What game did we pursue in 1984?

18) Which pop star had his handbag stolen in 1984?

19) The Queen had a bedside visitor in which year - and who was it?

20) The Scotch video tape skeleton ads debuted in 1983. But in which year did the skeleton sing "re-record, not fade away"?

21) Which alien from the Planet Drill made his earthly debut in 1987?

22) Who was responsible for making "walkies!" a popular catchphrase?

23) Which new TV channel came to our screens in November 1982?

24) What was the call sign of Inspector Jean Darblay of Hartley Police Station?

25) Bob presented a popular TV quiz show featuring teenagers from 1983 onwards. What was his surname, and what was the show?

26) Rik Mayall and Nigel Planer appeared in which alternative comedy, beginning in 1982?

27) Which group of people were going to live forever - they were going to learn how to fly?

28) What were the upwardly mobile set called in the 1980s?

29) Sonny Crockett of Miami Vice had an unusual pet. What was it, and what was it called?

30) In which year did the ZX Spectrum arrive?

31) Short-lived English soap opera of the mid-1980s set on a market.

32) Who made the blokes go "phwoar" at Twickenham in 1982?

33) Which famous arcade game character made his debut in Japan in 1980?

34) What did George Michael choose as a T-shirt slogan?

35) Complete the lyrics: "The first cut won't hurt at all, the second only makes you wonder, the third..."

36) What was Roland Rat's gerbil pal called?

37) The first space shuttle, which had its maiden flight in 1981, was called what?

38) If there was something strange in your neighbourhood, who were you gonna call?

39) Who did Joan Collins play in Dynasty?

40) Jill and Trevor got involved with the Affair, the Tapes and the Connection in which mid-to-late '80s TV trilogy?

41) Ethel, Harry and Dawn lived at which house?

42) Del and Rodney lived in a block of flats called?

43) Which group of American senior citizens ate lots of cheesecake in Miami?

44) A disaster in 1986 caused radiation levels to rise across Europe. What was it?

45) When was the first London Marathon run?

46) In which year did Brighton Nudist Beach open?

47) Which popular diet was published in 1982?

48) When did the Berlin Wall come down?

49) Which alien was stranded on Earth in 1982?

50) The BIG fashion trend of the 1980s.

ANSWERS

1) Toto Coelo; 2) CB radio; 3) Ted Moult; 4) EastEnders; 5) The Hungarian Magic Cube was re-manufactured and became Rubik’s Cube. 6) The Apple Macintosh; 7) The World Wide Web; 8) Deelyboppers; 9) Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States; 10) The hand-held cellular phone; 11) An Ology; 12) Cabbage Patch Dolls; 13) Weetabix; 14) House Music; 15) Haysi Fantayzee; 16) The Sinclair C5; 17) Trivial Pursuit; 18) Marilyn; 19) 1982 - Michael Fagan; 20) 1985; 21) - Gilbert; 22) Barbara Woodhouse; 23) Channel 4; 24) Juliet Bravo; 25) Holness - Blockbusters; 26) The Young Ones; 27) The Kids From Fame; 28) Yuppies; 29) An alligator - Elvis; 30) 1982; 31) Albion Market; 32) Erika Roe; 33) Pac-Man; 34) Choose Life; 35) “…will have you on your knees”; 36) Kevin; 37) Columbia; 38) Ghostbusters; 39) Alexis; 40) Beiderbecke; 41) Number 73; 42) Nelson Mandela House; 43) The Golden Girls; 44) Chernobyl; 45) 1981; 46) 1980; 47) The F-Plan; 48) 1989; 49) ET; 50) Shoulder Pads

How You Rate:

0-10: Were you not born? A tiny wee kiddie? Asleep? Living it up too much to observe the details of life?

11-20: Several squares short of a Rubik’s Cube. You don’t get a seat on the board.

21-30: You’ve certainly got the big hair, but not the shoulder pads. In fact your performance is a little on the Cabbage Patch side.

31-40: Well, my pretty good guy or guyess, twang those big red braces and make free with the hair gel. You’re going places!

41-50: You’ve got it all - the Rubik’s Cube, the ZX Spectrum, the docksiders, the deelyboppers, the designer stubble, the braces, the shoulder pads, the shell suit, the leggings, the jelly shoes… In fact, you’re absolutely tubular!

The Beiderbecke Affair: Which Way To Aristophanes Street?

2011-12-27T23:38:00.001Z

Jill Swinburne (Barbara Flynn) and Trevor Chaplin (James Bolam) break away from San Quentin High to go in search of Aristophanes Street...

It was a mysterious platinum blonde, selling mail order door to door in aid of the Cubs' football team, that drew local school teachers Jill Swinburne and Trevor Chaplin into a web of intrigue. Jazz enthusiast Trevor ordered a set of Bix Beiderbecke LPs from her. When the wrong records arrived, he set out to right things...

The trail initially led to an address in Aristophanes Street, but the mystery deepened when Trevor and Jill discovered that Aristophanes Street has been demolished just before they arrived...

And, in 2011, this led to an e-mail to '80s Actual from Chris:

I've been reading about Aristophanes Street, Leeds, on the Secret Leeds site, and wonder if it actually existed outside of the Beiderbecke Affair TV series of 1985. Have you any information? The street sign featured in the series looks very authentic.

Janey, the mysterious platinum blonde (Sue Jenkins)...

Aristophanes Street, Beiderbecke Land.

Alan Plater, the man who gave us the Beiderbecke Trilogy, invented Aristophanes Street, Chris. The street sign seen in The Beiderbecke Affair was created especially for the show. The Beiderbecke Affair was filmed in the summer of 1984 when some slum clearances were taking place in Leeds, and the production team selected one doomed road to pose as Aristophanes Street, filming there just after it was pulled down, with a derelict shop still standing on the corner to hold the sign.

Detective Sergeant Hobson (Dominic Jephcott) and Big Al (Terence Rigby) with some files.

Trevor discovers something rather sinister.

Read our main Beiderbecke Trilogy features here.

Rare Emmerdale Farm '80s Radio Shows Unearthed!

2011-12-27T11:38:00.003Z

Jack Sugden (Clive Hornby) reflects on life at Emmerdale Farm in the 1980s.

I've just been transported back to 1983 to spend some time with the late, much-loved Emmerdale Farm/Emmerdale actor Clive Hornby. Clive played the legendary Jack Sugden, making his debut on 19 February 1980, and was in the show until shortly before his death in 2008.

During that time, the show was transformed, rocketing out of the (by comparison) sleepy 1980s and into the 1990s and early 21st Century, keeping pace with the other English soaps via a thoroughly modern flavour, geared to the evolving tastes of soap fans across the country.

Through all the drama and comedy, there was Clive Hornby as Jack Sugden, providing a lovely thread of continuity back to the old days - as Elizabeth Estensen said in tribute to the character "Always the farmer".

It was an idea of Carl Gresham AKA "The Gresh", a DJ on Pennine Radio in 1983, to make use of his contacts with the stars of Emmerdale Farm and invite six of them into the studio over a period of about two months - to each present an hour of their favourite music. The Gresh put on his producer's hat for the shows, it being his plan not to interview the stars but simply to let them talk, choose their favourite tunes, and then play the music. Judging by the Clive Hornby hour I have just listened to, it made for marvellous radio.

But it's a long way back to 1983, times and technology have changed dramatically, and The Gresh, faced with the old Ampex ten inch tapes he had kept of the shows (he's a self confessed hoarder!) faced some discouragement from those that thought the tapes would be useless now - they would have degenerated, gone "crumply".

The Gresh persevered, and passed the tapes to his archive producer, Dave Perrett, and, after much work, the interviews were transferred to CD and sound as though they were recorded yesterday!

The Clive Hornby show was originally broadcast on Thursday, 10th November, 1983.

It's a lovely listen, an unexpectedly unearthed piece of Emmerdale history - and makes a tremendous tribute to Clive - who tells us a bit about his youth in the 1960s, the decade from which most of his favourite records originate. There's also a chance to hear the Dennisons - the pop group which featured Clive as drummer - and Clive also relates the story of how he became one of the first people ever to hear a certain classic 1960s hit, comes up with a song which captures the complexities of being seventeen years old, and slips in a request for another Emmerdale Farm cast member.

Throughout the hour, Clive comes across as being a thoroughly down to earth and likeable man who would have made a great companion for an evening's chat in the Woolpack Inn, Beckindale - or anywhere else.

If you'd like to hear Clive's musical choice, the show is available on a CD, available from:

PO Box 3. Bradford. West Yorkshire. BD1 4QN

The cost is £5.00 - including postage - and we think it's an absolute bargain. Please make cheques payable to Carl Gresham. We don't usually go in for advertising or selling things at '80s Actual, but this CD is, in our opinion, absolutely priceless!

Clive (far left) with his fellow cast members - the folks at Emmerdale Farm - summer 1984.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T00:21:00.002Z

Back to 1980 and 1987 for two of my favourite Chistmas hits of all-time. Merry Christmas to '80s Actual readers - and thanks xx

'80s Christmas Memories - Bob Holness And A Cuddly hedgehog...

2011-12-20T23:33:00.001Z

Christmas is just around the corner, and I'm startled by the suddenness of it all! Where did 2011 go?

Anyway, to celebrate the forthcoming festivities, here's a little look back at a favourite celebrity of that decade, with a Christmas flavour.

Blockbusters began in America in October 1980, and the UK version in August 1983. The UK version was, of course, presented by Bob Holness, and in this 1985 TV Times article, Bob recalls a favourite Christmas present:

"One of the nicest stocking fillers I've ever had was a glove puppet hedgehog, who quickly became christened Harold the Hedgehog.

"My wife, Mary, knows I have a soft spot for cuddly animals such as Harold and she gave him to me at Christmas 1983. He's becoming something of a national celebrity now, having appeared with me on two series of Blockbusters.

"Harold is in good company on the show. Most of the young contestants in the series have mascots like him."

Was there ever a kinder and more polite quiz master than Bob? We loved the show. Happy days... so far removed from Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link...

Read our full Blockbusters history here.

Bullseye

2011-12-20T00:10:00.004Z

In 1981 Bullseye arrived, and in this post you'll find a couple of pics of Jim Bowen and Bully - super, smashing, great!

The pics are actually slightly later than 1981 - as the Central TV logo on them proves - 1981 was the final year of ATV, and Bullseye began as an ATV show.

This review from the Daily Mirror, 3 October, 1981, is not exactly filled with praise for the show...

Contestants on "Bullseye", the downbeat darts quiz from ATV, seem to have been picked out for punishment - and I don't mean having to meet Jim Bowen, the gloomy-faced host.

Of the three couples who played on Monday, two went home empty handed. One of them - the chap was unemployed - had to give back the meagre cash sum Jim had dispensed.

Worse still, at the end of the show they had to go to the back of the stage to study the star prize, a car, they had just failed to win.

The reviewer did not share the taste of the viewing public on this occasion - because we adored Bullseye and it soon became one of our top quiz shows.

Odd to think that Bullseye was once broadcast on a Monday - it was in the Sunday teatime slot that the show became a legend, complete with Jim's daft sayings, Bully's Special Prize and the infamous "Look at what you could've won!" bits.

A lot of people I know loved Bullseye. Must say, I was absolutely hooked myself - from the atmospheric opening music with that gorgeous pub piano to "Look at what you could've won!" - it was required viewing for me for many years!

These bendy Bullys are now quite collectable.

Presenter Jim Bowen, back for series two...

Sunday Mirror, 10 October 1982 - Bullseye is back for another series - and has now moved to its familiar Sunday teatime slot!

Series creator Andrew Wood had spent months studying game shows from aound the world before the Bullseye format was born in 1980. Writing on his own website, he tells us:

I was convinced that the written format was at the heart of the show and it would be the base on which the show would be built. The format had to be strong, one which could stand the test of time, whilst being both practical and affordable and it would place the contestants at the heart of the show and the host would be the conductor, leading the way. And thus in 1980 the Bullseye format was born, going on to achieve not just unparalleled success, but it would be come one of the most treasured and loved shows on British television.

Click here for a visit to the site - it's very well worth it!

Wham! Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart - And China...

2011-12-18T00:06:00.000Z

Heady days for George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. Asked in 1984 what makes a great pop song, they replied:

George: "A great pop song has something about it that will appeal to millions of people. There are different ways of doing that. You can do it in a crass way like 'Agadoo'. Or in an uplifting way like the way we do it in."

Andrew: "It should be some form of emotion in extreme. I'll tell you why I think 'Two Tribes' [Frankie Goes To Hollywood] is so good. You get incredible energy, excitement and that really sad synthesizer bit in the middle. Two absolute extremes."

Santa Wham!

The Sun, 1/12/1984.

Last Christmas was soon to be released. Now it seems almost as much a part of Christmas as cards, tinsel, trees, and Santa.

Two famous faces pop out of Christmas costumes - Wham! superstar George Michael and Andy Ridgeley.

They staged the frolic for the launch of their latest single, Last Christmas.

George played Santa Claus, carrying a sackful of presents. Andy donned a reindeer rig-out.

Their Christmas caper will be pictured on the sleeve of their new record, which is released on Monday.

And Wham! reckon it will just sleigh their fans.

The pop princes flew to Geneva last month to make a video promoting the disc. George's girlfriend, sultry singer Pat Fernandez, also appears in the film.

One of the crew said yesterday: "Snow was all around, but their love was keeping them warm."

1985: Wham! were the first Western pop group to be invited to play in China. As one pop journalist pointed out:

There are no pop charts in China; only a year ago, discos were unheard of and dancing wasn't allowed.

George Michael opined:

"One of the many reasons the Chinese chose Wham! to play and not other groups who've asked was because of what we represent: optimism and inspiration. Also we're at the opposite end of the scale to what China sees as the decadent rock acts of The West. You know - sex, drugs, scandal. The thing with us was that there was no angle. That's why I suppose Fleet Street have had to make one up."

1984: Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas?

2011-12-17T02:19:00.000Z

What a year was 1984... Sir Alec Jeffreys at Leicester University, England, discovered DNA fingerprinting - entirely accidentally; Trivial Pursuit blasted in; the Miners' Strike brought angst and uproar; and a group of pop stars got together to make a record aimed at "feeding the world..."

Supergroup Band Aid's disc to aid Ethiopian famine victims has zoomed straight to the top of the pop charts.

And the double single, Do They Know It's Christmas? Feed The World has set a record of its own by selling an amazing 600,000 in Britain and 1,250,000 worldwide in just ONE WEEK. This makes the record - made by a host of British pop stars to help the relief fund - the fastest-selling single ever.

Gallup, who compile the official record industry and BBC pop charts, said: "It's incredible. At this rate it'll also be the biggest selling record ever."

The stars, including Boy George and Bob Geldof, hope Ethiopia can now quickly get £1 million for food and medicines from disc sales. For each £1.35 record sold, 96.03p goes to the fund.

Detail from the record cover. Band Aid in 1984 begat Live Aid in 1985. More here.

1989 - Tim Berners-Lee - The Invention Of The World Wide Web...

2011-12-03T00:50:00.000Z

It's hard to imagine the world without WWW. but in the 1980s that's just how it was. The basis for the Internet had been invented in the 1960s and was up and running by the end of that decade - this was ARPANET, developed by the USA's Department of Defence.

During the 1980s, the home computing era got underway, but it was the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 which would transform attitudes to computers in the 1990s and create a whole new way of life. Have you checked your e-mails? Updated your web site/blog? Checked Wikipedia's latest suspect information? No? Well, better get to it. It's as easy as shelling peas.

This is thanks to an English software engineer, Tim Berners-Lee. The origins of the idea for the Web can be traced back to June - December 1980, when Mr Berners-Lee wrote ENQUIRE, his first computer program for storing information. At this time he was working a six month stint as a consultant software engineer at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.

He left CERN for a spell, returning in 1984, and in March 1989 invented the World Wide Web.

From Tim Berners-Lee's own site biography:

A graduate of Oxford University, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN , the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread.

Click on the red text to go to Sir Tim's site.

Up and running in the early 1990s, the Web made the Internet easy for all and things would never be the same again.

And even confirmed technophobes like me, who had looked at the emerging home computer era with trepidation back in the 1980s, are now happily surfing the Web.

Thank you, Sir Tim!

March 1989 - the historic document!

Tim Berners-Lee at the www@20 celebration at CERN, 13 March, 2009.

Postbox - Einstein A Go Go, Favourite '80s Years, And More...

2011-10-29T16:24:00.005+01:00

The '80s, the '80s, the '80s were best - I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest!

Pap writes:

One of my favourite 1980s songs is Einstein A Go Go from 1981, by Landscape. You've never mentioned it. How dare you not?

Well, Pap, now we ARE mentioning it! Yes, lovely piece of synthpop, great video. Here's a piece of rare Landscape pop trivia: did you know that in 1980, when the group was starting work on Einstein A Go Go, they actually phoned President Carter's secretary, and that she is the voice heard on the single, apologising for the fact that the President can't speak to them? Of course, President Carter was very busy in 1980, fighting the election campaign against Ronald Reagan, which is probably why he was too busy to come to the phone!

According to Landscape, interviewed in 1981, Carter's secretary was rather nice to talk to, and their call to the White House ran up their phone bill more than a little!

Ronni asks:

How about a poll of favourite '80s years on here? My personal faves are 1982 and 1986. Or perhaps 1981 and 1988, or...

