Hinge and Bracket

The Dear Ladies were Dr Evadne Hinge and Dame Hilda Bracket. They were two elderly, intellectual, musical women who sang light-hearted comedy songs and motored around the English countryside visiting fetes and eating cucumber sandwiches. They played croquet and talked about the vicar and were generally very genteel Englishwomen. Sometimes they argued and that was [...]

It’s Friday, it’s Five to Five and it’s Crackerjack!

 Crackerjack ran from 1955 to 1984, but it will be the years with Michael Aspel and Ed Stewart which will remain immortalised in my Seventies brain. Once we got Stu ‘Ooh I could crush a grape’ Francis and The Krankies, it became rather naff, or maybe that was me growing up.
Crackerjack was a game show [...]

Soft Furnishings of the Seventies

Silver Jones (AKA EponaValkyrie)’s SIMS designs are Seventies influenced
At 33, Silver is barely able to remember the Seventies, though she tells me that she loved to sit on her stuffed horse and watch Wonder Woman. However, not remembering the time has in no way diminished the flower-power capabilities of this fabulous artist, as can be [...]

Watch out, watch out, there’s a Humphrey about!

Back when milk was delivered to your doorstep, Unigate started up an advertising campaign which may well be one of the first successful branding exercises of the modern age. Red and white stripes, or the phrase ‘watch out, watch out’ still engenders a response from the over thirties.
The advertisements generally featured a celebrity (such as [...]

In the Navy

Andy Laker joined the Navy, here are his thoughts on that experience
In April 1974 as a sixteen year old boy I joined the Royal Navy at HMS Ganges in Ipswich. I was woken that morning by my mother who walked with me to the bus stop. When it arrived she went off to work crying [...]

Bank Holiday Films

Before there were videos, DVDs, multi-start TV and whatever else we have now, Bank Holidays were TV heaven. For the whole of one day, starting when the Testcard stopped showing at nine o’clock, there would be films to watch. Classics such as The Wizard of Oz, Jason and the Argonauts and Ben Hur during the [...]

Seventies Work and Life

The later Seventies explored by Kim P Moody
As fashion changed I tried the ultra-tight hipster style flared trousers, with tank tops and Budgie jacket. Adam Faith had made these trendy in the TV series, Budgie, with Faith as Budgie Bird, recently released from prison. The jackets were very short bomber style, tight sleeves and lots [...]

Corporal Punishment

In the Seventies it was just starting to become unacceptable for children to be hit as punishment. Corporal punishment was the term used for the sanctioned and premeditated physical punishment meted out by teachers. It does not include the teachers who threw chalk or blackboard rubbers at children because of chatting in class or getting [...]

Postal Strike in the Seventies

Dorothy Davies’ memories of the longest postal strike in UK history
On the 20th January 1971 negotiations broke down between the postal workers union, headed by Tom Jackson and the Royal Mail. On that day the longest strike in postal history began. Officially it lasted seven weeks, in reality it lasted up to three months, all [...]

Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks

I was an aggressive child, I think that’s fair to say. I had learned that this was the way to deal with the world. One of my favourite things to watch on the TV was the wrestling, and my two favourite wrestlers were Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. I had a secret ambition to be [...]