1980: The Sony Walkman Arrives In The UK As The Sony Stowaway: Wired For Sound...

Magazine advertisement for the Sony Stowaway personal stereo, launched in the UK in 1980. In 1981, it would be patented as the Sony Walkman. 

To say their new Stowaway gives you totally incredible sound for such an an amazingly small stereo is not Sony's style.

They say they are quite pleased with it.

This is Sony's new Stowaway, a stereo cassette player about the size of your hand.

You can be forgiven for wondering how pure stereo sound can emerge from a system so small. Sony says it's quite easy; but then they would. Apparently they took the circuitry, transistors, diodes and what-have-you from a larger cassette deck, and squeezed it into a few silicon chips.

Technically, it's rather impressive. Your Sony dealer or the chaps at Sony's Regent Street show-rooms in London, can blind you with Stowaway's sience if you're interested.

But the sound! Now there's something you can understand as soon as you slip on the hi-fi headphones (inevitably they are the smallest and lightest in the world.) Clip in a standard music cassette and you'll hear all the treble and bass your ears could desire. Should you want to share the magic with a friend you can always plug in a second set of 'phones.

The little masterpiece runs off batteries, so you can tuck it in your pocket and relax to the music of your choice when you're on a train, a plane, or the next time you're in a hotel room with a radio fixed to Voice of America. Or you can buy an adaptor to run it off the mains.

Listen to Stowaway for yourself, and you'll understand why Sony are so excited.

Sony Sowaway. 

The world's smallest stereo cassette player.

  

Note that the device has two earphone plug-in points. This fact was put to use by EastEnders story-liners in 1985, when Sharon Watts, in competition with her "friend" Michelle Fowler for the attentions of Kelvin Carpenter, shared her Walkman "magic" with him - and infuriated Michelle.

Invented by Sony in 1979 and first marketed in Japan in July 1979, the personal stereo was launched in the UK in 1980 - and was marketed as the Sony Stowaway. 1980 was also the American release year and I believe it had a different name there, too - The Soundabout!

A very early mention of the newly released Sony Stowaway (Walkman) in the UK Press - a competition in the Sunday People in July 1980.

In 1981, the personal stereo was patented here under Sony's original name - the Walkman, and we saw Cliff Richard making full use of one down at the roller disco in his video (or should that be "promo" in 1981 terminology?) for Wired For Sound.

The Ingersoll Soundaround pocket hi-fi also made a brief impact on the UK in 1981, and other copy-cat personal stereos were also arriving on the market.
Soon, the personal stereo would be everywhere....

From the Daily Mirror, 30/7/1981:

The Walkmen never walk alone... or skate alone... or even cycle alone...

They are the people who have hopped on an international craze and now roam the streets wired up to the earphones of Walkman stereo sets.

The Walkman - and its many similar, often cheaper copies - has become the skateboard of electronics. A craze that has astounded the experts - and made them rich.

But, unlike the skateboard, this one should run and run...

The demand shows no sign of slowing. Lasky's, one of Britain's biggest hi-fi dealers, say: "The demand is fantastic. Our shops just can't get enough."

To Akio Morita, Sony's co-founder and chairman, it was a machine to get the world dancing. He said: "My dream is to have Walkman parties in the jungles."

Could people there afford them? I couldn't, for some time.

Back to the article...

In Britain trade sources estimate that 100,000 personal hi-fi's were sold last year and that another 250,000 will sell this year at prices of around £50 to £125.

Most sets are fairly simple in today's technological terms - but already Japanese engineers are working on more sophisticated models.

Sony are already selling a tiny version in Japan and America which includes stereo FM radio - though there are no plans to market it here.

And as the boom gathers momentum even the sophisticated models will fall in price. Marketing experts are predicting Korean and Taiwanese versions at £15, while the uses of the Walkman continue to become even more wide-spread.

They've been seen being worn by bicycling barristers and by art gallery and museum browsers. Some teenagers even take them to discos - preferring their own music to that of the DJ.

And in America, Linda Moriarty of Illinois, regularly plays classical music, via her headphones, to her unborn child.

 "The baby definitely responds," she says.

A 1983 Tandy newspaper advertisement for personal stereos. If that's what they do to you, I'll give them a miss!
 
A magazine advertisement from November 1984 - the Walkman is now on sale at £29.95.

Post updated  05/06/23

Rubik's Cube, 7 May 1980 - An Important Anniversary...