Sounds like a good idea, haven't done a poll for ages. We're kind of stuck on 1982 and 1987. But, then again, 1980 and 1988 pull on the old heart strings as do 1984 and 1986 and...

Karen enquires:

When are you resuming your look at the 1980s house? I was loving it - lots of great tips!

Hopefully soon, Karen - sorry for the long break. It's all down to my paid work getting in the way! x

Pump Up The Jam - Changing Charts Of 1989...

2011-10-28T23:54:00.005+01:00

In the final year of the glorious decade, we saw Technotronic arrive. Formed in 1988, this Belgian group wasted no time, releasing Pump Up The Jam in 1989, complete with distinctive (and sometimes blue-lipped) Felly as singer in the video, and their first album Technotronic, which contained other goodies such as Rockin' Under The Beat in November '89.

But distinctive (and sometimes blue lipped) Felly wasn't the singer. Ya Kid K was the one, and with that revelation, the picture of Felly on the album's cover was removed!

Pump Up The Jam reached No 2 in the UK hit parade in September 1989. Enjoy it by the magic of YouTube above!

Smells Like JR Ewing...

2011-10-07T00:31:00.004+01:00

From Titbits, April 4, 1981. It was a interesting time for men, the 1980s. Did you aspire to be an '80s Man (or New Man)? Or did you want to go round smelling like JR Ewing of Dallas fame? The choice was yours. The "JR" range was launched in 1980.

Treasure Hunt

2011-10-06T23:58:00.004+01:00

Anneka with her intrepid sound and camera men, Graham Berry and Frank Meyburgh.

1982 brought us Channel 4, a new telly channel with lots of fresh goodies - including Treasure Hunt - the first series was filmed in '82 and screened into early 1983.

The idea for Treasure Hunt came from France - the creative genius in this case was one Jacques Antoine. In 1980, he came up with the idea for a brand new series called La Chasse au trésor and filmed a pilot episode. There was just a single contestent, and no helicopter - a boat was used instead. Refined and honed, La Chasse au trésor went on air as a series in March 1981, and with Channel 4 cranking up for its November 1982 debut, it wasn't long before the idea was spotted...

Of course, there were some differences between the French and English versions of the show, but basically all Treasure Hunt devotees owe Jacques Antoine a big "Thank You" for coming up with the idea in the first place.

Anneka Rice, she of the colourful lycra outfits, was quite sedate for the first Channel 4 series or so, as she sped around the British Isles - and occasionally further afield - in a helicopter, looking for clues so that studio bound contestants could win a cash prize. But it didn't take long for her lively personality to assert itself and soon she was shrieking her head off, chattering away ten-to-the-dozen via a radio link with Kenneth Kendall and the contestants in the studio or, face-to-face, with the general public, helicopter pilot Captain Keith Thompson, and camera and sound men Graham Berry and Frank Meyburgh.

She livened things up no end.

Members of the "Treasure Hunt" team, including Anneka, Graham and Frank and pilot Captain Keith Thompson (far left).

Treasure Hunt is a show I remember fondly.

Some fascinating facts about the series from the 1988 Look-In annual...

Each new series involves no less than 13 months of hectic organisation, and the process begins in November when ideas for new locations are considered. Local maps are checked, guide books are read and tourist offices are contacted about any special events which may be happening during filming. The following month, a list of 15 proposed locations is completed after confirmation that general flying conditions in each area are satisfactory.

In January, two of the team set out for an eight-week tour of the locations to see if they look good, to assess the interest of clue sites, and to establish a good route. Approaches are made to secure landing permissions, and the co-operation of site owners.Channel 4 broadcasts an announcement inviting hopeful contestants to write in, then application forms are sent out, and replies considered, in February.

In March, the best 15 courses are worked out and presented to the producer and director, and then the final 13 chosen. From the thousands who write in, 250 pairs of applicants are invited to attend an interview session.

By April, the task of obtaining permissions from all involved at locations is still under way. Captain Keith Thompson, the chief pilot, contacts local airfields to get the go-ahead for landing and flight paths from local air traffic controllers. Contestants’ interviews are held in various parts of the country.

The final selection of contestants is completed in May; one pair per programme plus one stand-by couple in case the first can’t take part. The producer, director, researcher and clue writer are flown to each location by Keith Thompson for a 10-day period to carefully test each idea. A communications expert organises the rental of special telephone lines from British Telecom and talks to the Independent Broadcasting Authority about the use of local broadcast frequencies. Both are crucial factors to the programme; without them Kenneth Kendall and company back in the TV studio would have no contact with the crew out on location.

During May and early June, dates and locations are confirmed with everyone involved, from the police and the Civil Aviation Authority to property owners. Work begins on clues and Chris Gage, the director, organises the Ordnance Survey maps to be used in the studio. Camera scripts are prepared.

The middle of June is crunch time: it’s when each series is recorded over five intense and hectic weeks during which the location crew work and live closely together. With the filming completed, the painstaking task of editing begins in August. And ends in November! By December, everyone breathes a sigh of relief when the finished programmes are presented to Channel 4 for transmission.

Although bad weather is a constant hazard, only rarely has a shoot had to be postponed. Such a time was when a sudden, heavy fog descended on the helicopter after a tricky landing made by Captain Keith Thompson in a car park. Anneka had to run into a nearby factory in search of a clue when Keith decided that further filming should be abandoned. Two days later, filming was resumed in bright sunshine, and as Anneka ran out of the factory she said: “My goodness, it’s cleared up a bit while I’ve been in there!”

Anneka has to be prepared for literally anything on the programme. “Malcolm [producer Malcolm “The Captain” Heyworth] often rings me up and makes a casual suggestion that I could learn some new energetic pastime which might be called for in one of the programmes,” she grins. “Last time it was scuba diving. I spent many weeks at the bottom of my local baths with tanks on my back for two hours at a stretch until I mastered it.”

The whereabouts of the “Treasure Hunt” clues are shrouded in such secrecy that Anneka is confined to her hotel until the day of the shoot. The only advance information she has then is the starting point of her take-off!

Anneka has nothing but admiration for Graham Berry and Frank Meyburgh, who never leave her side during recordings. “They have to stay with me every step of the way,” she says, “and theirs is a more strenuous job than mine because they have to carry all their equipment, whether it’s up a mountain or to a rock out to sea."

Fresh Cream Cakes. Naughty. But Nice...

2011-10-03T16:15:00.000+01:00

Good heavens - it's Ada and Cissie scoffing a magnificent fresh cream cake, drinking tea and looking through holiday brochures...

These two, otherwise known as Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough, had me laughing for years - Ada (Les) hitching up her breast, giving her many ailments an airing and mouthing the names of various afflicted body parts and Cissie (Roy) struggling to keep the conversation genteel.

The 1980s were a good decade for Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough - with Les successfully replacing Terry Wogan as host of Blankety Blank and Roy becoming a full-time fixture in Coronation Street as Alec Gilroy.

In 1984 the two were appearing on a series of advertisements in the long-running fresh cream cakes series. Most of us were well happy. But a few people weren't...

From the Sunday Mirror, 17/6/1984:

A Real Mouthful For Les

Top bakers find comic Les Dawson's TV cream cake commercials a bit hard to swallow.

They reckon Les, dressed as a buxom housewife as he gobbles up cakes before wiping his cream-smeared face with the back of his hand, gives a "degrading" image.

Mr Tony Cavan, of the 3,000-member National Association of Master Bakers, said: "Les talks with his mouth full and cream is squelching all over the place. It is all very unpleasant."

Les commented: "I don't know why the bakers should get so crusty."

Personally, I thought the ads were excellent. See two of them below...

Lotta Bottle - 1982 - The Beginning Of The Famous Milk Ads

2011-09-30T00:20:00.003+01:00

" Daily Mirror", November 3, 1983: an ad campaign launched in 1982 had given rise to a new catchphrase...

Three of the original 1982 "Gotta Lotta Bottle" TV ads, revealing far better than any written words the life, colour and brashness of the 1980s! Look out for the Eighties/New Man and Zara Nutley, the fearsome lady from Mind Your Language - "WELL!" Nice cold, ice cold milk - The daily pinta would never seem the same again...

Graham Thomas, formerly of Allen, Brady and Marsh, which produced the ads, wrote about the 1982 "Gotta Lotta Bottle" campaign a few years ago:

Everybody thought that natural goodness was very nice. They also thought that it was extraordinarily boring and old-fashioned - that is if they were thinking about it at all.

When we won Milk it was because we were able to convince the Milk clients that what milk needed was a complete change of personality. ABM transmuted natural goodness into "gotta lotta bottle."

Within a matter of weeks, "gotta lotta bottle" was part of the language and whilst today it may seem on the staid side, back in 1982 it was a revolution for milk.

"We wanted to get away from the middle class, worthy image that milk had and we went particularly for a very young boisterous approach. We quite literally broke all the rules" said Rod Allen, Executive Creative Director, at the time.

Run DMC, England, 1985!

2011-09-25T02:34:00.000+01:00

Run D.M.C. hailed from New York's Queens district. Their involvement as youngsters with the underground club scene placed them in a good position when the rap scene began to blossom into the hip-hop scene in the 1980s. "Sucker M.C.s" and "It's Like That" had been dance hits in America earlier in the decade, and soon Run DMC were merging rock with rap on releases like "Rock Box".

In early 1985, they performed at Buzby's in London.

1987: The Great Gale And The Stock Market Crash...

2011-09-25T02:26:00.000+01:00

Much is made of Michael Fish's reassurances that all was well on the night of the gale, but apparently he simply reassured viewers, after a telephoned query to the BBC, that there wasn't going to be a hurricane that night. The wind never reached hurricane force, so perhaps we should let him off? Mind you, I can't help thinking that Auntie Beeb and co should have been aware that something was brewing!

From The Times, 17/10/1987...

Eighteen people died and hundreds were injured as yesterday's storms, the worst in memory, left a trail of destruction as they cut across southern England.

The Government demanded an urgent report from the Meteorological Office into its failure to alert the nation to the impending storms.

The Met Office was warned of the risk of very high winds four days ago by the most sophisticated weather forecasting computer in the world.

The devastation left by the gales could cost up to £300 million in insurance claims, although earlier estimates put the figure at around £100 million.

Government ministers demanded an urgent report last night from the Meteorological Office in to why it failed to alert the nation to the worst storms in living memory.

The almost hurricane-force winds claimed at least 18 lives, cut electricity to millions of homes, and caused £100 million of damage early yesterday.

After a meeting of senior ministers, Mr Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, said the storms had caused "the most widespread night of disaster in the south-east of England since 1945"...

Extract from Peacetime Echo of the Blitz, The Times, 17/10/1987:

When future generations crowd at the knee to ask: "What did you do in the Great Wind, Daddy?" the boldest will answer for sure: "I walked." As London awoke yesterday from a night when even its bravest buildings seemed to be howling, it was to darkness and to stillness.

Then the first humans came into view. They looked footsore but triumphant, coming together in twos and threes to walk together in streets without traffic to destinations in office blocks without lights. "How's your house?" was an invariable greeting, uttered with an almost superstitious awe.

As they walked, they talked with stoic modesty: "Well, I was lucky. Got a lift in a bread van to Kingston. Then the bus came. Never been to the Elephant before, but I thought it would save me a mile or so, I thought 'here goes'. Only took me an hour after that."

They walked looking about them at the bizarre. The pot plants standing on a traffic island. The traffic cone in the window of a sandwich bar. The deckchair atop a bush in St James's Park; the racing skiff from the Serpentine, now embedded in the branches of a tree. A man in the electricity showroom pumping at a gas burner to brew tea...

Whatever next? We didn't have long to wait to find out...

The Yuppie Millionaire's Guide To The Good Life, an article published in The Times on 19th October 1987, featured news of the arrival of a new American magazine simply called Millionaire, which bore the subtitle "Lifestyles of the working rich".

To quote the article:

Even the advertisements appeal to raw indulgence. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" goes the pitch in the full page [advertisement] for Maserati.

The publisher of "Millionaire" is Mr Douglas Lambert, the Florida millionaire who started "Playgirl". He says he is not aiming at the older, idle variety of rich, but at the younger battalions who have emerged from the business boom of the Reagan years, "the person who is out there earning money and wants to spend it on nice things".

He says: "I have no problem with that. I think the attitudes of the 1960s are gone." A brief excursion in Manhattan is enough to convince anyone that Mr Lambert is understating it. Eavesdrop on any gathering of under-35-year-olds and the topic is almost always related to money.

But the article also recorded the fact that more and more Americans felt the boom era was drawing to a close as the stock market suffered "daily jitters".

Ironically, the 19th October 1987, the very day that the yuppie millionaire's guide to the good life article appeared in The Times, will forever be remembered as "Black Monday"...

1987, which had started out as such a sleek, shoulder-padded, money-worshipping beast, had suddenly gone completely off its rocker...

From The Times, October 20th 1987.

Crowds of dazed young brokers milled around Wall Street yesterday evening trying to come to terms with the unthinkable - the roaring Eighties, the years of easy prosperity, could be over.

As Mr John Phelan, chairman of the Stock Exchange, sat in the ornate boardroom putting a brave face on the day's massacre, tireless young operators stood in the street and agreed: "Maybe this is the big melt-down."

"I've lost my shirt today as well as the money of a lot of other guys," said one stereotype of the Yuppies who swarmed to the financial world to reap the benefits of the Reagan boom.

"We knew this was coming one day," said another, equipped with the red braces and horn-rim glasses that are the badge of office for the generation who came straight from college and have never seen a bear market.

A few streets away, in Harry's Bar, crowds of young brokers swilled their beer from the bottle, their hands trembling from the day's havoc but still cracking nervous jokes. "Maybe we should call it Fall Street," said one, glancing at The New York Post with its banner headline "Wall Street Goes Mad".

"Tomorrow's another day. Perhaps we'll see it go up another three hundred again when it opens tomorrow," one hopeful operator said. Jokes about leaping from windows abounded, but there was a feeling that the country was not in such bad shape as it was in 1929.

Older hands said they saw an end to the collapse provided the market came to its senses within the next few days. They pointed to the continuing strength of the economy, still growing after the longest post-war expansion.

But it was obvious nothing would be the same again after Black Monday. A black man on a bicycle seized the mood when he shouted at the brokers: "Freedom! The Reagan revolution is over. Death to Yuppies."

A tubby broker bellowed back at him: "Whoever dies with the most toys wins. We start over again tomorrow."

Terry's Chocolate Orange Famous 1980s TV Ad...

2011-09-21T22:39:00.008+01:00

This wonderfully witty ad was clearly inspired by the 1981 film Indiana Jones & The Raiders Of The Lost Ark! One of the people who worked on the ad has since joked that the makers were worried about being sued by George Lucas, and also joked that the lava featured in the ad may have helped inspire the next Indiana Jones epic - The Temple Of Doom! The ad's director was Paul Weiland, and it first appeared on-screen around 1983. The working title of the ad was "Safe". The late actor John Ringham, also Norman Warrender in popular '80s sit com Just Good Friends, played the ad's fearless hero.

Talk Talk - Bringing Back The '80s...

2011-09-21T01:53:00.001+01:00

Talk Talk formed in 1981, and their music has the ability to lead me back to my '80s youth... so that I can almost touch it. Almost be there.

But not quite.

Those rough-edged, highly turbulent but still much simpler days are gone.

Forever.

Above you'll find Talk Talk's 1982 hit Today... I was seventeen... wore a donkey jacket for fashion... worked as an office clerk... played on the CB... smoked, went to discos and down the pub. I didn't have a ZX Spectrum. Nerdy rubbish. Computers were just a passing fad anyway...

And on to 1984... It's My Life... no more office clerking... now a Social Services Care Assistant... wanted to CARE, do something MEANINGFUL... I was idealistic AND cynical... booze, nightclubs and sex ruled my free time...

1985: Life was what I made it... sex and music and dancing and booze and hair gel and cheap flash clothes - tweak those shoulder pads, push up those sleeves... Mobile phones? Yuppie toys - they'll never catch on!... pose at the Nite Spot... sink eight pints of Stella...

And then, suddenly, completely out of the blue, I fell in love - properly in love for the very first time - and my life slid totally out of my control...

Wanted - Bixie Weetabix Badge

2011-08-28T00:51:00.004+01:00

'80s Actual reader Billy has been in touch to appeal for a 1980s Weetabix badge like the one pictured above - Bixie - Aerobix. He will be happy to pay for one, so, if you can help, please send your e-mail address to actual80s@btinternet.com and I'll pass it on to Billy.

Read all our Weetabix stuff here - OK?!

1989: The True End Of The Cold War

2011-08-21T01:39:00.008+01:00

Faye asks:

Did the Cold War end in 1989 or 1991?

There seem to be differing views on this and I'd value yours!

I'll give you the view of Mikhail Gorbachev, who became Soviet President in March 1985, interviewed by Katrina vanden Heuval and Stephen F Cohen of The Nation Magazine in November 2008, Faye!

Mikhail Gorbachev:

... If President Ronald Reagan and I had not succeeded in signing disarmament agreements and normalizing our relations in 1985-88, the later developments would have been unimaginable. But what happened between Reagan and me would also have been unimaginable if earlier we had not begun perestroika in the Soviet Union. Without perestroika, the cold war simply would not have ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war ever present.

