Life in 1986 - A Few Magazine Ads - Hugo Boss, Cars For Rent, Puma, Just Juice And Stella Artois...

Fashion 1986 - the deelyboppers of a couple of years before had mysteriously disappeared...

Cars for rent... the Toyota MR2, Ford Escort RS Turbo, or the Ford Escort 1.6i Cabriolet - £59.40 a day or £356 a week?! The Lamborghini Countach QV or Ferrari Testarossa - £436.50 per day or £2,619.00 per week?!!!

Incredible...

Martina Navratilova and Boris Becker - "Puma" written all over them. I'll never forget seventeen-year-old Boris's win at Wimbledon in 1985. Probably the most thrilling Wimbledon I ever saw.

"No additives, no mess, no fuss - just juice!"

An advertisement for Just Juice featured in The Field Story Of Wimbledon, a 1986 magazine published to celebrate 100 years of championships at the All England Club. Wimbledon actually celebrated its centenary in 1977, but the 100th championships were not played until 1986 because of years missed during the two world wars.

Do you remember the 1980s Just Juice advertising jingle on the telly? "No pips, no additives, no preservatives, just juice..." Some days that jingle went round and round in my head from morning till night!

More liquid refreshment - this time lager at "La Brasserie" - very posh indeed. In fact, posh to the max, darlin'...

"Reassuringly expensive" - sounds barking, doesn't it? But it made perfect sense back in those 1980s days of yuppiedom - yer pays for quality yer see!

I loved a few pints of Stella Artois. It was pricey, but got me... er... muddled and jolly quicker. In fact it got me muddled and jolly very quickly. And lively too. We used to call it 'rocket fuel'!

1980s TV Ads: Shredded Wheat - "Bet You Can't Eat Three!", Nina Myskow and Ian "Beefy" Botham...

One of the most successful  and best-remembered TV ad campaigns of the 1980s was for the breakfast cereal Shredded Wheat, featuring several screen and sports stars, and the tagline "Bet You Can't Eat Three!"

News Of The World TV columnist Nina Myskow launched into one of the ads' stars, England cricketer Ian Botham, in 1983 whilst the ad campaign was in full swing. 

What, I wonder has the cricketing disaster Down Under done for the sales of Shredded Wheat, so heavily advertised by Ian Botham on telly? And yes, his bum does look as if he's stuffing down at least three at each sitting. Does a spoonful now turn to Ashes in his mouth?

Ouch, Ms M! The gentler sex? Oh, yeah... Poor old Beefy...

Some Of Us Were Watching In Black and White: Dickie Davies, Of "World Of Sport", Gets Ticked Off

Dickie Davies - World of Sport presenter - in black and white, of course.

Whilst colour TV became available in 1967, and became quite widespread in the years following, it is worth noting that quite a lot of us stuck to black and white well into the 1980s. For instance, my mother and step-father rented a slot meter colour set in 1978 but couldn't afford to feed the meter and so away it went after only a few weeks, and back came our very own, decrepit black and white set. Colour vanished from our house until the early 1980s.

Many of our neighbours were black and white folk in the early 1980s.

And one reader of the Sun newspaper on October 3, 1981, reminded Dickie Davies that we weren't all colour privileged:

Dickie Davies should try to remember that there are still lots of us with black and white sets.

Last week he told us our boxer was the one wearing blue shorts. Funny! On our set they were the same colour as the streak in your hair, Dickie.

More about World Of Sport here.

Daily Mirror, December 31, 1982 - the Rumbelows ("We Save You Money And Serve You Right") - make a tempting offer - RENT COLOUR TV FROM ONLY £6.95 DOWN!

For as "little" as £8.95 down, the Rumbelows would deliver and install your "good as new" set and give you a "superb" Ferguson clock radio.

In early 1983, I went in for a thrilling piece of 1980s technology - a 1982 Pye Tube Cube - with cassette, radio, digital clock and TV. It was a lovely bit of kit and the fact that the TV was black and white didn't bother me in the slightest. It served as my main TV set until 1987. Read more about the Cube here.

Saturday Wrestling On The Telly...

Much-loved Big Daddy, aka Shirley Crabtree, advertising Daddies Sauce/Ketchup in 1985.

World of Sport had begun in 1965, with Dickie Davis arriving as anchorman in 1968. The TV Times cutting shown above is from March 1985 - with the show nearing the end of its run.

-

Most people I knew, regardless of gender, loved the wrestling.

-

My gran thought it was "better than a trip to the pantomime"; cousin Sue watched to ogle young men like Danny Collins; my mates and I watched " 'cos it was a right larf".

-

Wrestling continued to crop up on ITV on Saturdays after the end of World of Sport.

-

So that was all right.