I'm writing and posting this article on the seventh of May 2020, and it is a very important anniversary. On this day, the 'Rubik's Cube' trademark was registered in the UK back in 1980. Not that we were suddenly flooded with Cubes - no, there was a shortage and that is the reason 1981 was The Year of the Cube rather than 1980, but it's still an important date.

Although they were in very short supply when they started arriving here, just before Christmas 1980, the British Association of Toy Retailers noted the interest shown and declared it 'Toy of the Year'. As the craze raged after we were fully stocked in the spring of 1981, the association named it 'Toy of the Year' for 1981 too!

The Rubik's Cube made it on to the front cover of the Sunday Times Magazine's review of 1981 - and is listed just below the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. A special Cube depicting the union flag and the faces of the Royal couple, was produced to commemorate the occasion in July 1981.

The Cube was such a craze - it made a legend of its creator, Erno Rubik of Hungary, and saturated popular culture from late 1980 to 1982.

From the invention of the Magic Cube prototype in 1974, to a change of name and mass manufacture to Western World safety and packaging specifications in 1980, seems a short leap. Many inventions take much longer to come to prominence. But the world was very different back then. Hungary was very much 'Behind The Iron Curtain' - and the Cube's penetration of that Curtain was very noteworthy indeed - particularly in such a short amount of time. When you consider that the first test batches of the Magic Cube were not even released in Hungary until late 1977, its progress to the West seems even more remarkable.

There had been a small seepage of  Magic Cubes from Hungary to the West, but in minute numbers (there weren't that many to begin with), and without any major backing to provide publicity. The 1980 Rubik's Cube was a remanufactured version of the Magic Cube, lighter and easier to manipulate (allowing for speed-cubing), and with Ideal Toys behind it, trusted purveyor of many previous toys and games, couldn't fail to become a hit.

The remanufactured and renamed Rubik's Cube was a huge success. Perhaps its launch at the start of the new decade helped with that - new decades are eager for new fads - but the Cube was entrancing in its own right. It was aesthetically pleasing, bright primary colours with black edgings, it looked like a child's toy - surely easy to complete? (HUH!) - and it took over many lives.

Daily Mirror, 12 August, 1981: The craze was raging. Cube mania was rampant!

Ours sat on the sofa and we twirled it whilst watching the telly. We couldn't leave it alone!

Now it's as much a part of early 1980s memories as Duran Duran, synth pop, hair gel and the ZX Spectrum.

In fact, it has become an icon of the entire decade.

Happy anniversary, Rubik's Cube! Read all our Cube data by clicking on the 'Rubik's Cube' label below.

BANG! How The 1980s Began... Tabloid Snippets From The First Two Years...

1980 - Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please... The anthem of that summer. LOVE IT!!!! Listen to it whilst you're reading through this article - it'll help bring that early 1980s vibe flooding back...

"TWO PINTS OF LAGER AND A PACKET OF CRISPS PLEASE!" we all squawked in the summer of 1980. This was thanks to Splodgenessabounds, of course. 

June 24, 1980:

Britain's most outrageous punk group have rocked into the charts with their first single.

The band, Splodgenessabounds, pour out four letter words, show their bare bottoms and break wind on stage.

Their recording of Simon Templar has reached No. 7 only four weeks after its release.

But it is the B-side - a song called Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Please - which has caught on with the fans.

The group's founder, lead singer Max Splodge, 21, said in London last night: "Before I take my trousers down and moon, I always take a special powder so that I can break wind effectively."

The only person in the eight-strong band without a bare bottom role is girl singer Baby Greensleeves, 22.

Baby, who sometimes takes her dog Two Pints to the group's concerts, said: "I'd moon as well, but it would take too much time because of the gear I wear."

And what was the song about? Some desperate young lad trying to get served in a packed-out pub. Been there so many times. Mind you, if I'd been a barmaid/bloke, I probably wouldn't have served me either.

Max Splodge, Two Pints... writer and singer, spilled the beans about the song years later:

"One night I rushed into The Crown in Chislehurst waving a pound note, trying to buy two pints of lager and a packet of crisps. The bell rang and the bloke wouldn't serve me. The guys in the band were out of their heads on magic mushrooms and thought this was hysterical. The next day I put down a drum track and bass line and just shouted, 'two pints of lager and a packet of crisps...' Mike Reid played it on Radio 1 and it started selling 17,000 copies a day. No one could believe it. It sold a quarter of a million copies and got to No 7."

Cor, the '80s were starting out dead posh, weren't they? 

 Splodgenessabounds' wonderful 1980 anthem on glorious vinyl, tucked away on the B-side with Michael Smith's Talking Bum.