Sometimes people ask me why I began perestroika. Were the causes basically domestic or foreign? The domestic reasons were undoubtedly the main ones, but the danger of nuclear war was so serious that it was a no less significant factor. Something had to be done before we destroyed each other. Therefore the big changes that occurred with me and Reagan had tremendous importance. But also that George H.W. Bush, who succeeded Reagan, decided to continue the process. And in December 1989, at our meeting in Malta, Bush and I declared that we were no longer enemies or adversaries.

KVH/SFC:

So the cold war ended in December 1989?

MG:

I think so.

KVH/SFC:

Many people disagree, including some American historians.

MG:

Let historians think what they want. But without what I have described, nothing would have resulted.

When you consider that after Reagan and Gorbachev first met in 1985, Reagan declared: "Gorbechev is a diehard Bolshevik!" and Gorbachev stated that Reagan was "A real dinosaur!" it seems amazing just how their relationship thawed. Do read the full article, it's fascinating (here), but the dramatic events of 1989 certainly left most of us agreeing with Mikhail Gorbachev that the Cold War had ended. Things no longer felt "Cold" and there seemed no prospect of a "War".

Why this tendency persists to state that the Cold War ended in 1991 with the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, I don't know. I suspect though that many of the "great and good", including many highly respected historians, have a hard time allowing the limelight to fall on the 1980s, a decade many of them like to scapegoat and revile.

So they gabble things like: "and in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. In 1991 a whole new era began as the Cold War ended and the world looked on stunned as the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place before their very eyes..."

1989 - the year the Cold War ended? I'm sure that sticks in more than a few priggish gullets! But I'd much rather listen to Gorbachev.

1980s Shoulder Pads

2011-08-19T23:48:00.000+01:00

Jason Donovan of Neighbours and Stock, Aitken and Waterman fame sports some very big and lovely shoulder pads. And a mullet.

Ah, shoulder pads! Ah, the 1980s! So where's the link? As if we didn't know! Studying fashion via vintage mail order catalogues and fashion shop ads in my local newspaper archive is where I began my work of learning the realities about popular clothing of various decades.

By this, I don't mean the ultra sophisticated garb of the super rich, as seen on the posh fashion show catwalks (very Jan Howard!).

No, I mean what Sharon and Gary (or you and me) were wearing down at the "local", and which pop or TV stars they (or us) had been inspired by.

So, what about those shoulder pads? Well, '80s shoulder pads actually began as a chic retro revival. They were first around in the 1940s.

If you watch a TV programme from 1980, you will note the very ordinary-looking shoulders of the good folk on-screen. Shortly after this, small shoulder pads became prevalent. But, by the mid-1980s, COLOSSAL shoulder pads were everywhere. Nowadays, they make very amusing viewing.

It's tremendous fun to view several seasons of an '80s era American soap and watch those shoulders grow over the years!

Joan Collins of Dynasty fame was partly responsible, and where Dynasty flew, the rival American soaps followed as the female cast members howled for higher costume budgets and more "stylish" gear!

Shoulder pads became a required part of the power dressing image for women, and men also cottoned on to the trend. Well, those kindly pads tended to detract from a beer belly!

1940s shoulder pads had often been big. 1980s shoulder pads were usually bigger.

Sometimes absurdly so.

The era of the truly massive shoulder pad began around 1982/1983 and stretched on into the early 1990s.

Personally, I used to like them in a nice pastel linen jacket, with the sleeves pushed up.

Unashamedly an '80s fashion victim!

And why not?

The '80s are sometimes called "The Style Decade". But the trouble was the styles were often too brash, too "in your face". A lot of us were "dead common" back then. And a lot of the styles - like those oh-so-stylish shoulder pads were horrendously OTT!

Fun, though...

Kate (Susan St James) of the American sit com Kate And Allie wears very clearly defined and MASSIVE shoulder pads. Very smart indeed!

Some 1982 Magazine Ads: "Don't Say Vinegar. Say Sarson's"...

2011-08-19T23:44:00.000+01:00

Trawling through a mountain of 1982 magazines, I came across these goodies...

Remember "Don't Say Vinegar. Say Sarson's"?

"Take one soaking wet husband..."

A brilliant OXO ad for winter 1982, complete with a very acceptable recipe for crusty beef casserole.

The long-running fresh cream cakes "Naughty But Nice" TV ads had their magazine counterparts. Here, the Mona Lisa has a crafty nibble...

Curried beans? Ooh, no ta....

And finally, breaking off from the food theme, I recently had an e-mail from a woman apparently desperate to wear some 1980s fashion but without big hair, shoulder pads, lycra leggings, pixie boots, deelyboppers, etc, etc, etc.

Well, the above is perfect for you, madam! Actually, there's been a revival of '80s fashion on the boil for a while now, and I've seen similar colour schemes back on the streets.

Computer Technology 1988 - IT For The Terrified...

2011-08-19T23:42:00.000+01:00

TV Times, 10/11/1988: IT for the Terrified -

1: STORMY FRIDAY

Our world is increasingly dominated by new technology. So how can ordinary people be expected to understand what is happening?

Those were strange days indeed! I never thought I'd get to grips with computer technology back then - ever! I simply couldn't imagine it - the whole thing was far too complicated and what would be the point? I was far from being alone...

But the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 would end up bringing computers into just about ALL our lives.

Good programme, IT For The Terrified - I'd love to see it again. It would be quite nostalgic and fascinatingly dated!

Stone Cladding...

2011-08-19T23:40:00.000+01:00

Stone cladding was so much better than pebble dashing.

So much more elegant.

So much more modern.

So much more aesthetically pleasing.

Well, at least some people thought it was.

1983 - and having your house stone-cladded is becoming desirable. With the dosh floating around and the credit boom of the mid-to-late 1980s, "doin' up the 'ouse" in all sorts of ways became more and more popular.

This particular company offered:

NEW Unique 'Country Cottage' one-piece corner stones with traditional sawn stone finish. A revolutionary building development that eliminates unsightly vulnerable edges, to give you an unbelievably perfect finish - everytime...

So, whether you're a homeowner or in the process of buying your Council house, your home will take on a charming and unique character. If you ever decide to sell, you will probably find that you have added considerably to the value of your property...

Every stone is an object of natural beauty. Mellow Cotswold golds, ruggedly handsome greys, browns and delicate pastel shades are all available...

All that and improved sound proofing, thermal insulation and a thirty year guarantee!

1980: David Bowie On Ashes To Ashes: "A 1980s Nursery Rhyme"...

2011-08-19T03:46:00.004+01:00

1980 was a great year for David Bowie. Haunted by some Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) he brought us the brilliant Ashes To Ashes and Fashion. The videos (or promo's or whatever we called them back then) for these songs were very excellent indeed and nudged us on towards the video age and the New Romantic era.

I was particularly startled by the Ashes To Ashes video and song. David returned to good old Major Tom from 1969's Space Oddity.

My mother said to get things done you'd better not mess with Major Tom...

What a difference just over a decade had made! The super cool, spaced-out hippie Major Tom of 1969 was a junkie in 1980.

The video, complete with inky black sea and oddball characters trailed by a JCB, was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

As for exactly what the song and video mean, David Bowie has said an awful lot over the years, making me rather confused. However, his original explanation from 1980 is the one I find most interesting. Major Tom had been launched in 1969, the year Man landed on the Moon. The song became a hit in the July of that year. By the time Bowie returned to Major Tom, when work began on Scary Monsters in early 1980, more than ten years had passed and times and attitudes had changed.

Bowie said:

"When I was thinking of how I was going to place Major Tom in this, hence ten years later on, what would be the complete disillusion with the great dream that was being propounded when they shot him into space ten years ago, and had got such wonderful ideas. This great technology was capable of putting him up there, when he did get up there, he wasn't quite sure why he'd been put there and we left him there. But now we come to him ten years later and we find that the whole thing has soured because there was no reason for putting him up there. It was an ego, a technological ego which got him up there for no specific reason and just added more disaster because it was a potpourri of technical ideas, so the most disastrous thing I could think of is that he finds solace only in some kind of heroin type drug that the cosmic space itself is feeding him with, an addiction, and he wants now to return to the womb from whence he came.

"It's also a nursery rhyme. It's very much a 1980s nursery rhyme. I think 1980s nursery rhymes will have a lot to do with the 1880s/1890s nursery rhymes which were all rather horrid and had little boys with their ears being cut off and stuff like that. Well, I think we're getting round to that again. I think the idea of the Sesame Street nice nursery rhyme is possibly outdated - unfortunately."

Hmmm... but the 1980s child, the girls at least, were bombarded by the cutest of the cute, Cabbage Patch Dolls, Care Bears, My Little Pony, Keypers, Sylvanian Families - to name but a few... and I can't recall any new nursery rhymes at all. Well, apart from this one, obviously.

Probably best to simply enjoy the song for what it is - a flash of pure Bowie genius.

Hear the 1980 Bowie interview, in which he gives insights into the inspirations for various Scary Monsters tracks - including Ashes To Ashes, below.

1983: Yellow Pages TV Ad: "I Were Right About That Saddle Though!"

2011-08-17T02:46:00.005+01:00

This fondly remembered ad from 1983 was part of the "Good Old Yellow Pages" series which also launched JR Hartley of Fly Fishing fame the same year. In this, Peter Armitage, soon to make his debut as Bill Webster, father of Kevin (Michael Le Vell) in Coronation Street, plays a nice Northern Dad who, together with his nice Northern wife, buys his son a bike for his birthday - despite having some doubts about the saddle...

Voyage Voyage - Desireless

2011-08-07T01:30:00.010+01:00

This brings back memories of me, steeped in melencholy at the end of yet another broken romance, strolling round on warm summer evenings in 1988, gazing at the stars and the moon, sometimes quietly crying, with my personal stereo blaring away in sympathy. Loved this song back then. Still do.

Voyage Voyage, sung by Desireless - Claudie Fritsch-Mentrop - is in French and I don't speak French, but somehow this only added to the appeal of the song for the love-lorn 23-year-old lad, seeking not words but mood, I was back then.

The original version of the song had been written and recorded a year or so before (some sources say 1986, others 1987), but fame took time to spread. My favourite version was the 1988 Britmix - remixed by Pete Hammond and Peter Waterman. Hear it below.

Wonderful.

And what I wouldn't give to be 23 again.

Even if I was love-lorn at times.

Return To Crossroads - Forthcoming ATV Documentary On DVD...

2011-08-01T22:40:00.007+01:00

Meg Richardson (Noele Gordon) bravely turned the house and grounds left to her by her late husband, Charles, into a motel in the early 1960s. In 1965, she met successful businessman Hugh Mortimer (John Bentley). After ten years of an on/off romance, the couple married, but happiness was not to last. Hugh was kidnapped by terrorists in 1978 and died of a heart attack. Meg was left alone to face the terrible truth about the ruinous state of Hugh's finances...

The old ATV/Central soap opera Crossroads has left behind the most wonderful legacy, and I can find nothing more de-stressing after a hard day at work than to pop in a DVD and revisit my old friends at the motel. Whether it's Meg trying to get her hair done in the sitting room in the 1960s, Vera handing out advice on her barge in the 1970s, or Valerie toying with a Pussyfoot Special in the 1980s, there is no better way for me to let go of the pressures of the day and relax into off-duty mode. I could write a separate hymn of praise to the Brownlows in the early-to-mid 1980s, a family who seemed to somehow capture the essence of everyday life in my humble opinion, and, later in the decade the doings of Beverley and Jason Grice (probably one of the best representations of 1980s teenagers I ever saw), but time presses!

1980 - David Hunter (Ronald Allen) marries novelist Barbara Brady (Sue Lloyd).

Crossroads still thrives on-line, from sites on the brief 21st Century revival, to sites which examine the original series in great depth, to blogs like this. And one of the best sites to go and relive the series in any era is The Crossroads Network Forum, owned by ATV and linked to The Crossroads Appreciation Society, originally formed in 1988, and now absolutely thriving on-line. It's a great place to visit, and whether you loved Crossroads in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, early 21st Century or ALL of it, you can express your views here and be sure of a knowledgeable and appreciative audience, all happy to give their views in return and help to answer any queries you may have.

1980 - Paul Henry was hugely popular as Benny.

It was through this site that I originally got to hear the news that ATV, the old Midlands ITV franchise holder, had leapt back to life, and of exciting plans for a brand new documentary on Crossroads. Recently, I contacted Maria Brabiner, an ATV Director, to ask if she might have time to give readers of this blog some insights into ATV today and the Crossroads documentary, and was delighted when she happily agreed. Below is our question and answer session...

Andy: Can you tell me about ATV and its aims in the 21st Century, and the inspiration for the “Return To Crossroads” documentary?

Maria: ATV Network was “saved” from the skip by some members of the Crossroads Appreciation Society, ex-ATV staff and some, at the time, Carlton employees. Granada sent a memo telling them to “chuck away” ATV and Central material (excluding the film and videotape). The staff of course had other ideas and that is where ATV reborn came from. We’ve had help in rebuilding some items that were not saved (a whole warehouse of ATV paperwork was ‘overlooked’ in error and destroyed) from people such as Reg Watson. We also helped in a photograph search with ITV Archive for Crossroads images which ultimately thankfully the TV Times magazine had kept many of. The whole idea for ATV now is to promote the legacy of the Lord Lew Grade era, and provide correct information about the company rather than the myths some other big ITV companies like to colour ATV with to improve their own image in the history of the network.

As part of the promotion of ATV past we decided to look at the Company's often regarded most famous programme, Crossroads. An idea we first had in 2006, and the first footage recorded for it was in September of that year when ITV Central arranged a tour of the old Birmingham studios with some selected fan club members. The project went on hold for a while, while we waited for ITV to co-operate with several things we wanted assistance with, and resumed last year.

Christmas 1980 - Meg, Jill (Jane Rossington), and Sandy (Roger Tonge) celebrate.

Andy: The documentary is designed to appeal to fans of the original 1964-1988 run. Anything for fans of the revival in the early 21st Century?

Maria: We haven’t managed to record anyone from the new series as yet, although Sherrie Hewson did ‘tweet’ that she’d be interested in taking part. We’ll hopefully arrange some interviewees from the revival once we’ve completed the original series. In making the documentary we have found that actors from the 1960s to the early 1980s have been the most supportive of the project which does rather show that the crew did become like a second family, which was obviously lost in the later years and the revival didn’t have time to make those bonds.

Andy: That's really interesting, Maria. I think also that might be true of the era 1985-1988, which saw many changes to the cast and two new producers. There really wasn't a lot of time for things to settle and "gel" behind the scenes before the axing was announced in the summer of 1987.

Businessman J. Henry Pollard (Michael Turner) was never ashamed to admit he was "filthy rich". He and his daughter, Miranda (Claire Faulconbridge), first arrived in King's Oak in 1980. J. Henry's wife, Valerie (Heather Chasen), followed in 1982 - and then the trouble began...

Andy: Although it was panned by critics, large numbers of viewers loved Crossroads, and even after cast axings and revamps it still had a sizeable audience. What do you think its secret was?

Maria: I think Kathy Staff was right when she said it was a family show, that appealed to a wide audience. It was also successful, I would think, because of the time of night it went out and a lot of the audience would be having their tea as it aired. Families could watch it together. It had a warmth and characters people could relate to and either love or hate.

Moving with the times - yuppette Lisa Lancaster (Alison Dowling) shows off her '80s finery.

Andy: Who were your top three characters from the original run, and why are they your favourites?

Maria: This one is very easy for me to answer. I've no hesitiation in saying Meg, Hugh and Tish. Meg and Hugh Mortimer were the "Golden Couple" of television. 1976/1977 viewing figures for Crossroads made it the No. 1 top rated show of those two years beating allcomers at the BBC. It cannot be just down to co-incidence that this was the period when Meg was married, settled and enjoying life as a married lady to a rich, successful millionnaire businessman. Stories that the viewers liked to see. All down to the acting performances of Noele Gordon and John Bentley. My other character is Tish Hope. I liked Tish because she was Meg's best friend, her confidante, always on hand to advise Meg in any personal crisis. Tish being part of Meg's extended family. Something I'm sure the viewers just loved. Again all down to the lovely acting abilities of Joy Andrews. I still think it was a mistake to let Tish just "disappear"like many other characters did. She just went and never returned without an ending. The character of Tish was timeless and could have remained through any of the revamps I reckon.

1980s cast photographs of Angela Webb, who played sometimes bitchy, sometimes lovable Iris Scott, Ian Liston - dependable Ron Brownlow, Pamela Vezey - kind and motherly Kath Brownlow, Lynette McMorrough - motel waitress and desperate for a baby Glenda Brownlow, Peter Hill - the oft highly grumpy Arthur Brownlow, and David Moran - Glenda's handsome hubby, Kevin Banks. Arthur's opening story-line involved him being diagnosed with a terminal illness. In early 1980, it was discovered that there had been a mix-up, another Arthur Brownlow had died, and the King's Oak version lived on until 1982; Glenda married Kevin in 1981, and went on to have a test-tube baby in 1983; Ron fell in love with cousin Iris, but left to work on an oil rig after she had a phantom pregnancy; Kath went upwardly mobile after Arthur's death, by marrying posh school teacher Stephen Fellowes (John Line).

Andy: What was it like interviewing TV legends for the documentary?

