Advert - Pro-Plus (1980's)

Click to Enlarge

As essential to the 1980's Young Urban Professional, or Yuppie, as his filofax and brick-sized mobile phone, Pro-Plus tablets kept him high on caffeine. These days it would be Red Bull.

Advert - Granada Video Recorder rental (1980's)

Click to Enlarge

1982 and the must have gadget was a VHS video recorder and you could rent one from Granada for only £14.45 a month, build up a huge library of tapes and then wonder what to do with them when DVD's arrived.

Advert - 100 Pipers Scotch Whisky (1980's)

Click to Enlarge

1980's advert for 100 Pipers Scotch Whisky and another nicely drawn cartoon.

Advert - Fine Fare (1980's)

Click to Enlarge

Founded in 1951, Fine Fare was an offshoot of its parent company Welwyn Department Stores of Welwyn Garden City. The name disappeared from the High street in 1988 when it was re-branded as Gateway.

If they were really confident that their prices were cheap they'd have written 'YOU DISPROVE IT' as a challenge.

Advert - Royal Mail Parcels (1980's)

Click to Enlarge

I love the cartoon in this 1980's ad for the Post Office Parcels Service. Note the Vague Fashion shop, the Bodger Tools (with picture of a badger) and the snooty looking lady walking by outside.

Advert - Do-Do Cough tablets (1980's)

Click to Enlarge

This is still marketed as Do-Do ChestEze. I'm sure Do-Do used to be baby talk for something rather unpleasant and you would definitely not want on the tip of your tongue.

Advert - Music Club (1981)

Click to Enlarge

The Audio Club of Britain offering vinyl long players or cassettes for only £1.29. Who would you go for - Mantovani or Judas Priest, Rod Stewart or Ted Nugent, David Bowie or Blue Oyster Cult?

Advert - Woolworths (1986)

Click to Enlarge

The first UK Woolworths was opened in 1909 and by the 1950's when I was a kid every High Street had one, but the last  Woolworths store closed down in 2009.

Random Ad - CB Radio Rig (1982)

Click to Enlarge

Originating in the USA Citizen band Radio was popularised in the UK by films like 'Convoy' and 'Smokey and the Bandit'. "What's your handle, good Buddy? I'm knocking on your back door and I've got the pedal to the metal. Ten Four."

Random Ad - Kalms (1980's)

Click to Enlarge

What better was to survive living in the 1980's and having to listen to The Smiths, U2, Pet Shops Boys, Prefab Sprout and Phil Collins, than to take Kalms containing a sedative made from the root of the Valerian plant?

Random Ads - Royal Wedding stuff (1981)

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

Prince Charles and Diana Spenser's wedding in July 1981 spawned a good many pieces of memorobilia. Here we have three examples - stamps, a medallion and coins. All guaranteed to last longer than the marriage?

Murdered by Madmen (1984)

Daily Mirror dated Wednesday April 18th 1984

Click to Read

 

Click to Read

25 year-old WPC Yvonne Fletcher was a British police officer fatally shot during a protest outside the Libyan Embassy in St. James's Square, London, on April 17th 1984. Her death resulted in the Metropolitan Police laying siege to the Embassy for eleven days, and the UK cutting off all diplomatic relations with Libya. No one has ever been convicted for the murder.

Random Cutting - Sunday Opening (1986)

1986

Click to Read

The sides are drawn for and against Sunday trading. The Shops Bill which would have de-regulated shop opening times and what could and couldn't be sold on a Sunday was defeated 14 votes on 11th April 1986. De-regulation finally came in 1994. 

Random Cutting - Huw Wheldon dies (1986)

15th March 1986

Click to Read

Huw Wheldon was a familiar face on TV first in Children's programming and then Arts especially 'Monitor' which started in 1958. He then switched to Management and became Head of Documentaries followed by Controller of BBC1. He returned to presenting after retiring. 

Sadat of Egypt Murdered (1981)

Daily Mirror dated Wednesday October 7th 1981

Click to Read

 

Click to Read

The young Anwar Sadat was an anti-British and anti-colonial revolutionary and was instrumental, along with Gamal Nasser, in overthrowing King Farouk in 1952. When Nasser died in 1970 Sadat became President, but compared to Nasser, Sadat was a moderate and when he expelled Soviet advisers he gained limited support of the USA.

Sadat's attempts to reconcile Egypt's and Israel's differences led to him and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sharing the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize, but the subsequent 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty was not received well among the other Arab nations and Egypt's membership in the Arab League was suspended. Islamic discontent within Egypt festered and finally on October 6th 1981, during a military parade, 4 Egyptian Army soldiers attacked and shot Sadat.

Pope John Paul II shot (1981)

Daily Mirror dated Thursday May 14th 1981

Click to Read

Click to Read

Polish born Pope John Paul II was shot and badly wounded as he entered St Peter's Square in the Vatican by a Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Ağca, who was immediately captured. The Pope recovered after major surgery and went on to survive another assassination attempt in 1982. The gunman was given a life sentence, but pardoned in 2000 and extradited to Turkey where he was arrested for an earlier murder and given 10 years and released in 2010.

Live Aid (1985)

The Mirror dated Monday July 15th 1985

Click to Read

 

Click to Read

 

Click to Read

Live Aid was a pair of pop music concerts held on July 13th 1985, one at Wembley in London and the other at the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, organised by musicians Bob Geldoff and Midge Ure to raise money for the famine in Ethiopia that had been going on since 1983 and took 400,000 lives.

The concerts featured the likes of Status Quo, The Style Council, The Boomtown Rats, Adam Ant, Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, Elvis Costello, Nik Kershaw, Sade, Sting, Phil Collins, Howard Jones, Bryan Ferry, Paul Young, U2, Dire Straits, Queen, David Bowie, The Who, Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Paul McCartney, Four Tops, Billy Ocean, Black Sabbath, Run–D.M.C, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Bryan Adams, The Beach Boys, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, Santana, Madonna, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood. I watched it on and off all day and of course recorded some of it on VHS video.

Hurricane in UK and Reagan's Revenge in Lybia (1986)

Daily Express dated Tuesday March 25th 1986

Click to Read

Click to Read

This hurricane on March 24th 1986 was not the hurricane of October 15th 1987, which weatherman Michael Fish failed to warn us about, but was till pretty drastic. If you try to Google this 1986 hurricane all you get is references to 1987.

In 1973, Lybian Leader Kadhafi (now normally spelt Gaddafi) claimed much of the Gulf of Sidra to be within Libyan waters with an exclusiion zone of  62 nautical miles. Gaddafi declared it 'The Line of Death', the crossing of which would invite a military response. The US claimed its rights to conduct naval operations in international waters using the standard of 12-mile territorial limit. On March 23rd 1986 several US warships tested Gaddafi's resolve by crossing the Line. The ensuing skirmishes resulted in 35 non-US dead, a Lybian corvette and a Lybian patrol boat sunk. Some SAM missile sites on the mainland were also damaged.

Charles and Di Wed (1981)

Daily Mirror dated Thursday July 30th 1981

Click to Read

Click to Read

Click to Read

A fairytale wedding with an unhappy ending. The couple separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. Diana was killed in a car-crash in 1997 and Charles re-married in 2005. 

Random Cutting - Doris Stokes (1986)

April 1986

Click to Read

Grantham born Doris Stokes was psychic medium who was strongly criticised and accused of fraud. Long before Derek Acorah and Colin Fry were filling theaters Doris sold out the London Palladium. She died of a brain tumour in 1987