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

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".

1982: The Kids From Fame In England...

"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.

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

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

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...

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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...

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.