Maria: None of us have really been star-struck of sorts. There was one small instance when for a few seconds I was, when in Birmingham Cathedral for the interview of Jane Rossington. She was saying her piece to camera when she suddenly stopped talking, turned to me and asked "Where was I up to". I was so busy watching her hands when she was talking doing the movements of the criss-cross Crossroads credit, that for those few seconds I was dumbstruck. It's never happened since ! The Crossroads actors are actually all so very friendly, its like talking to old friends. All so down to earth. Stan Stennett gave us a lift at one point, wearing the same hat that Sid Hooper used to. It was almost like being in an episode, so a little strange, but lovely of him. Tony Adams also dropped us off at a train station as we’d decided to commute to Brighton. Jane Rossington arrived at Birmingham Cathedral soaking wet as it was pouring down outside, and just started chatting away about how it had ruined her hairdo like we’d known her years. So they’ve all been a pleasure.

Andy: The 1980 shooting of David Hunter is now part of Crossroads legend. Can we expect anything from Janet Hargreaves, who played David’s deranged wife, Rosemary, in the documentary?

Maria: There are lots to come from Janet. She reveals something about Ronnie Allen that’s never been made public before, she also recreates the shooting scene, playing both parts! She did bring along her Rosemary costumes and she’s agreed to present the documentary as Rosemary so that will be fun I’m sure. Actually on revelations there are a couple, JoAnne Good also tells us something she believes she’s never told any other programme before, so we’ve been quite honoured really they like us so much!

The 1980 shooting of David Hunter by his deranged wife, Rosemary (Janet Hargreaves), is now part of Crossroads legend.

Andy: If Crossroads was to be revived again, could you name five characters you think would be essential for the series to succeed?

Maria: Jill & Adam Chance, Kate Russell, Sarah Jane Harvey, Sharon Metcalfe. Kate Russell was quite an effective figure in 2001. You need a strong woman, a "Meg type" figure at the helm.

But if a new series was to succeed I'd introduce a new character called Matthew Mortimer, grandson of Meg & Hugh Mortimer, son of Anthony Mortimer and Jill Chance. You'd have the battles between half brother/half sister, both grand-children of Meg. I think that would be interesting. it's a shame Matthew wasn't thought of in 2001.

Andy: Can you give us an idea of who will be appearing on the documentary?

Maria: A lot of classic era actors have been positive about the production, most very keen to take part. Obviously we’re tried to find a range of people from all the eras, we’re still working on some from the early days of the 1960s including one actress who now lives in France but wants to travel to London to record, just for us. That’s loyalty to the original series.

We’ve also lined up a few surprise interviews, which we can’t say anything too much on but I think people will be surprised to see some of the faces turn up. We have two top bosses from ATV for example who’ve never spoken before about the show before in any great detail but had the power to axe it in the 1970s and never did.

We were pleased when Sue Nicholls said yes as people still ask her about playing Marilyn in the show and also very happy to get Carolyn Jones on board as her role of Sharon is one of the most memorable and she of course appeared in the Noele Gordon era and after she’d gone so covers all those changes.

Andy: Sounds absolutely wonderful! Can't wait to see it!

For more information about the "Return To Crossroads" documentary DVD, please e-mail:

returntocrossroads@atvdvd.co.uk

1989: The Fall Of The Berlin Wall

2011-07-30T11:56:00.000+01:00

Thinking about 1989 the other night, two events sprang into my mind, followed by a whole battalion of others. I haven't much time, so I'll just toddle through the first two here...

The first of the 1989 events that came to mind when I focused the little grey cells on that memorable twelve months, was the invention of the World Wide Web by English software engineer Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Switzerland.

This event passed unnoticed by the vast majority of us at the time - we would not discover its wonderful, world-altering significance until the 1990s. Read all about it here.

The second event to trot into my noddle was the Fall of the Berlin Wall...

An absolutely stunning historical moment...

Here's how the Daily Mirror reported events on Saturday, November 11, 1989:

TOGETHER AT LAST
on the day the world became a better, braver place...

Holes were bulldozed in the Berlin Wall and East Germany promised free elections yesterday as thousands of her citizens continued to pour out to the West.

Minutes after the election announcement, East German bulldozers began smashing two more holes as exit points in the wall. And eight more border crossings will be made next week.

For the Communists it is a calculated gamble in an attempt to stem an exodus. For the East German people, already almost delirious with the pace of change, it is another giant step to freedom.

The East German Communist Party unveiled an amazing package of reforms, including free elections, changes in the economy and parliamentary control over the army.

This revolutionary programme means party bosses have now given thousands of demonstrators everything they demanded during peaceful candlelit protests.

They knew that East Germany's 16 million people would never have halted the protests unless free elections were granted.

Yesterday the East Germans were walking and driving through the Wall at the rate of 800 an hour, sounding their car horns and weeping with emotion.

For some, however, the dizzying pace was almost too much. The East German guards did not know quite how to react to the West German who stretched out the hand of friendship near the Checkpoint Charlie crossing.

But for the families who were crossing into West Berlin all day there were no doubts. They came, they saw... and they fell in love with the capitalist world they had for so long been taught to distrust.

With the toys in the shops - the Batman cars, the walking, talking, living dolls, the video games, the mountain bikes.

With the clothes. The baby wear. The range of cars.

But, most of all, with the overflowing shelves in the supermarkets. For many who are younger than the 28-year-old wall, it was their first day of freedom. Their lives have been dominated by secrecy and shortages.

Their first taste of Western plenty was a free handout.

Police and savings banks told excited East Germans who wanted to go shopping the way to social security offices.

There they were given 100 West German marks - worth about £35 - in "welcome money."

Gunter Martin, a factory worker from Halle, waved a wad of East German marks and said: "This is completely useless to me here.

"It's the most unbelievable day of my life. I just shut up my car repair shop and jumped in my car as fast as I could."

Reinhold Haupt, a 41-year-old electrician who drove from Ashersleben to spend the weekend in West, was showered with hospitality by a crowd of West Germans giving the new arrivals a heroes' welcome.

Within minutes someone offered him a bed, another said he would take him on a tour, a third handed him a cup of coffee and a woman pressed a 10-mark note into his hand.

He spent his "welcome money" on bananas, oranges, coffee and chocolate, all in short supply in East Germany.

Civil servant Thomas Kolbar said: "I turned up at my aunt's house last night and she nearly died of shock."

The Communists' gamble may pay off. Most East Germans are only visiting the West, happily returning home after partying or sight-seeing in the West.

No one could count the numbers going to the West in Berlin. But elsewhere, 45,000 East Germans swarmed to the West yesterday and only 2,500 stayed.

More from 1989 soon.

1989: The Motorola MicroTAC - A Far More Mobile Mobile... And A Bit About GSM...

2011-07-30T11:54:00.000+01:00

Advances in technology brought about the revolutionary Motorola MicroTAC phone of 1989 - the first step towards smaller mobile phones.

It was also massively influential, being the world's very first flip phone. The aerial, by the way, was simply ornament!

It really was incredible as, at that time, mobiles were like grandiose walkie-talkies. And you had to be a yuppie (or Del Boy Trotter) to afford one.

The decade which introduced the very first hand-held mobile, the DynaTAC 8000x in 1983, very much a brick, roared towards its end with this little beauty.

Of course it was analogue, but the current system was on its way, and had been since 1982 when Groupe Spécial Mobil (GSM) was formed to design a pan-European mobile technology.

Behind the scenes planning often long pre-dates technology hitting the streets, and in that light it's amusing to relect that there were no hand-held mobile phones in 1982, and that the Mobira Senator, Nokia's very first mobile phone - a car phone released in 1982, weighed around twenty one pounds!

From 1982-1984, agreement on strategic targets for GSM was reached.

From 1985-1987, agreement on principles for services, network architecture, radio and speech coding in GSM was reached.

In 1986, trials of different digital radio transmission schemes and different speech codecs were carried out in several countries and comparative evaluations carried out by GSM.

1987 was the birth year of the current system, with GSM agreeing its basic parameters. This was finalised in May 1987 in Bonn. Then, in September 1987, a proposal was put forward to create an operator agreement in the form of a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’. This was drawn up and signed in Copenhagen in September by fifteen members from thirteen countries that committed to deploying GSM.

The BBC reported in 2007:

The technology behind the mobile phone is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

On 7 September 1987, 15 phone firms signed an agreement to build mobile networks based on the Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications.

According to the GSM Association there are more than 2.5 billion accounts that use this mobile phone technology.

Adoption of the technology shows no signs of slowing down with many developing nations becoming keen users of mobile handsets.

Robert Conway, head of the GSM Association, said the memorandum of understanding signed in 1987 is widely seen as the moment when the global mobile industry got under way.

Although work on the GSM technical specifications began earlier (1982), the agreement signed in 1987 committed those operators to building networks based upon it.

"There's no doubt that at the time of the agreement in 1987 no one had an idea of the explosive capabilities in terms of growth that would happen after the GSM standard was agreed," he said.

As Paul Simon said back in the '80s, "These are the days of miracle and wonder..."

Compact Discs

2011-07-30T11:53:00.000+01:00

The Sun, July 1 1982:

Records are about to shrink to less than half-size. New Compact Discs will be on sale before the end of the year.

The mini-records, less than five inches across, can be held in the palm of one hand.

They will have a permanent clear protective coating, which means they won't scratch or wear out. And they will sound better than ordinary albums.

A spokesman for Sony, who are producing the discs, says: "The sound is produced by an optical laser, and is of superior quality."

There's just one snag - the price. Not only are the discs themselves more expensive than today's records, they also need special new equipment to play them on.

But Sony says: "We hope within two years to have prices down to the same as ordinary albums."

A 1983 newspaper advertisement.

The article states that compact discs were due to arrive in England before the end of 1982. Some sources now state that they didn't actually arrive until March 1983.

The discs and players certainly did not come down in price that quickly. Asked if he/she owned a compact disc player in the mid-to-late 1980s, the average geezer/geezette would almost certainly reply:

"You wot? Wot do you think I am - made of money?"

The price was highly prohibitive, and CDs didn't outsell vinyl and cassettes for some years.

Albion Market: The History Of Carol Broadbent...

2011-07-20T00:28:00.007+01:00

Barbara Wilshere as Carol Broadbent, Albion Market cast card, 1985.

Ronni has written:

Very interested in your wonderful site, and enjoying all the 1980's soap stuff. I vaguely recall Albion Market and the character of Carol Broadbent as she made some sort of impact on me (judging from your article on the show, it was probably her hair-do!). Can you tell me about the character?

Happy to hear from you, Ronni. Glad you like the blog.

Carol Broadbent was played by Barbara Wilshere and was the YTS girl at Peggy's cafe on Albion Market when the show began. A lively girl with an '80s fashion sense, Carol confessed to always being in trouble at school as she was bored, but she seemed happy working at the cafe. Still living at home with her parents, Carol enjoyed experimenting with her hair and spent long periods with her head bent over pop magazines.

She was outgoing, rather immature, not academically gifted but inquisitive, and good hearted.

At the start of the series, Carol's YTS placement with Peggy at the Albion Market cafe was almost over, and Peggy was none too sure that it made good business sense to start paying the girl wages. Although enthusiastic and a definite plus when it came to the atmosphere in the cafe, being a lively conversationalist and good with customers, Carol had a sad habit of breaking things.

Carol was worried and tearful for a time, fearing a return to unemployment, but then Peggy developed a summer cold, Carol proved herself a worthy stand-in, and with a little help from Phil Smith, the cook at the cafe, was taken on as permanent staff.

Carol was good friends with Lisa O'Shea, who worked on her mother's household goods stall on the market, and disdainful of "spotty Keith" - Keith Naylor, the market superintendent's assistant.

She proved her worth when she captured Keith's escaped pet boa constrictor, which had made its way onto the market, and finally turned up in the cafe! She tried to prove her worth further by beginning a "butty run", taking sandwiches, drinks and cakes around to the market traders to sell, but Peggy was never convinced that it was a worthwhile venture.

Carol almost lost her job when she accepted an invitation to a pop concert in Brighton with some friends. Carol thought they meant New Brighton, but Brighton, Sussex, was the venue. When Carol was AWOL from work the next day, Peggy was sorely tempted to sack her, but did eventually see the funny side.

Having accepted an invitation to play squash with Jaz Sharma, a Ugandan Asian who ran the market's fashion clothes stall with his brother, Raju, Carol became attracted to him. Jaz liked to play the field and was never serious about Carol, but Carol read far more into things.

When the prospect of an arranged marriage for Jaz raised its head, Carol was hurt. She handled things badly by becoming angry with Jaz, and encouraging Keith Naylor to hit him during an argument at the cafe. When Jaz ended up hitting Keith instead, Carol was incensed, demanding that Keith got up from the floor and hit back. This was the first evidence that there was a side to this young woman which could mean trouble.

Life settled down again, and Carol studied meditation with help from stall-holder Lam Quoc Hoa, and looked on a little enviously at her friend Lisa's steamy but stormy relationship with cake and biscuit seller Tony Fraser.

When Jaz Sharma was "had up" on the charge of murdering racist Oliver Shawcross, who ran the Albion Market toy stall, Carol rushed to his aid, proving to be an excellent friend and enduring adverse comment from Oliver's fellow racists. As Jaz awaited trial, Carol proved to be one of his staunchest allies.

Unfortunately, Carol had become rather bored with her job, and her schooldays tendency to land herself in trouble re-emerged. When cafe cook Phil Smith went to live "down South" on a temporary basis to further his studies (Phil was a keen sculptor), Carol became aware that something might be happening between Colette Johnson, Phil's partner and the mother of his child, who worked as a barmaid at the market's local pub, The Waterman's Arms, and Tony Fraser - Lisa's handsome, Scots boyfriend. Carol was a friend of Phil's, a friend of Lisa's, and saw every reason to stand in judgement over Colette and Tony.

Colette had only recently moved to The Waterman's, leaving behind her friends in her old district, and, feeling vulnerable, she had succumbed to the advances of Tony Fraser after Phil's departure, and regretted it ever since. But Carol could not see the finer points of the situation. Despite Carol's confident assertion that girls grow up quicker than boys, those of us "in the know" are aware that it is down to the individual. Carol gave Colette a hard time, despite Peggy's pleas for her to back off, and bad feeling took a while to dissipate.

Carol and Peggy Sagar (Paula Jacobs) look on as new cook Paul O'Donnell (Paul Beringer) attempts to produce something edible at the cafe.

When Jaz was found "Not Guilty" of killing Oliver Shawcross, Carol though this was the green light for them to be together. But, although grateful for her support and friendship, a seriously shaken Jaz was not thinking along the same lines at all. Carol was angry and bitter.

More bored than ever with the cafe, and let down (as she saw it) by Jaz, Carol set her sights on becoming a hairdresser at Viv Harker's smart new salon which was just about to open on the market. She faked illness to avoid telling Peggy that she was going for interview, and was convinced, as Keith Naylor was a friend of Viv's, that she would get the job as trainee. She didn't.

Startled and angry, Carol was not prepared for Peggy to discover the fact that she had attended the interview with Viv, and told her a cock and bull story about Viv promising her a job and then letting her down.

Peggy confronted Viv, discovered that Carol was telling porkies, and told the girl she would have to go. Carol was devastated, and hoped to change Peggy's mind, working hard at the cafe and exhibiting some of the old qualities of warmth and enthusiasm which had originally commended her to her employer.

Peggy had a sometimes fearsome exterior, but was not really a hard woman. And with her own daughter living abroad, she had grown fond of Carol. But Carol had gone too far. The atmospheres she'd caused in the cafe in recent months - arguing with regulars, even arguing with Peggy, and the lies she had told over "fainting" to cover her interview with Viv, not to mention the follow-up lies regarding Viv virtually promising to employ her, meant Peggy could do only one thing - which she did with a heavy heart.

Carol was given her cards.

Peggy told her that she'd gone along with her, but Carol hadn'r reciprocated. If the loss of her job served as a lesson...

Carol ran from the cafe in floods of tears, and was not seen there again.

She was missed - earlier in the series she'd brought humour and colour to the show with her daffy ways and outlandish hairstyles.

However, viewers couldn't help but agree with Peggy's decision.

Carol had become a serious pain in the neck!

The role was played by actress Barbara Wilshere, herself a few years older than Carol, with great skill. It was easy to believe in the character.

And Carol, at least for the majority of her reign, remains a fondly remembered member of the Albion Market gang - a soap opera which, I feel, was not given enough time to adjust and thrive by ITV.

I'm pretty sure it would have done, given that time - and, of course, the right scheduling.

Read our main Albion Market feature here.

Soap Aid 1986: EastEnders And Emmerdale Farm Stars In A Lather For Charity...

2011-07-01T01:52:00.000+01:00

From the Sun, July 28, 1986:

Do you remember all the charity events of the 1980s? You couldn't walk out the door without colliding with a sponsored walk, a sponsored silence, a sponsored bean scoff, a telethon, a walkathon, a talkathon, a bonkathon (you should be so lucky), etc, etc.

This particular event, part of "Soap Aid", appears to have been a bit of a wash-out, but it's good to see Beckindale's Amos Brearly (Ronald Magill), Seth Armstrong (Stan Richards) and Dolly Skilbeck (Jean Rogers) hobnobbing with Walford's Angie Watts (Anita Dobson) and Michelle Fowler (Susan Tully).