 1981 - England's burning...

Well, of course, we all remember the Style Decade! The glitzy 1980s! Yuppies! Docklands developments! Big Bang! The Credit Boom! Big hair and shoulder pads!

Ho, ho, weren't they up themselves, mateyboots?

Well, actually, one of the things that fascinates me the most about the 1980s is what a turbulent and contrasting decade it was, and nothing speaks louder about that than the good old tabloid newspapers of the era, those we propped up against the Daddy's Sauce bottle as we read and gronffed down our egg and chips early in the decade, or against the bottle of fancy salad dressing as we read and gronffed down our beautifully prepared Nouvelle Cuisine later on.

Let's continue to trawl through some early 1980s tabloid snippets... no yuppies. No mobile phones. Three TV channels and Top of The Pops on Thursday nights...

In my street, none of the school leavers stayed on to sixth form or had the remotest desire to attend university. Oh no, we wanted out of school, and that was the way it had been for us, the lower working classes, the great unwashed, forever. During the 1980s, this would begin to change, but when I left school it certainly wasn't the case. Unemployment had been a problem for years, and with Thatcher focusing on inflation, the number of jobless folk was accelerating through the roof in the early 1980s. But we poor sods had no thought of "staying on" - and it would not have been financially viable for parents round my district anyway.

No yuppies in the early 1980s, no credit boom... riots, royals, CB radio, New Romantics, Space Invaders, and Rubik's Cube were the new trends popping one by one onto the scene.

One writer referred to "The Swinging Sixties And Savage Seventies". As the 1980s got underway, I wondered if they would be remembered as "The Aggro Eighties"? Actually, there was a lot of aggro THROUGHOUT the 1980s, so perhaps it's a worthy title, but so much else happened in that ten years that there are many others!

Anyway, sit back and continue (hopefully) to enjoy this visit to 1980 and 1981, via the Daily Mirror...

1981 - "There's Going To Be A Rumble Tonight"...The riots... in 1980, there was some trouble, centred around racial tensions, a youth leader commented he'd seen it coming for fifteen years or so. In 1981, inner cities burned and shops were plundered as trouble makers, opportunists, political activists and bored youths joined in.

July 9, 1981:

Hours before the latest explosion of mob violence in North London, the word was passed around: "There's going to be a rumble tonight!"

The news spread rapidly through local pubs, youth clubs and even school playgrounds.

It resulted in a crowd of around 400 youths converging on Wood Green and turning it into a battlefield of looting and rioting.

Yesterday police, community leaders and shopkeepers - who were robbed of thousands of punds' worth of goods - were in no doubt that the mob was well organised.

More than six hours before the eruption, the Daily Mirror was warned that trouble was about to break out.

A man, who refused to give his name, phoned the Mirror to say: "There will be trouble in Wood Green High Road tonight."

The caller explained that he had overheard a group of youths in a North London pub boasting that they were going to "take on the police".

At about the same time, police themselves heard about the impending violence.

This was revealed yesterday to local police Commander Jim Dickenson.

He said: "It was obviously organised by somebody.

"You don't get hundreds of people massing in one place by coincidence."

Haringey Council leader Robin Young also got a tip-off hours before.

He said: "Undoubtedly it was all pre-arranged. The word went round that there was going to be a rumpus."

Youths in orgy of plunder

Moss Side

Shopkeepers were last night counting the cost of mob violence which exploded in Moss Side, Manchester, early yesterday.

Mobs of youths threw petrol bombs, smashed windows and looted shops, leaving a trail of damage estimated at £300,000.

They stoned fireman who were forced to retreat and watch helplessly as two shops were gutted...

In Liverpool, 25 people - the youngest aged eleven - appeared in court following the Toxteth riots.

They were charged with offences ranging from assaults on police to criminal damage. Most of the adults charged were remanded in custody.

Meanwhile, the BBC was apparently giving instructions on Radio 2 on how to make a Molotov cocktail. Good grief!

Wednesday, July 8, 1981: 

A bomb boob on JY show

The BBC blundered yesterday by broadcasting how to make a petrol bomb.

BBC community relations correspondent John Clare, who has been covering the Liverpool riots, described the ingredients of a Molotov cocktail on Jimmy Young's Radio 2 show.

The BBC received a number of complaints and Jimmy made an apology later in his show.

On the same day, a letter published in the Mirror's Public Opinion section asked an interesting question...

As I lived in Toxteth until about two years ago, the riots there are less of a surprise to me than most. It was obvious that the levels of social deprivation I witnessed could not continue without some reaction sooner or later.