EastEnders and Emmerdale Farm - both shows had titles that started with an "E" and both were soap operas, but, in 1986, they had little else in common. The Square squabbles seemed to be a million miles from the Dales tales!

The Simpsons

2011-06-30T00:16:00.002+01:00

Look kind of familiar? The Simpsons as they appeared in 1987. The characters soon morphed into the more familiar images we still see today.

Over in America in early 1987, Matt Groening created The Simpsons.

The USA's favourite dysfunctional family first appeared in Mr Groening's mind whilst he was sitting in the lobby of James L. Brooks's office, producer of The Tracey Ullman Show for the Fox Network.

Tracey was already a celebrity here in England. Think of Three Of A Kind. Think of those wacky pop hits.

I can't break away, though you make me cry...

But they don't know about us - and they've never heard of love...

And so on.

Back to the USA and 1987.

Mr Groening had originally intended to pitch for a series of cartoon shorts for Tracey's series based on his Life in Hell series. However, he quickly realised that animating Life in Hell for television would require the rescinding of publication rights for his life's work. And so his fertile mind, working on absolute overdrive in Mr Brooks' lobby, came up with Bart, Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie.

The Simpsons debuted as a series of cartoon shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987.

According to legend, the show's producer was concerned about the ugly appearance of these new creations, and our very own Tracey reportedly reassured him: "Relax! It's an '80s show!"

And so popular were The Simpsons cartoon shorts that, in 1989, work began on a half hour series of Simpsons shows, with the first, a "holiday special", being broadcast on December 17, 1989.

And the rest is history!

An American TV guide from December 1989...

To some viewers one of the best parts of Fox's "The Tracey Ullman Show" was the commercial breaks.

That's no knock on the talented Ullman. It's just that each set of commercials was preceeded by the antics of the Simpsons, the animated family created by cartoonist Matt Groening whose playlets were hilarious dispatches from the front lines of the ongoing war between parents and their children.

We haven't seen much of the Simpsons lately. The quiet is due not to a truce, but to the preparation of a new offensive. The Simpsons will soon debut in their own Fox series, probably next month. And on Sunday, December 17, Fox will air "Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire", a holiday special starring dad Homer, mom Marge, brother Bart, sister Lisa and baby Maggie...

The Simpsons are a family as families really are. Homer is in a continual state of low level exasperation, with the threat of an eruption always lurking. Marge is the jumpy peacemaker, bearing a quivering white flag back and forth between the battle lines of Homer and the children. And the kids are like the first mammals in the age of the dinosaurs, peeping from the underbrush at a world of behemoths, pausing in their torture of each other only to unite against the threat of its interruption by lumbering adults whose seeming soul purpose in life is to ruin any hope of having fun.

"The most common thing people tell me," says Simpsons creator Matt Groening in a soft, friendly voice, "is that I've been spying on them."

17/12/1989 - an historic telly event for America. The first full-length episode of The Simpsons, a seasonal tale entitled Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire, was broadcast.

Acid House

2011-06-30T00:15:00.001+01:00

One of the big "things" in 1988 and 1989 - the smiley face! Created in the 1960s and long associated by us plebs with kids' badges and jolly tea mugs, the face was suddenly the symbol of a rather frantic and frankly rather naughty progression from the House Music scene called Acid House. I was confused. House music had been created in Chicago in the early 1980s, and the sound had not begun to go wide until midway through the decade.

And now we had ACID House. Say what?!

The smiley face was soon cropping up on T-shirts everywhere, accompanied by the slogan "Right On One Matey!" The elders got themselves into a right old stew about it all, whilst many youngsters, bored with being garishly posh, gothy and synthy, eagerly embraced the chance to get sweaty under strobe lights, and move about to weird electronic noises and samples.

And if you had to break into somebody else's warehouse or barn to do it, all the better!

Some newspapers seemed alarmed. A new drug culture, and the kids acting up again. Oh dear! Where had Acid House sprung from?

The Observer observed in 1988:

Drugs Fear as the 'acid house' cult revives a Sixties spectre

"Acid house" started in four London clubs... In the past month it has "taken off", spreading to other clubs around the country.

1988 and 1989 were wild. Absolutely evil according to some! The elders were definitely rattled!

From the Sun, August 28, 1989:

More than 25,000 youngsters - some aged only ELEVEN - went wild at a huge acid house party yesterday as the police watched helplessly.

Dozens of evil pushers raked in a fortune openly selling the mind-bending drug Ecstacy at £10 a time - with a bottle of mineral water to wash it down.

A police superintendent and WPC moved through throngs of spaced-out teenagers as dealers chanted "E, hash, weed" to the beat of the music.

School-age children rolled their own reefers.

But the officers were only there to make sure there was no trouble while notices about the noise were served on the organisers.

The 15-hour bash started on Saturday night when hordes of acid house fans converged on the village of Effingham, Surrey.

Cars, coaches and vans poured into Newmarsh Farm for the £30-a-head "Energy Summer Festival".

Youngsters from as far way as Leeds, Swindon and Ipswich screamed "Mental, mental" as lasers lit the sky.

Headlines from the Sun CONDEMMING the drug craze flashed on a huge video screen.

Party organisers made an estimated £500,000 from the bash - which cost about £50,000 to stage.

Police, who only heard of the party hours before, at first stopped youngsters entering the site.

But as thousands joined the crush, senior officers decided it was safer to let them in.

About 70 police were on duty, but there were only seven arrests - two for alleged drug offences.

Police will quiz the organisers and those responsible for the land.

A spokesman said:

* An acid house bash, tagged The Heat, was smashed at the weekend because it was a FIRE RISK.

* Around 10,000 revellers were expected to head for a disused factory at West Bromwich, West Midlands.

* But the local council won an injunction to ban the party after fire experts declared the building unsafe.

* Only 30 youngsters, mainly from London, arrived at the factory, but were promptly turned away by the police.

"There could be criminal charges."

Michael Grylls, MP for North West Surrey, said: "It is a massive indictment of parents that they allow their children to attend this sort of thing."

Fellow Tory Terry Dicks said: "These parents should be fined, if not sent to prison."

Monks at a silent order at West Kingsdown, Kent, were disturbed by 3,000 at a nearby acid house party.

Master of a little-known DJ skill called Transformer Scratching (making a record sound like a robot's voice), James Dorrell was hailed as a pioneer of "English hip-hop". Dorrell, who was also in M/A/R/R/S (Pump Up The Volume), was interviewed in 1988 and said of Acid House:

"It's really crazy, psychedelic music. There's no real tune, just lots of studio technology. You can also scratch other bits of records over the top of the beat and add to the effect. The other day I found an amazing old record by Brian Clough of all people! I used this bit where he says, "He's got a good left foot that lad!" over a serious Chicago House groove. It sounded brilliant!"

Mind you, imagination and originality were needed. Dorrell again:

"If I hear another James Brown yelp or This is a journey into sound again I'll scream!"

Despite the '60s psychedelic references (particularly the return of the lava lamp, which became HUGE in the 1990s, reaching its highest ever sales), the new drug culture (just what was this ecstacy?!) and so on, followers of Acid House were not hippies. From what I saw, they were harder, more streetwise, more working class - "On One Matey!" rather than "Peace Man!" The music too was very different. 20th Century Words by John Ayto, describes it thus:

Acid House n (1988) a type of house music with a very fast beat, a spare, mesmeric, synthesised sound, and usually a distinctive gurgling bass noise. Also applied to the youth cult associated with this kind of music, characterised by a vogue for warehouse parties, a revival of psychedelia, and the taking of hallucinogenic drugs. "Acid" may well be the slang word for LSD, although many cultists claim that it comes from the record "Acid Trax" by Phuture (in the slang of Chicago, where this music originated in 1986, "acid burning" means "stealing", and the music relies heavily on "sampling" a polite word for stealing musical extracts).

Did you join in or want to put an end to the "menace"? From the "Sun", November 18, 1988.

Sheena Easton: "My Baby Takes The Morning Train..."

2011-06-30T00:13:00.000+01:00

We were all hoping for good things for singer Sheena Easton, who hailed from north of the border, and first came to our attention on Esther Rantzen's The Big Time show.

And good things she got - quickly scoring several hits here. It didn't matter if she was a Modern Girl or a traditional stay-at-home, waiting for her hubby to arrive back from his 9 to 5, Sheena could do no wrong...

"All day I think of him - dreaming of him constantly..."

The audience was so thrilled that a balloon was let fly.

Sheena later left us far behind, hitting the USA for a brief (fictional) marriage to Sonny Crockett of Miami Vice and a duet with pop genius Prince.

Who would have believed it back in 1980? In fact, I'd never even heard of The Purple One back then, and Miami Vice was still a twinkle in a scriptwriter's eye...

Fast forward... From a boiler suited 1980 to a shoulder padded 1987... Sheena with Prince in the video for "U Got The Look".

Alternative Comedy: The Young Ones

2011-06-30T00:09:00.000+01:00

Tucked away in the TV pages of the Sun, 31/10/1981, was some interesting news about telly comedy. TV writer Charles Catchpole traced off-beat telly comedy back to Monty Python, which had begun in 1969. And of course that was inspired by The Goon Show, which had first aired in the 1950s. In the early 1980s "alternative comedy", anarchic, left-wing, proto-PC and generally a breath of fresh air, blasted onto our TV screens...

Jimmy Gilbert, head of light entertainment, has commissioned a try-out show for a possible series to be called "The Young Ones".

It promises to be one of the boldest ideas ever tried on telly. It will mix situation comedy, revue humour, fantasy and rock music.

The idea for "The Young Ones" was born out of the success of three off-beat shows - "Boom Boom Out Go The Lights", "Three Of A Kind", and "A Kick Up The Eighties".

It will star Rik Mayall, 23, alias Kevin Turvey of "A Kick Up The Eighties", as a down-at-heel student, sharing a flat with three friends.

Other parts will be played by three of the most promising of Britain's young comedians - Ade Edmundson, Nigel Planer and Alexei Sayle.

Edmundson is Rik Mayall's partner in an act called 20th Century Coyote. Planer is half of a double act known as The Outer Limits.

Rik Mayall, who is co-writing the show, says: "We will try to get permission to use Cliff Richard's song "The Young Ones" as the title music.

"But if we can't, we'll get a really dud group to record a crummy new version."
-
From the Daily Mirror, 9/11/1982:

A new comedy team hits the screen tonight. But be warned... this will be no innocent comedy romp.

It involves four outrageous characters living together as squatters in a derelict house.

They're a pretty shocking mob and their behaviour - and their language - is likely to upset older viewers.

But it's the younger TV audience they're aiming for with "The Young Ones" (BBC2, 9pm).

Rik Mayall, Ade Edmundson and Nigel Planer, who all worked at London's notorious Comic Strip club, team up with actor Chris Ryan to make the foursome.

Alexei Sayle, another of the Comic Strip's star comedians, plays their dodgy East European landlord.

Some BBC bosses were worried about the show at first, saying the comedy was crude and too near the knuckle.

Producer Paul Jackson says: "We were taking a big chance. When the first script was submitted, no one was quite sure if it would work."

But I think it's the most exciting new comedy we've done for years."

Rik Mayall, who devised and helped write the scripts, says:

"We had to cut certain words from sketches because they were considered too naughty by the BBC.

"We are not trying to push censorship back. But when you use swear words in normal life, and then you're not allowed to use them on TV, it's difficult to understand."

1985: The Sinclair C5

2011-06-30T00:05:00.000+01:00

Above and below: details from the original C5 advertising, 1985.

Sir Clive Sinclair in his C5, 1985.

Practical personal transport - powered by electricity, ran the C5 advertising blurb.

It's a world first. It needs no petrol, just an overnight charge from a mains socket. Press a button to start, squeeze a lever to stop - there's no gearchange, no clutch.

Anyone can drive it on the roads, from the age of fourteen upwards. You don't need a licence. You pay no road tax.

The C5 was 1744 mm (5'9'') long, 795 mm ( 2'7'') high, and 744 mm (2'5'') wide.

Again according to the advertising blurb, it had a range of up to 20 miles (depending on use) and was listed as having a max speed (electric drive) of 24 kph (15 mph). It cost £399 and was advertised under the slogan A Whole New Way To Get About.

Environmental issues were high on the agenda in the 1980s, so, what was the problem with the environmentally friendly C5? Well, it was small - could it be easily seen from other vehicles? As the driver was quite near to the ground, wouldn't he/she be breathing in other drivers' exhaust fumes? These were two head scratchers that I heard in connection with the C5, and were genuine concerns. Some people were simply out to ridicule it.

Unlike that other 1985 launch, Microsoft Windows, the C5 was soon a thing of the past.

1981: John McEnroe - "You CANNOT Be Serious!"

2011-06-30T00:01:00.000+01:00

Heeere's Johnny!

American John McEnroe ended Björn Borg's record run of victories at Wimbledon in 1981 and ended up in hot water with the All England Club for some temperamental outbursts. We, the viewing public, were delighted. "You CANNOT be serious!" we parroted and "The Ball was IN!"

The Sun, 6/7/1981:

Superbrat John McEnroe stormed out of Britain yesterday after an amazing final insult to Wimbledon's top officials.

He snubbed the traditional champions' dinner at London's Savoy Hotel... and went out celebrating his men's singles triumph with friends instead.

His absence angered All-England Club chiefs - and women's champion Chris Lloyd made a blistering attack on him when she spoke at the dinner.

She told the guests: "I have to make two speeches, one for myself and one for you know who.

"I do not have the vocabulary and as an American I wish to apologise for him."

McEnroe already faces fines of up to £7, 375 for his tantrums and bad language during Wimbledon fortnight - and his final insult could bring HIM a snub.

His non-appearance will be discussed by the All-England Club today and they may well decide not to grant him honorary membership which Wimbledon champions usually receive.

McEnroe is understood to have been angry because he could not get tickets to Saturday's dinner for friends - and decided to have a party of his own.

He was in a happier mood earlier when he phoned his blonde girlfriend Stacey Margolin in America.

She said: "He called me after the final and said 'I showed them'. I'm so delighted for him."

But McEnroe was Superbrat again at London's Heathrow Airport as he barged angrily past photographers on to a New York-bound Concorde.

This article from the Daily Mirror, 17/11/1981, reveals that John was in the cart again...

... tennis spoilsport John McEnroe, fined £350 for his ill-mannered display at Wembley on Sunday, was flying home to New York feeling sorry for himself.

The 22-year-old Wimbledon champion said at Heathrow Airport: "I felt all alone on the court, as if everyone was against me.

"It gives you a reason not to want to return." But he added: "I'll be back for Wimbledon."

In more recent years, I've enjoyed listening to John commentating at Wimbledon. He has a sense of humour about his past, a keen eye for the tennis and is a welcome visitor to the All England Club.

I love to see him on the telly - I feel I've watched him grow from lad to man!

If You See Sid Tell Him...

2011-06-30T00:00:00.000+01:00

Part of a magazine advertisement from October 1986.

Another advertisement - this time from November.

Who was this mysterious "Sid" in the British Gas shares ads? I found myself wondering if it might be the hissing Sid of Captain Beaky fame, you know, the snake whose innocence we'd all been proclaiming back in 1980?

But nobody I mentioned my theory to thought it very likely.

More of the November 1986 magazine ad.

To help as many people as possible afford to apply for British Gas shares, we're making the minimum investment level as low as possible. And payment will be in instalments...

Did you get a "share of the shares"?

1982: The Kids From Fame In England...

2011-06-29T23:57:00.000+01:00

"Baby look at me and tell me what you see..." We see Doris on the cover of an October 1982 Look-In magazine, which contained an invitation for readers to meet the kids from Fame in an EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW!

"You ain't seen the best of me yet, give me time I'll make you forget the rest..."

It had all started as a film in 1980, but now, in 1982, we got Fame the TV series, and Fame fever struck! The series helped start a major fashion trend - transforming leg warmers from useful but boring garments into high fashion. Yes, they were worn on the streets in high summer.

"You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here's where you start payin' - in sweaty ankles..."

Here's a newspaper advertisement for Fame, the 1980 film, available on Video 2000 in 1982.

Video what?!

Yes, we didn't only have Betamax and VHS to confuse us. Perhaps it was a good job that video machines were too expensive for many of us!

Fame, the TV series, was first shown by the BBC on Thursday, 17/6/1982.

From the Daily Mirror, 31/12/1982:

The Kids from "Fame" faced up to the consequences of their phenomenal showbiz success yesterday. They were hemmed in by a crowd of fans and photographers at their London hotel.

The singing, dancing, music-playing kids, including Debbie Allen and Lee Curreri, came smiling through as they do in their TV shows.

It was their first night off during a ten-day British tour.

But they were given no time to relax at their hotel when the cameras clicked and they were questioned by a group of children for an ITV programme.

One youngster asked Debbie, who plays teacher Lydia Grant in the series: "What do you do if you want to be a dancer?"

The answer: "Just jump into it and work, work, work."

Then, without further ado, Debbie led Lee Curreri, who plays keyboards ace Bruno Martelli, and the rest of the cast back to rehearsals and work, work, work.

Claire, my little sister, was a Fame devotee well before the end of the year. My diary entry for 8/9/1982 reads:

Claire has gone bats on "Fame". I'm going bats listening to her rambling on and on about it. There's going to be trouble if this keeps up.