I wonder, though, why riots have only broken out now under a Tory Government.

Ted Heath and the Left Wing Mirror were well and truly on Thatcher's case, and Lady Di caused shock amongst traditionalists as Royal Wedding fever raged...

 Thursday, July 2, 1981:

Lady Diana Spencer will NOT promise to obey Charles when they marry on July 29.

She will pledge herself only to "love him, comfort him, honour and keep him, in sickness and in health" at the ceremony at St Paul's Cathedral.

Her decision after talks with Prince Charles and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, breaks with the tradition followed by Queen, Princess Margaret and Princess Anne.

But it delighted women's libbers like Nell Noell of the Women's Rights Movement.

But Lady Di didn't go far enough for Nell, who said: "I hope she will avoid the humiliation of using her husband's name.

"She should stick to name she was born with and not agree to be called Princess Charles."

Flippin' 'eck! The times were changing, however, quite frankly I couldn't have cared less about the Royal Wedding - and as for Feminism - YUCK! - one-sided, cherry-picked lies aimed at vilifying one half of the human race. Men. I'm in total agreement with Karen Straughan. But what's that at the bottom of the front page? The topless Mary Poppins? Good grief! SURELY NOT?!!!

Eeeek!

Thursday, July 2, 1981:

AT LAST.. this is the moment when sugary British star Julie Andrews loses all her inhibitions and Mary Poppins finally pops out.

Julie plays a fading Mary Poppins-type actress in her new film, SOB, the story of the machinations of the Hollywood film moguls.

She is called on to go topless in a movie to save the studio from going bust.

It's quite a wrench for the poor girl, but finally she is convinced that fans will pack the box offices if she is seen in the bare flesh.

There is another eye-popping scene where she bares her bottom for a quack doctor to inject her with a muscle-relaxant drug so she can pluck up courage to peel off for the cameras.

What did Julie think of her part in the film, directed by husband Blake Edwards? "It gave me quite a kick," she said.

That nice Mary Poppins certainly wouldn't have approved.

I was so shocked, I nearly passed me fags round. 

In other news... Ronald Reagan was elected President of the USA in November 1980. He was shot in 1981, but survived.

Oh well, we'll watch Wimbledon! In 1981, Wimbledon was a bastion of tradition, a far more staid, and in fact downright posh, affair than it is today. The perfect retreat from the stresses of the highly modern early 1980s world.

Oh yeah?!!!!

"You CANNOT be serious!" John McEnroe was making waves as he dragged Wimbledon out of the highly polite "More Tea Vicar?" 1930s and into the brash, "In-Yer-Face" 1980s....

Lady Diana Spencer watched at Wimbledon yesterday as tennis superbrat John McEnroe smashed his way into the final with a volley of abuse.

Lady Diana, a keen tennis fan, was a surprise visitor to Wimbledon. She was given a standard ovation when she arrived in the Royal box.

Then the 14,000-strong crowd watched in amazement as McEnroe made thirteen loud comments to the umpire and shouted obscenities at spectators.

The behaviour on court brought a public warning and penalty point with the possibility of a £5,000 fine.

And twenty minutes after his semi-final victory, over Australia's Rod Frawley, the fiery American was still at it. 

He stormed out of a press conference after calling newsmen "liars" and "trash".

McEnroe's first-set public warning for unsportsmanlike behaviour came when he suddenly bellowed: "I hate umpires. I get screwed by them in this place."

In the final set he lost a penalty point for shouting, "You are a disgrace to mankind."  The umpire took it as an insult, but McEnroe later said he had been talking to himself.

At the press conference McEnroe's first explosion came when he was asked whether the return to New York of his girlfriend, Stacy Margolin, meant they had split up.

The 22-year-old New Yorker shouted: "People like you make me sick. It is none of your business in the first place and the answer is no."

He went on: "You guys are sh*t and trash and I want you to quote me on that."

During McEnroe's outburst Lady Diana's name was mentioned. He suddenly paused and said: "She's a terrific person."

Before sweeping out of the room McEnroe told reporters: "I don't want to waste time on low people like you."

The uproar continued after the star's exit when a fight broke out between two newsmen - a Britain and an American - which sent chairs and microphones flying.

 Phew, feel quite exhausted after this little trip back... Time to go and have a cuppa and a quick play with my ZX 80, I think. More soon...

1981 - A Hoover Called Henry...

1981 was an eventful year - the riots, the Rubik's, the Royal Wedding, the New Romantics, the recession, Only Fools And Horses, the launch of the Space Shuttle, the CB radio craze, the first London Marathon... and Henry the vacuum cleaner. Ever had a Henry? They were created by a company called Numatic International in 1981 and have since become a friendly and familiar companion to jolly up the naff task of hovering. Henry has developed a family - including George, Charles and Hetty - and is still going strong today.

Hats off to Henry. A hoover with a smiling face was certainly a novel idea and, as we love a bit of whimsy, we adore it.

Here's the lovely Hetty. We think she's Henry's sister.

These days you can even get a mini-Henry for hoovering your desktop - which, judging by the amount of muck in our keyboard, is a great idea. We didn't have Henry desktop hoovers in 1981. But then we didn't have desktops either.

1981: Marching For Nuclear Disarmament...

From the Sunday Mirror, 25/10/1981: 

Thousands of ban-the-bomb marchers staged a massive demonstration through the streets of central London yesterday. 

The march, from Charing Cross to Hyde Park, was headed by Labour leader Michael Foot and veteran anti-nuclear campaigner Canon Collins. The 150,000 demonstrators shouted slogans like "Give us jobs, not bombs" and "Fall out with Thatcher".

Police adopted a low-key softly-softly approach and the protest passed off peacefully.

The march, organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, ended with a mass rally in Hyde Park.

Mr Foot described the rally as "the greatest and most historic meeting" ever seen in Hyde Park.

"Only by disarmament can we properly defend our people in this nuclear world." 

1981 - "I can envisage a limited nuclear war in Europe" - President Reagan came out with some corkers - but 1985 would mark the beginning of a new era, which would include the end of the Cold War, as new Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev arrived.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, I was terrified of the prospect of nuclear war. I was far from being alone. I even remember Gail of Coronation Street voicing similar fears in 1978! 1979 was particularly grim as the SALT II treaty failed because of Russia invading Afghanistan. As the 1980s arrived, things seemed darker than ever on the Nuke Threat front, but by that time I had decided that I could not spend my young life petrified with fear and was getting on with living. The rapid thawing of the Cold War ice after Gorbachev took office in 1985 surprised and delighted me and the formal ending of the Cold War in December 1989 was simply incredible. 

1981: Chas And Dave - Rabbit Upsets Some Feminists!

One of my step-father's favourite chart hits of 1980 was that rollicking "rockney" outing Rabbit, by those two likely geezers Chas and Dave - aka Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock.

This was, I felt, a grotty piece of fogey stuff back in the day, designed for parents, not teens. But I must admit, on hearing it on an '80s compilation over Christmas, it made me smile.

You've got more rabbit than Sainsbury's, it's time you got it off your chest...

However, back in the 1980s, Rabbit aroused the ire of some feminists.

Oh, purlease! Surely the song wasn't stating that all women talk too much? But the letter I've scanned below, from the Daily Mirror, January 1981, reveals that rumblings were definitely being heard in feminist circles.

"The singers list the woman's bodily charms then complain that the only thing wrong is that she talks too much. This implies that men are only interested in a women's body and appearance," snipes the letter writer.

Well, perhaps some are. Just as some women appear to only be interested in men's bodies and appearances. I've sat in enough pubs with female friends who were happily eyeing up every bloke that came in the door and rating their physical appearances, to know that both genders contain examples of this type.

For me, the Rabbit ditty conjured up a strong image of the singer as an insensitive, often monosyllabic male, most animated in conversation when out with "der lads" - and probably a bit of a twit. As, it seemed, was his chattering girlfriend.

Flipping heck - gender issues...

I've worked hundreds of shifts at hospitals with women who spent a lot of the time making hideous generalisations about men, but who were terribly quick to cry "SEXIST!" at anything vaguely similar from the apparently unfairer sex. 

Such double standards! Such lack of insight!

Perhaps one day the situation will improve. But not until both genders grow up a bit!

In the meantime, I've revised my opinion on Chas and Dave. The memories Rabbit evokes of 1980 make me smile!

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

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!

British Telecom Arrives...

In 1980, Post Office Telecommunications became British Telecom and would become a totally separate public corporation on 1 October 1981.

A popular saying of the late '70s and early '80s, a play on the "make someone happy with a phone call" ads, was "make someone happy - wring Buzby's neck".

Sounds hard, eh? Well, I don't think we really hated Buzby. Perhaps we just saw too much of him.

October 1981 - Buzby tops "hate" poll!

1981: The Riots And The Royals...

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...

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.

1980 And 1981: Prince Charles And Lady Diana Spencer - How It All Began...

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.