The 1980s House - Part 2

2011-06-21T01:16:00.003+01:00

Nice, trendy Triton showers from Argos, 1989. This is a sign of the times - a gratuitous glimpse of botty. Believe it or not, I never saw any such thing in mail order catalogues before the 1980s. Were we trying to be more broad minded? More European? There were many grumbles as this kind of thing began. Gratuitous botty? Whatever next?!! Showers were yet another thing that the vast majority of working class people didn't have at home until the 1980s.

Of course, what you really needed was a power shower, to go with your power breakfast, power dressing, power napping, power walking, etc, etc. The black tiles with red grouting are an '80s style wow, too!

Oooh dear! 1983 Brian Mills catalogue. I favour the old rose, myself.

In the 1980s, microwave ovens swept in, as did jug kettles. Such a sensible design! My Brian Mills spring/summer 1983 catalogue has only one jug on offer...

... but my catalogues from 1985 and 1989 have whole armies of the things. The page above is from Argos, 1989. I particularly favour the red and white ones.

Dining in style in 1983... my cousin had something very like the table and benches on the right in 1984. Very lovely, of course.

How about these red, narrow slatted blinds for the kitchen - Index, 1989? I always lusted after some for my own kitchen, but never got round to buying any. Black was another option. I don't recommend white. Boring and shows up the greasy marks carried through the air from your deep fat fryer - an essential for getting your Crispy Pancakes just right!

Red and black... Bella magazine, 1988. Adore this!

Bella 1988 again with another powerful '80s style statement. Pure beauty.

Index 1989 - with all that talk of power in the 1980s, it was only natural that boardroom blinds should start to come out of the boardroom and into the home. There's been a recent revival in this trend, so you may already have them. The colour of the ones featured here was called "champagne"... mmm... more is more...

These 1980s curtains are beautifully colourful and would tell the neighbours so much about your glorious sense of style!

Meanwhile, these particular 1980s curtains can still be seen hanging in my house. Viewings by prior appointment only.

Postbox: The 1980s Versus The 1970s...

2011-06-17T01:14:00.003+01:00

1980s mega star Gilbert the alien rewarded the e-mail featured here with a rousing chorus of "How Far To Hitchin?" all done up a crimpy sweaty specially designed for the occasion by Nifty Thoughtcup.

Thanks to all those who write in. It keeps me company, and I'm truly grateful.

Lovely recent e-mail from Sita:

We have a very attractive young teacher called Miss Cross at my school who likes to encourage debates. She often joins in and hogs the show because she's very fond of herself and usually able to out-argue any student.

One day recently, she set the agenda: "Let's talk about our favourite decades. What decades were significant, and why?"

Immediately, she started going on and on about the 1970's, how wonderful they were, how hippie they were, how world shatteringly eventful and influential they were...

I pricked up my ears and said: "But surely hippies were 1960s? They may have been around in the 1970s - '80s as well - but they started out in the 1960s?"

"Yes," said Miss Cross, "but the full thrust of hippiedom was felt in the 1970s. Woodstock..."

"But that was 1969!" I said.

Miss Cross went a bit red. "The gateway to the 1970s," she said.

"I disagree," I said. "1969 was not the 1970s."

Miss Cross was looking rather cross, and said: "Well, what decades interest you?"

"I find the 1980s fascinating," I said.

"The 1980s?" Miss Cross smirked. "A very conservative and vapid decade, in my opinion."

I frowned: "How come? Red Wedge, Greenham Common, Perestroika, fall of the Berlin Wall, creation of House and Acid House music, invention of the World Wide Web, inner city riots..."

"But many events of the 1980s were the outcome of events from other decades," said Miss Cross.

"And many events of the 1970s were the outcome of events from other decades," I countered. "Left-over hippiedom and flared trousers for a start."

"But the inventions, the fads, fashions and the technology of the 1980s can't hold a candle to the 1970s," said Miss Cross. She was getting very red in the face by now.

"Rubik's Cube, CB radio, ZX Spectrum, Apple Mac, invention of the World Wide Web, goths, shoulder pads, hair gel and mousse, leggings, ra ra skirts, jelly shoes, bulldog clips, first commercial hand-held cell phones, beginnings of GSM system, DNA fingerprinting, Sky TV, Trivial Pursuit, Pac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, Channel 4..." I recited.

The debate ended.

"Yes, well, that's most interesting. Thank you, Sita," said Miss Cross, looking as though she'd like to slap my face.

My friends and I still talk about that day. And it's thanks to you, Andy, because I took all my info from your blog!

Miss Cross hasn't initiated a debate since, and the decades skirmish was two months ago!

Thank you!

Glad to help, Sita. It does give me the pip when people start glorifying decades (usually the 1970s, unfortunately) when they don't know their facts. Decades are ten year spans and every ten years contains its own significant events, fashions, fads, and are usually interesting enough and significant enough without having to embellish them.

Judging by TV, books and on-line stuff, the 1970s are the exception...

But that's not true. Plenty happened in the 1970s, even if you just stick to the real 1970s!

Of course, the 1980s are priggishly disapproved of because they were the era of Thatcher and Reagan and enormous changes, both socially and technologically. But that's why they're so fascinating. And no amount of attempts to rewrite history can make the ... er... actual 1980s any less so.

The 1980s House - Part 1

2011-06-05T00:13:00.009+01:00

1989 living room from Argos catalogue. Blue pastel walls and black, black, black! Black was hugely popular in the mid-to-late 1980s, even TV casings went that colour - a trend which lasted throughout the 1990s. The director's chair on the far right was a must-have - so very, very stylish!

You've looked around your house, grown sick of your "funky" late-1960s inspired wallpaper (it makes your eyes go funny) and realise you want style. You want a 1980s style home.

Do you? Do you really? There were so many styles of homes in that decade, each one designed to say something about the occupant and their lifestyle.

But you are not to be diverted. You want your home to give a screamingly 1980s effect, and you are determined. OK then. We'll take a look at popular decors of the 1980s including furniture, knick knacks, clocks, kitchens, kitchen ware, and bathrooms. See what you think afterwards. This is the first of four articles designed to bring the 1980s house back to life.

1989: Black blinds... Mmmm... lovely. Red blinds for the kitchen, of course. An uplighter. Glorious. But a black stand for it might be nicer... And look at that music centre - yuppie heaven...

1989: A very beautiful black ash shelving unit and bed settee. The mixing of black, grey and red in the design of the settee material is so 1980s. Don't you just love it?

As well as black, toy box colours were incredibly in, and this kitchen from 1983 simply shrieks "1980s!

If you were poor in the 1980s, you might have painted the wood chip wallpaper in your hall pink and hung up your Adam Ant mirror. In the modern day, this is only recommended for people who remember the 1980s, liked them, and have fond memories of Adam (I do and so the mirror still hangs). It's not terribly evocative of the stylish 1980s house you are trying to create though, so if you don't have a nostalgic attachment to the decade, avoid.

A wonderful 1980s bed (1989) and, of course, a director's chair beside it. Sleep had never been so stylish! In the 1980s, duvets (known in the early-to-mid decade as "continental quilts" but increasingly as the decade wore on duvets) took over from blankets and candlewick bedspreads.

This late 1980s wall clock is called "The Boss" and features a yuppie gorilla on a lovely red '80s phone, chomping on a banana. I don't recommend it, but remember that the 1980s were actually rather brash and whilst they craved style, their taste was not exactly impeccable. You might like it, however, and it's certainly very much of the decade.

This 1980s Ferrari clock is of a similar style to old monkey chops, but rather more tasteful. I want it all. I want it all. I want it all. And I want it now!

Here's my trusty old wall clock from circa 1987. Still going strong.

More 1980s home design tips coming soon!

EastEnders: Sue And Ali Osman, 1988...

2011-06-01T00:45:00.002+01:00

January 1988, and Sue and Ali Osman (Sandy Ratcliff and Nedjet Salih) are the stars of the cover of Woman's Own. The tragic fictional couple are facing the arrival of a new baby and perhaps a bright new future...

Bright new future? Well the past had been anything BUT bright. Turkish Cypriot Ali Osman had come to England in 1975 and married his English wife, Sue, in 1982.

By early 1985, the Osmans were living in a thoroughly grotty flat in Albert Square, Walford, E20. Ali worked as a taxi driver and Sue ran the cafe in nearby Bridge Street.

The light of their lives was their baby son, Hassan.

Sue had been the child of older parents, both of whom never lavished much warmth or affection on her. She grew up emotionally insecure, and was often to be heard accusing Ali of being unfaithful to her.

Good natured Ali had his own problem - he was teetering on the brink of becoming a compulsive gambler.

Insecure Sue had a simple philosphy in life: get at people or be got at.

As well as bubble and squeak, hot tongue and cold shoulder were always on the menu at the cafe and Sue liked to make sure that the likes of Lou Beale (Anna Wing) got a large helping if required.

She worried over Ali's gambling, and sometimes her rants were fully justified. On one occasion, Ali risked the cafe on a bet!

But that bet paid off, showering them in money.

And then, just afterwards, Hassan died.

A cot death.

Sue and Ali were shattered. After her chilly upbringing, Sue found it hard to let her emotions have free reign, Ali experienced sexual difficulties in the wake of the tragedy.

The state of play in 1987: Ali's brother, Mehmut (Haluk Bilginer) and sister-in-law Guizin (Ishia Bennison) are now participating in running the business with Sue and Ali - and the Ozcabs taxi firm is underway (remember Dot Cotton (June Brown) answering the phone for Ozcabs in her "posh" voice?!).

Sandy Ratcliff wasn't terribly happy with stuck-in-the-mud Sue. In a 1987 interview, she said:

"Sue really annoys me sometimes because she's got no guts. I'd love to liven her up a bit, dress her in some of Angie's clothes, get her out of that cafe, set her up in a business of her own and allow her to make something of her life."

Sandy was into women's rights, and thought Sue should be, too:

"I was under the impression she'd become more assertive. I had visions of a bunch of feminists walking into the cafe one day right in the middle of a typical Sue and Ali fight, and them asking her why she puts up with him.

"No doubt Sue would screw up her nose and ask: 'What do you mean?' But she'd think about it, want to hear more and gradually begin to change her ways to become stronger, more independent!

"I get cheesed off with Sue. She isn't me at all."

And then, in October 1987, Sue announced she was pregnant again.

After years of trying following the death of Hassan, the Osmans were once more to be parents.

The couple's dearest wish.

So, we could be forgiven for thinking that a happy era was on the way for the troubled couple?

Certainly, Sandy Ratcliff and Nedjet Salih believed so when they were interviewed for the January 16th 1988 edition of Woman's Own...

"It's going to be the making of Sue and Ali," said Sandy.

"Neither of them has ever got over the death of Hassan but hopefully the new baby will fill the void in their life."

"Ali is over the moon about being a dad again. It's time they got lucky, isn't it? Hassan has been gone for more than two years and I think Ali was beginning to think Sue would never get pregnant again," said Nedjet.

"The marriage was going downhill. Ali is no angel, but he's had a lot to put up with and has been very tolerant about Sue's depressions. Sue hasn't been easy to live with, she's been such a misery. No wonder he's been looking at other women... although to be honest it's all bravado. He'd get cold feet when it came to it. It's really only Sue he loves and wants."

Some viewers were very involved. Back to Nedjet:

"We've had baby gifts sent in (which will all go to charity), letters of congratulation and wherever I go people stop me in the street and say, 'Well done!' "

"Sue's getting pregnant has put me in a dilemma," said Sandy. "I knew nothing about the baby plans until a few weeks ago when I came back from my holidays and was told that Sue was pregnant again. Sue has gone through enough in the last couple of years. I'm glad she's got her dearest wish. I think she'll make a great mum and I'm sure Ali will be supportive. Hopefully, the story-lines will open up for me, but it also means that if the pregnancy goes well and the baby is fine, it would be very difficult for me to leave without there being another tragedy in the Osman family. I don't think that would be fair on the show or the viewers."

Sue's sour puss attitude and downbeat life were the cause of Sandy's thoughts about leaving the show.

"She's been such an unhappy woman since Hassan died. And it was beginning to rub off on me. I'd go to work, six days a week, be stuck in that grim little cafe and be permanently miserable. I got to the stage when I started to ask myself if I really wanted to spend all my working life playing a misery.

"Now Sue is pregnant and happy I feel differently about the role. So maybe it would be fun to stick around for a couple more years - if I'm wanted."

Sandy linked arms with Nedjet as the interview came to a close.

"I think Sue and Ali are going to be blissfully happy and very successful. Who knows, they might even become Yuppies!"

"Why not?" grinned Nedjet.

Stranger things have certainly happened in Albert Square! commented Women's Own.

Of course, being Albert Square, even way back then, blissful happiness was as unlikely as a tiny shoulder pad in 1988.

Shame really.

Many of us daft viewers were certainly hoping that Sue and Ali would be OK.

So, what DID happen?

Well, in a nutshell, the baby brought with it bad times indeed and the Osmans story ended with Sue taking the child ("Ali junior"), and leaving Ali, Ali snatching the child back, and Sue then having a nervous breakdown and being admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Before the end of 1989, Ali had left Albert Square, and Sue had disappeared into the hospital.

And so the state of blissful happiness envisaged by Sandy Ratcliff never happened.

Bleedin' typical!

EastEnders: Roly The Poodle

2011-05-29T00:03:00.004+01:00

Remember Roly Watts, the poodle who scampered around the Queen Vic, upstairs, downstairs, in and out of the ructions between Den and Angie in the mid-to-late 1980s?

I loved Roly. So interested in him was I that I remember wondering if his name was actually Roland? Surely Roly was always short for Roland? But the love of my life (that week) convinced me that such thoughts could lead to madness - he was Roly, he was a dog, so normal rules didn't apply, and I didn't actually write to the BBC to ask as I had intended.

And I'm glad I didn't - the official EastEnders cast card above, which I discovered recently, seems conclusive evidence that he was actually simply called Roly.

Roly was a real star of the show. He listened with apparently higher intelligence than most of the locals to conversations around him, caused poor Naima to prang Ali's taxi when she was out for a driving lesson with her husband, joined forces with Ethel's little Willy to scoff down the meat intended for the Vic's pub grub pies, and did Pauline and Arthur Fowler a tremendous favour when he tore up the dreadful knitted robe Ethel had concocted for Martin's christening.

Angie rather disgracefully tried to blame Roly for the noises Sharon heard when Ange was "entertaining" Tony Carpenter in a "sauce for the goose" get-back at Den moment. Roly had been very restless that night, she porkie-pied. Sharon was not convinced.

Angie could be a bitch at times, describing Roly as a "mangy, half-wit mongrel" and a "shag pile on wheels", but the fact that, in the story-line, Roly had been a present from Den to Sharon shortly before the series began might have coloured her feelings somewhat. She and Den were fighting a bloody battle for Sharon's affection, each trying to win their adopted daughter's love.

And sympathy.

Actually, it concerned me for a while that Sharon appeared to be unduly influenced by Roly when it came to her hairstyle, but taking a quick look around me at the real world, I encountered such a battery of weird and bad taste barnets (including my own) that I decided it was just a coincidence. Sharon didn't actually aim for the Roly look, although there were times when her "best friend" Michelle Fowler, in the on-going battle for Kelvin Carpenter's affections, thought that Sharon was a right dog anyway.

Roly was in the limelight when the mystery of the father of Michelle's baby was finally solved. Michelle arranged to meet the man down by the canal, and several locals were seen receiving telephone calls and hurriedly leaving the Square. But it was Roly jumping out of Den's car that finally gave the game away.

On-screen, Roly was the complete professional. Gretchen Franklin, who played Ethel Skinner, once commented that he wasn't a strong dog, and couldn't do as much as Ethel's little Willy, but there was no evidence of this when the camera was rolling.

Den and Ange were originally to have had an Alsatian called Prince, but finding a pooch of that type lightly coloured enough so as not to blend in with the pub's colour scheme and the other dowdy interior sets proved very difficult indeed.

Then Janimals, a company which specialised in providing and training animals for television and films, called EastEnders producer Julia Smith with the news that they had a seven-month-old apricot standard poodle and it would take them three weeks to train him.

The poodle, dear Roly, got the part, became the property of the BBC, complete with his own I.D. card, and went to live with Julia.

The 1987 book, EastEnders - The Inside Story by Julia Smith and Tony Holland reveals that Roly and Willy were regarded as EastEnders cast members, not props.

Roly in the mid-1980s, pictured with his fictional home, the Queen Victoria public house, Albert Square, London, E20, and his real life landlady, EastEnders producer Julia Smith.

The canine character outlived the 1980s. He was killed off in the early 1990s, run over in the Square.

In real life, Roly was not in the best of health and died in 1995.

He remains my favourite EastEnders canine of all times (sorry, Willy, loved ya too, but!) and, in fact, probably my favourite telly dog as well.

Those '80s days with Roly, Den, Ange and Sharon at the Queen Vic still make great viewing.

And, somehow, the idea of Den and Ange having such a dog (an Alsatian called Prince would have been so much more appropriate) added a delicious touch of the absurd and slightly surreal to the proceedings.

The explanation that Roly had been bought for the already poodle-haired Sharon was convincing, but he still didn't blend in with his dog rough surroundings, and seeing macho man Den out walking him often reduced me to giggles!

1985 - Den (Leslie Grantham) and Angie (Anita Dobson) slug it out whilst the wonderful Roly looks on. I often wondered what he was thinking at times like that...

EastEnders: From The Albertine Wine Bar To Albert Square - Well Heeled Left Wing Preaching To The Masses

2011-05-24T00:40:00.004+01:00

1980s EastEnders could be wonderful - the picture above reflects some of the show's triumphs. But it could also be patronising propaganda straight from a bunch of well-heeled left wing scriptwriters.

As we know, Julia Smith and Tony Holland were determined that EastEnders was to be set in the 1980s, uncompromisingly (their word) in Thatcher's Britain.

Uncompromisingly? Implies disapproval, doesn't it?

Much as I loved early EastEnders, having just watched a slab of episodes from 1985, I ended up wanting to smash the TV screen.

I mean, bloody hell!

As Julia Smith and Tony Holland made plain in their book, EastEnders - The Inside Story (1987), the Albertine Wine Bar was an important hang-out for them during the show's early stages. And they cleared orf to Lanzarote to write up the EastEnders characters.

I couldn't afford to go there, but I did manage to rent a video recorder and liked the flash side of '80s life (the C&A and Tracey's Nite Spot version, that was!).

The trouble with 1980s EastEnders is a tendency to preach which occasionally comes through to sledge hammer effect. Anti-Thatcher comments sparkle like diamonds, but it's the tendency of the well-heeled (in comparison to the real life Arthur Fowlers and Sue Osmans) production team to clumsily deliver patronising propaganda story-lines that really gets up my nose on watching 1985 episodes again after all these years.

And when one follows hard on another, I really want to be very ill indeed.

Take Andy and Debs - she upwardly mobile bank clerk, he children's nurse. After a burglary, they were deprived of their TV set, record player, newly acquired video recorder and other household sundries.

So devastated were they, they went all limp and pathetic, before before being told off by Tony Carpenter - they were two young people with their health, jobs and a whole house to themselves. They should be thankful!

Meanwhile, another victim of the "consumerist society" was Punk Mary, fed up with living in one room (her treatment was so unlike any single mother I knew in the '80s), and seeing adverts for nice things, things she was apparently supposed to want, she went shop lifting and got "had up" in court. £50 fine and the story vanished - point made. The consumerist society was BAD.

Meanwhile (again), the Square was suddenly afflicted by a power cut. Fault of the government, someone suggested? Eh, we were in 1985, weren't we, not the 1970s?

Meanwhile (yet again!), nurse Andy suggested to Debs that he brought a little boy - a patient - home from the hospital. Debs was horrified, but Andy pointed out it was always happening because of the cut-backs and nursing staff turning a blind eye.

As somebody involved in care/nursing work during the same era, I never saw it. Cut backs, yes, but things were never so bad we took patients home.

What on earth was that little story-line based on?

Reality from Planet Zog?

EastEnders was of the '80s - every bit of it. But unfortunately it represented a very prevalent and highly biased view of working class life as seen by those who hung out in wine bars and got inspiration in places like Lanzarote. As, unfortunately, did a lot of BBC left wing propaganda back then.

At the time, I applauded every second of it, but now it makes me angry.

That's not to say that all early EastEnders was bad. Far from it. It was - and is - in the main - wonderful to view. In my humble opinion, of course.

But the views of leftie BBC "haves" being foisted on to licence paying "have nots" is not an attractive scenario in retrospect.

It was so bloody patronising - and often so grim as to be totally unlike life as thoroughly working class me and my friends lived it back then!

And yet it's taken my years to get things into perspective enough to be able to see it.

EastEnders: Were Andy and Debs Yuppies?

2011-05-11T00:05:00.010+01:00

Shirley Cheriton as Debbie Wilkins. Was Debbie one of those swaggering, ostentatiously rich yuppie people?

An interesting e-mail from "80s TV Lover":

You write quite a lot about EastEnders on here, but I'm not sure you've done the show justice, considering its impact and intial revolutionary soap techniques. Please, Please, PLEASE can we have more 1980s EastEnders stuff on here, and can I ask a pressing question? Were the characters of Andy O'Brien and Debbie Wilkins yuppies? Shirley Cheriton has described Debbie thus in recent years, but I never saw them that way at the time. Upwardly mobile, yes, but not yuppies!

Well, 80s TV Lover, I'm currently writing more EastEnders articles, intended to focus on Ali and Sue Osman (Nedjet Salih and Sandy Ratcliff) and Debbie Wilkins and Andy O'Brien (Shirley Cheriton and Ross Davidson) so I hope you will continue reading!

Certainly, I have made mention of the show's gritty story-lines and groundbreaking approach, along with Brookside, which saw soaps venturing into previously "No Go" territory.

As for Andy and Debs being yuppies, well, I know that Shirley Cheriton has commented that Debbie was, and the use of the "yuppie" word became quite nebulous after its early 1980s coinage. But I don't think Ms Wilkins and Mr O'Brien were actually yuppies, and didn't at the time. Upwardly mobile, yes, but not yuppies, as you say.

Consider this from The Times, October 1987, in the wake of Black Monday:

"I've lost my shirt today as well as the money of a lot of other guys," said one stereotype of the Yuppies who swarmed to the financial world to reap the benefits of the Reagan boom.

The term was originally American, and a yuppie was somebody who sought to make all they could out of the Reagan/Thatcher era, anybody could attempt to make it big, and yuppies sought to become ostentatiously rich.

Yuppies were associated with upwardly mobility, of course, but upwardly mobility was a much older concept. The yuppies sought to make all they could out of the favourable dosh-making conditions wrought by the Reagan/Thatcher era. The upwardly mobiles were usually far more modest, aspiring to a home of their own car, foreign holidays, nice car, etc.

As the '80s continued, usage of the yuppie word was applied to just about anybody who seemed to have done remotely well, often resentfully by those who hadn't (like me!), but in the strictest sense, you couldn't consider a nurse and a bank clerk (the occupations of Andy and Debs) to be yuppies (a nurse is particularly nonsensical). Nor, indeed, Colin Russell (Michael Cashman), a graphic designer who made Albert Square his home. My father-in-law was a graphic designer, but in no way could his upwardly mobile success be described as propelling him into yuppie status.

As an aside, I was a great fan of the Andy and Debs characters, I thought they were well-acted and made a fascinating contrast to the other EastEnders characters, but were absolutely wasted by the show's writers. I'll write more about that soon!

Read all our yuppie material here.

How To Be A Wally

2011-05-01T02:46:00.000+01:00

I'm not sure when the term came about, but in the early-to-mid 1980s it was decidedly "in" to call somebody who was behaving in a thick witted manner, a "wally". So popular was this gentle term of insult, that it became the subject of a book, How To Be A Wally, by Paul Manning, published in 1983.

The How To Be A Wally back cover synopsis:

CONGRATULATIONS!

You have just become a bit of a wally SIMPLY BY PICKING UP THIS BOOK!

Now see if you can take it a stage further. Buy it. Then buy a copy for a friend.

And you can both find out

HOW TO BE A WALLY

in the comfort of your own home! Yes, with the help of easy, step-by-step diagrams, you can learn to:

Stand outside DER showrooms in the rain watching 'Game For A Laugh'

Feed prawn-cocktail flavour crisps to the lions in safari parks

Get the best out of your Colonel Bogey car horn

Destroy a Spanish football stadium

plus much more besides!

HOW TO BE A WALLY

The complete, no holds-barred guide to the wally lifestyle - AT A PRICE YOU CAN AFFORD!

An ad which appeared in the TV Times and several other publications in 1983.

Sunday People TV critic Nina Myskow was happy to announce a "Wally Of The Week" each and every week. The honour conferred above dates from 22/8/1982.

Marilyn wins the sought after "Wally Of The Year" title in the Sun, December 23 1983. Lucky bloke! Runners-up include Boy George, Terry Wogan and Max Bygraves.

1981: The Riots And The Royals...

2011-04-28T21:57:00.001+01:00

Riots rocked inner cities across the country - etching names like Brixton and Toxteth on all our minds...

... and, wildly contrasting, Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer, causing an epidemic of Royal Wedding fever...

Oh the romance, the pomp the ceremony...

There is a glowing moment every bride remembers. When she steps into the sunlight for the first time - as a wife.

For Lady Diana Spencer it was something more. She walked into St Paul's Cathedral as the daughter of an earl. She walked out as the next Queen.

Charles and Diana starred on a very special Rubik's Cube, featuring images of them both and the union flag.

There was a flood of memorabilia...

Royal Wedding - the tray.

And here we have a lovely book about the Royal Wedding. Oh, I'm sorry - it's Not.

The Kids Of 1981 - Rubik's Cube, Fish 'n' Chips, Hide And Seek And Nuclear War...

2011-04-28T21:55:00.000+01:00

The Rubik's Cube - UK kids' favourite toy of 1981.

A UK survey on the interests and attitudes of parents and children, carried out for the Walls Ice Cream Company in 1981, made some of the newspapers when the results were published in April 1982.

POWER TO THE KIDS, THE SUN, 21/4/1982.

Children are winning the battle for power in the nation's homes, according to a survey out yesterday.

It reveals that a growing number of youngsters now make the decisions over which hair-styles and clothes to wear - and what to do with their leisure time.

A third of 1,057 seven to seventeen year-olds quizzed claimed they had total freedom over their choice of clothes.

Half made up their own mind over what to do with their spare time - and a third decided what TV programmes to watch.

The favourite toy last year was the Rubik Cube - and hide-and-seek was the top game, followed by chase and cops and robbers.

But the survey - carried out for the Walls Ice Cream Company - showed that youngsters do not get all their own way.

Mums still rule the roost in the kitchen by deciding what food is served.

Fish and chips followed by ice cream was the favourite in most homes last year.

Dads also have the final say over what time children come home at night and go to bed.

The under-tens are in bed between 7.30pm and 8.30pm and six out of ten teenagers have to be in by 10.30pm on weekdays and midnight at weekends.

Only one in six parents interviewed admitted that their children dominated the family's TV viewing habits.

THE BIG WORRIES

Children and their parents share the same big worries about life, the survey reveals.

Both are very concerned about cruelty to children and animals.

Youngsters also fret a great deal about the dangers of smoking and the threat of nuclear war.

Mums and dads are more worried about youth unemployment and rising prices, vandalism, cutbacks in education spending and drug-taking.

The family is the most important thing in the lives of 92 per cent of mothers - and 83 per cent are very happy with their homes.

Most are also satisfied with their standard of living.

But the recession has forced the majority of families to cut back on outings.

When Was The Term "Yuppie" First Coined?

2011-04-27T05:02:00.004+01:00

Diary of a Yuppie, 1986.

Jane writes:

When was the term yuppie first coined? I know they were young urban professionals, but when did the word first appear?

20th Century Words by John Ayto, traces the yuppie name back to 1982 and defines a yuppie thus:

a member of a socio-economic group comprising young professional people working in cities of a type thought of as typifying the ethos of the 1980s: ambitious, go-getting, newly affluent, young, class-free, owing no debt to the past. Originally US; a hybrid word coined probably by grafting an acronym based on "Young Urban Professional" (or "Young Upwardly mobile Professional") on to a basic model suggested by hippie.

In recent years, a claim has been made that the first printed appearance of the word was in a May 1980 edition of Chicago Magazine - an article by Dan Rottenberg.

However, no hard copies of this magazine have been forthcoming, there aren't even any on-line links to the article, so I'll reserve judgement. My own extensive archive of newspapers and magazines from 1980 do not contain even a hint of the word, and it does seem very early when you consider that the US President was Jimmy Carter in May 1980!

However I'm open to persuasion if somebody can come up with an original copy of that magazine.

I first encountered the word around 1983.

Recently, I had an e-mail from a woman who claimed to have found a very early usage of the "yuppie" word in an American soap opera. When I examined the episode, however, the phrase used was "upwardly mobile" - a much earlier coinage than yuppie.

Our main yuppie article is here.

Charles And Diana, 1981: Video 2000 - The Best Choice For The Royal Wedding...

2011-04-27T00:56:00.000+01:00

July 29, 1981, saw Lady Diana Spencer marry HRH Prince Charles, and what a day it was. The wedding was a glorious spectacle of pomp and ceremony - and just look at the train on Diana's dress!

1981 was a highly memorable year, with the Royal Wedding, the Rubik's Cube craze, illegal CB radio usage going into overdrive before legalisation in November, and the inner city riots which rocked England.

It's a year I'll never forget - and it seems almost impossible to accept that it is now thirty years ago. Yes, THIRTY!!!

And we have another Royal Wedding in the offing for 2011.

Were you one of those glued to the Royal Wedding on the telly back in 1981? Did you video it? If so you were lucky because not many people had a VCR in 1981. 5% of the population in 1980 were lucky enough, and the Royal Wedding did cause a small leap in sales and rentals of VCRs, but I didn't know anybody that had one. They were very uncommon in 1981.

By early 1985 the figure stood at 25%.

Still, some were lucky enough to be able to use this uncommon device on that very uncommon occasion.

I was fascinated to find the ad below in the Daily Mirror, July 13, 1981, for Video 2000.

Video WHAT?!!! you splutter.

Well, for a time in the early 1980s, Video 2000 was a serious competitor for VHS...

THE PERFECT MATCH. THE PERFECT REPLAY.

Some souvenirs of the royal wedding will be more authentic than others, like the Video 2000 cassette. Philips have spent six years developing the only cassette that will record the whole event. It's all part of the new Video 2000 system.

THE ONLY VIDEO CASSETTE THAT CAN GO THE DISTANCE

No ordinary video cassette can contain all the emotion of a royal wedding.

Especially when proposed TV coverage is 7 hours long.

The unique Video 2000 cassette will record up to eight hours, because it simply flips over like an audio cassette.

Hour for hour it is one of the cheapest forms of video recording around. It leaves the others waiting at the church.

THE MOST ACCURATE PICTURE EVER

To improve your video picture Philips have invented a totally new tracking system: Dynamic Track Following. It actually lays down a pilot signal during recording.

On playback the video heads continually compare the video track with this original pilot. The result is the most accurate picture ever.

Video 2000 is so accurate that it needs no tracking control - the knob other video users have to twiddle when playing a tape recorded on another machine.

Your video 2000 machine will play any Video 2000 cassette perfectly. And that goes for pre-recorded cassettes too.

A ROSY FUTURE

Video 2000 is here to stay. It has been adopted by over twenty major European brands. Why not see the Philips VR2020 recorder at your Philips Video dealer. It will handle July 29th royally.

Philips Video. Simply years ahead.

VIDEO 2000. If you've been waiting for Video, it's arrived.

Daily Mirror, July 30, 1981:

There is a glowing moment every bride remembers. When she steps into the sunlight for the first time - as a wife.

For Lady Diana Spencer it was something more. She walked into St Paul's Cathedral as the daughter of an earl. She walked out as the next Queen.

How certain things seemed back then. And what a day of joyful optimism the twenty-ninth of July, 1981, was - even for the vast majority of us - those without video recorders!

1980 And 1981: Prince Charles And Lady Diana Spencer - How It All Began...

2011-04-27T00:51:00.000+01:00

We'd never even heard of Lady Diana Spencer at the start of 1980. But by the end of that year she was the focus of intense public and media interest. Why? Well, basically, she was seeing Prince Charles and the question was: would she become his wife?

Prince Charles had first come to view Lady Diana in a "romantic" light in the summer of 1980, and that type of thing didn't remain secret for long.

The popular press went overboard. The shy young aristocrat, who worked in a very exclusive kindergarten, was the subject of thousands upon thousands of newspaper and magazine articles. No detail of her life, no matter how tiny, was left unexamined.

And when the popular press was desperate, well, they could always print stuff like this: Daily Mirror, November 15, 1980:

JUST THE TICKET

Lady Di is booked for parking... and the Mirror told you so

It was her boyfriend's 32nd birthday... The day some said would end with the announcement of a royal engagement. But as the gifts poured in for birthday boy Prince Charles, what did Lady Diana Spencer receive? A parking ticket.

Of course, she could have saved herself the £6 fine if she had checked her own birthday stars in yesterday's Mirror. Under the sign of Cancer, astrologer June Penn wrote: "There's danger of a parking ticket or a small fine, so be careful. Some of you will be asked to an anniversary or other celebration." Well, she got the parking ticket. The party was to follow later.

The unwelcome sticker was clipped to the windscreen of 19-year-old Lady Di's blue Renault 5. A traffic warden had spotted it parked on a yellow line just around the corner from her £100,000 Chelsea flat. Of Lady Diana herself there was no sign.

One of the three girls with whom she shares her first-floor mansion flat said: "Diana went out early this morning - before 7 o'clock." Had Lady Diana been invited to a birthday party at Sandringham? The flatmate said: "I don't know where she went or how she intends to spend the day."

A famous sunny day picture of Lady Diana.

The country waited in breathless anticipation. Was an engagement about to be announced? And what was Lady Di like? Daily Mirror, November 19, 1980:

The little school where Lady Diana Spencer spends her working day is not much to look at. It is just a modest church hall and there's a slightly out-of-tune piano to the right of the stage, a hint of dust about and lots of happy noise when the three to five-year-olds crash in through the swing doors.

Assistant teacher "Miss Diana" - as the children call her - loves every living, brawling "Please-may-I-go-to-the-lavatory," and "Jessica's-just-hit-me" moment.

The privileged kindergarten - £150 per term - includes such sprigs as Harold MacMillan's great-grandson, Agriculture Minister Peter Walker's little boy, plus a clutch of merchant bankers' off-spring.

The school, patriotically and simply named Young England, sits opposite Pimlico School, where the working-class children thunder out, pausing occasionally to thumb their noses or make rude noises at the nannies and the slumbering Bentleys lined up outside the tiny place opposite.

Miss Diana - the girl almost everyone thinks will perch on the Throne next to King Charles III - takes it all very easily. She is a good, affectionate teacher, and one liked and respected by even the occasional anarchic little Tory cabinet minister in training. "Come along, Elizabeth," she will admonish gently, "You're hanging behind." Or "Please, James, don't do THAT! It's not very nice, is it?"

Having delivered such mild rebukes, she will come out with her natural trademark - a brilliant blush.

Lady Diana Spencer may well blush in front of parents and children alike, but during the last few weeks she has demonstrated a remarkably cool and mature approach to the no-holds-barred degree of personal publicity to which she has been subjected...

Now Prince Charles has come out with a potentially significant statement. While week-ending at Sandringham, where Lady Diana was a house-guest, he told a small congregation of the world's press: "I know you were all expecting some news on Friday (his 32nd birthday) and I know you were disappointed. I can promise you that you will all be told soon enough"...

On paper, of course, she would appear to be the ideal girl. Both sides of her family are highly aristocratic - including four direct links to King Charles II and one to King James II. Her father, the 8th Earl Spencer (the family name is Althorp and is pronounced Althrup in that perverse way the upper-class English have of saying things differently) is directly related to the Churchill family...

Meeting her one would assume that she was just another quiet, rather unsophisticated, upper-class girl one often meets at smartish London parties. Very pretty eyes, not a great conversationalist, a trifle nervous, seemingly cool - and (best indication of her character, perhaps) a great laugher. She can look intensely serious one moment - then if someone cracks even a mild joke her face lights up like a beacon of laughter and joy.

Additionally pleasing is her voice. It is not one of those braying, high-pitched, nasal, horsey, pinched howls so typical of that Sloane Ranger set who inhabit London, complete with scarves knotted precisely on their chins and out-of-fashion Gucci shoes clanking away with enthusiasm. She is quietly spoken, not particularly posh even. It is a pleasant, even classless accent. It is certainly not in the Princess Anne league.

She is something of a domestic fusspot. One of the things she apparently cannot stand is washing up that has not been done. Indeed, she is even known to rush off into the kitchen and do the washing up while a party is going on...

It had finally happened, or so it was reported in some newspapers, just before Christmas 1980: a romantic proposal of marriage from Prince Charles to Lady Diana in the vegetable patch near the farmhouse of his two close friends, Lt. Col. Andrew and Camilla Parker-Bowles. And in early 1981, it was reported, Lady Di had disappeared from the scene to consider the proposal.

From the Daily Mirror, February 17, 1981:

Lady Diana Spencer's vanishing act was explained yesterday.

She had gone away to decide: Shall I marry Prince Charles?

Friends believe that the couple have been asked for a make-or-break decision.

A source close to the Royal Family said: "Lady Diana had to get away from all the pressure and think."

That pressure has been fiercely on Lady Di since Christmas. All sides, including her own family, have urged her to make a statement.

She is believed to have told the Royal Family that she needs time on her own, relaxing in the sun, to finally make up her mind...

And from inside the Daily Mirror, February 17, 1981:

Prince Charles proposed to Lady Diana Spencer just before Christmas - in the vegetable patch outside the farmhouse of his close and trusted friends, Lt. Col. Andrew and Camilla Parker-Bowles.

On the day in question Charles had been out hunting with Andrew and Camilla Parker-Bowles near their home at Allington, near Chippenham, Wilts.

Now it was early evening on a clear, beautiful winter day. Prince Charles and Lady Diana were holding hands. Charles, Lady Diana has told friends, seemed "strangely stifled."

Then he asked her: "If I were to ask you, do you think it would be possible?"

Lady Diana has since told friends: "I immediately felt the immense absurdity of the situation and couldn't help giggling. I still think the situation is absurd, but I just don't giggle anymore"...

From the Sun, February 25, 1981:

MY SHY DI

Charles presents his bride-to-be

The look of love is there for the world to see... as Prince Charles presents the girl he will marry. Lady Diana Spencer, 19, and the 32-year-old heir to the throne stepped out together in the grounds of Buckingham Palace yesterday - just hours after their engagement was announced.

Shy Di smiled and blushed as she displayed her dazzling engagement ring - an oval sapphire surrounded by 14 diamonds in 18 carat white gold. And there was no disguising her love for the Prince as she looked up at him and said: "I think I coped all right."

The account of the marriage proposal is different here - we move from Camilla Parker-Bowles' vegetable patch just before Christmas 1980, to Charles' private quarters at Buckingham Palace in early 1981:

Delighted Prince Charles revealed last night how he popped the question to Lady Diana over a romantic dinner.

He asked her to be his bride three weeks ago as they ate in his private quarters in Buckingham Palace.

The anxious heir deliberately timed the proposal to fall just before Lady Diana was due to fly to Australia for a holiday.

He explained: "I wanted to give her a chance to think about it - to think if it was all going to be too awful."

But Lady Diana settled the matter there and then.

And she chipped in yesterday: "I never had any doubts about it."

The paper further reported that the Royal romance had begun in July 1980, and that Diana would live at Clarence House, home of the Queen Mother, until the wedding.

The Sun's centre page spread on the same day:

Lady Diana Spencer, the English rose who has captured Prince Charles' heart, was born to be a queen.

From babyhood she has known the ways of royalty - the protocol, the courtesies and the taboos, as well as the over-riding responsibility of public duty and discretion.

The nation has fallen in love, too, with the beautiful strawberry blonde whose blushes are so endearing.

Shy Di, as she is known to close friends, has the pedigree of one of England's great families - and something about her of the Queen Mother's aura.

She is witty, well bred, friendly and unsophisticated, and she adores children. Above all, she is well liked by the Queen.

To the Royal Family she was really the girl next door.

She was christened at Sandringham and was brought up in rambling Park House on the royal estate.

As a child Lady Diana, with her two elder sisters, joined the royal children at the same birthday parties and shared the same friends .

And the Spencer children were invited on regular visits to Windsor Castle and Balmoral.

But Diana's playmates were the younger princes, Andrew and Edward. With a 13-year age difference, Charles treated her as a sort of kid sister...

The romance did not start until last autumn, shortly after her 19th birthday.

The couple spent a weekend together at Balmoral. She watched Charles fish for salmon.

Diana was barely back in her London flat when the telephone rang. It was Charles. Flowers followed and the message was believed to be signed "with love".

In the run-up to the great event, Royal Wedding fever struck - Charles and Di appeared on a huge variety of items, including clocks, trays, tea cups and a very special Rubik's Cube, featuring images of them both and the union flag...

I always remember 1981 as being the summer of the three R's - Royals, Rubik's and...

... Riots - the Sun, July 6, 1981.

And here we have a lovely book about the Royal Wedding. Oh, I'm sorry - it's Not - Not The Nine O'Clock News, of course, the brilliant BBC TV show giving its own unique view of events in book form. Rowan Atkinson takes Prince Charles' place for the cover pic.

On 29 July, Charles and Diana were married...

Daily Mirror, July 30, 1981:

There is a glowing moment every bride remembers. When she steps into the sunlight for the first time - as a wife.

For Lady Diana Spencer it was something more. She walked into St Paul's Cathedral as the daughter of an earl. She walked out as the next Queen.

How certain things seemed back then. And what a day of joyful optimism the twenty-ninth of July, 1981, was.

Neighbours And Wikipedia - Inaccurate Information Regarding Channel Nine And 1982?

2011-04-25T01:47:00.012+01:00

Mrs Mangel appears to frighten the Neighbours off!

Sandie has written:

According to Wikipedia, Reg Watson, Neighbours creator, originally pitched the idea to Australian TV network Channel Nine in 1982. The Herald Sidney Sun has taken up the info from Wikipedia - or the other way about! Is this true? All the Neighbours material I have, including interviews with Mr Watson, indicate that he first pitched the idea to Channel Seven two years later.

Thanks for that, Sandie. My information also indicates that 1984 and Channel Seven was the first "pitching". Much was written about the show's origins when it initially achieved success, including the excellent book by James Oram - "Neighbours - Behind The Scenes" - and the Channel Nine/1982 information was never mentioned. Wikipedia is not a resource I use or would quote, so until I'm told by an absolutely reliable source (and no newspaper, no matter its quality, is absolutely infallible), 1984 will remain the year that the idea for the Ramsay Street saga was first put forward to an Australian TV network.

Here is an extract from Mr Oram's book, which contains the "origins of Neighbours" story I am familiar with:

In 1984 Ian Holmes (president and managing director of the Grundy organisation) was thinking about soaps. So was Reg Watson, head of TV Drama at the Grundy Organisation. Born and raised in Brisbane, Watson went, like so many creative Australians, to Britain because of the work limitations at home. He set up ATV's first game show, 'Hit The Limit', wrote several early episodes of 'Emergency Ward 10', then worked for several years on 'Crossroads'. Always in his mind was the idea of a serial like 'Neighbours'.

"I first got the idea for 'Neighbours' in England watching 'Coronation Street',' he said. 'I spent long enough in England to know that 'Neighbours' was just right for viewers over there too."

In fact Holmes and Watson (that duo has a familiar ring) were so confidant it would be a success in Britain they wanted to co-produce it with the BBC and include several English characters. "But that was scrapped when the BBC failed to get its daytime schedule together by the time we were ready to go with 'Neighbours'," said Holmes.

And by the way - if Mr Watson ever states that he did pitch Neighbours to Channel Nine in 1982, I will be more than happy to accept it. I simply don't feel at ease with rewriting the Neighbours history on the current evidence. Yes it's trivial, but on a site called '80s Actual, I've got to keep it ACTUAL, haven't I? :)

EastEnders: Angie Watts, Her Shaggy Perm And Ever Changing Moods, Sue Osman At The Cafe, Lou Beale In Brighton and "Thatcher Is Killing Us All!"

2011-04-22T14:47:00.011+01:00

Good grief - I've just been watching the first eight episodes of EastEnders from 1985, and I'm absolutely stunned! Clearly influenced by the subversive Liverpool saga Brookside, which had begun in November 1982, the Albert Square saga was, however, far more seething, far more "in yer face", far more downbeat.

Obviously the downbeat part was a teensy bit overplayed: there we were, in the mid-1980s, with Thatcher in her second term of office after her landslide of 1983, and many BBC types were out to portray just how grim life was for us plebs under her rule. How I applauded at the time. But it isn't the truth. It wasn't like that for everybody - far from it. And young Punk Mary Smith (Linda Davidson), being moved into a Victorian hovel room, complete with iron bedstead, does not echo the experiences of young single mothers I knew back then. Indeed, many of the older generation were complaining that these young women were given far too much by the State.

Sue and Ali Osman (Sandy Ratcliff and Nejdet Salih) made a memorable couple as they slugged it out in the cafe.

The teenagers, apart from Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean), who appeared good for a giggle, were far too dowdy and miserable, and all-in-all the "Thatcher is killing everything good" vibe ("Community spirit went out when the Tories came in!" "It's that cow in Number 10!") is a little bit laughable.

The Square obviously hadn't begun its tumble downhill in the few short years of Maggie. But, that aside, early EastEnders is compelling viewing: Anna Wing as horror bag Lou Beale ("I've missed me bingo!"), Wendy Richard as a surprisingly chirpy Pauline Fowler ("I need a fag!"), Gretchen Franklin as lovely, dippy Ethel Skinner ("The last time I had beef, we had a different Prime Minister!"), Sandy Ratcliff as miserable, bitchy but somehow touchingly vulnerable Sue Osman ("ALI!!"), Ali Osman, the aforementioned's ever loving ("SUE - pack it in!!") and Anita Dobson and Leslie Grantham as Angie and Den Watts of the Queen Victoria public house ("Seventeen years since our marriage was consummated. Except it wasn't!" "You're barred!") particularly light up the screen for me.

And although Albert Square was rather too grim to be total reality, it certainly made compelling viewing and uncompromisingly pulled many issues of the day out of the closet and shoved them in our faces.

It was a shock.

Favourite characters? Well, my all time favourite EastEnder has to be Lou Beale - what a terrific battle-axe she was! I recall almost bumping into actress Anna Wing outside Boots in Brighton on a very hot, sunny day in the early 1990s. Lou, the character, had been dead since 1988, but seeing Miss Wing there, and myself being heavily hung over and dazzled by the sunshine, I saw only Mrs Beale, and fully expected to get a terrible mouthful for almost knocking into her. I changed course and stumbled up the steps into Boots, although I'd had no intention of going there originally! With shaking hand, I sought out a hangover remedy and retired back to my hotel for a long lay down!

Number two favourite has to be Angie Watts - Anita Dobson. I know actors are supposed to act, but how on earth did she do it? At the beginning of a scene, we might find Angie crying. Then, suddenly, she was happy, all teeth and smiles. Then she was blazingly angry. Then she was frightened, heavily made-up eyes wide with fear. Then she'd suddenly laugh and turn playful...

Angie's wardrobe and snazzy '80s shaggy perm were also highlights.

And where would we have been without the sneering and surprisingly complex Den?

And Sue Osman - could be quite a bitch, but seemed so insecure I always wanted to give her a comforting hug.

Thoroughly engrossing viewing.

What a shame the BBC doesn't bring out some official DVD releases of '80s 'Enders.

Read what happened when Anita Dobson took to the pop charts and opened a bingo hall in the town where I live in 1986 here.

1980: The "Type K" Pillar Box

2011-04-19T00:27:00.006+01:00

1987 - the embattled residents of Brookside Close, stars of Phil Redmond's groundbreaking Channel 4 serial, and the production team, with a very interesting pillar box (far left). This box was a permanent fixture on the Close, but differed from many dotted across our green and pleasant land. It was kind of steamlined... kind of modern... it looked... kind of like a lipstick.

So, what was it?

The answer is a "Type K" pillar box, introduced on 31 July 1980.

A new pillar box for a new decade, and felt to be "more in keeping with the times in which we live".

Of course, it would have taken more than a modern pillar box to cheer up the Brookside folks, particularly legendary grouse Harry Cross (Bill Dean). Bless 'im!

The Type K ceased production in 2000 but examples can still be spotted here and there.

Post Office official souvenir cover - introduction of the new style posting box, 31 July, 1980.

The accompanying blurb reads:

It is just over 100 years since the cylindrical pillar box was generally introduced.

In redesigning the pillar box the opportunity has been taken to create a product more in keeping with the times in which we live and takes advantage of modern techniques. The box has been designed by Tony Gibbs a Fellow of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers and is being made by Lion Foundry of Kirkintilloch, Glasgow.

Max Headroom

2011-04-03T11:39:00.000+01:00

Super weird TV presenter Max Headroom... Now what was all that about? I found the lowdown on Mr Headroom in a magazine article from May 1985...

"When we suggested a computer instead of a human being as a TV presenter, Channel 4 were DELIGHTED. A computer! No hangovers, no union disputes, no gossip column stories... and NO SALARY! It seemed so perfect. Nobody could have foreseen the trouble we'd have with him..."

Peter Wagg is the producer of the "Max Headroom Show" (Saturdays, 6.00pm) - Channel 4's newest pop video programme, a collection of 'the best of the new and the old' videos, linked by a bizarre stuttering character who's apparently part machine, part human being. Is he really a computer copy of a human brain? Is he a man with make-up? Is he just a puppet tarted up with a bit of computer graphics?

"Max is all those things," says Peter Wagg darkly, "and more..."

In fact his creators refuse to divulge how he works. "A trade secret," they say. "He's a series of techniques joined together."

They claim instead that Max was first created from the brain of super-sleuth journalist Eddison Carter and rescued from the corrupt Network 23. He was simply glad to be alive and of some small use to his rescuers. But Max has taken to media stardom like a duck to water, and Peter Wagg is afraid that it has turned his head...

"He really is very difficult. All we want him to do is be jolly on the telly and introduce the videos. But he's rather political and keeps getting digs in that aren't in the script. And he's so VAIN."

But intial reaction to the "Max Headroom Show" has proved too favourable for his creators to pull the plug on him now and, if Max gets his way, his show will soon be shown all over the world.

"It's world domination or nothing now," says Peter Wagg, sadly. "I'm afraid we've created a monster."

PERSONAL FILE ON MAX HEADROOM

Name: Maximum Headroom 2.3m

Born: In Finchley, North London.

Starsign: Vegetarian.

What would you do if you weren't a TV presenter? Kill myself.

First record ever bought: "Digital Watch Tunes Volume 2", by Bronco

Are you going out with anyone? Come come now. We hardly know each other! Just get on and do the interview. 'They' want me to say that I'm happily married and in love with my wife. Hah!

Have you ever had a supernatural experience? I ate a Big Mac once without taking it out of the box...

Best thing about being a celebrity: Being invited on the "Terry Wogan Show".

Worst thing about being a celebrity: Meeting Terry Wogan.

What's in your pockets? My pockets? No they're definitely not 'in'.