Saturday August 25th
We start this story in Blackpool, where I am enjoying my annual summer
holiday with my Gran. We went every year for the last week of August from
1976 to 1983, then again in 1985 and 87, each time staying at the Kenbarry
Hotel on Albert Street, which was run by a bloke called Barry. Barry just
happened to be the son of one of my Gran’s next door neighbours, which
meant we were always welcome. I never found out who Ken was. The last
time I went there it was closed for refurbishment and had changed its name
to The Blackpool. I understand it was also once the subject of a reality TV
programme of some kind. But presumably under different management.
This may well have been the same summer that I got an autograph from
Darth Vader. It’s also likely the same week Gran bought me a Palitoy Star
Wars Cantina. I almost certainly visited the Tower, the Doctor Who Exhibition
and the Pleasure Beach. Coral Island was still new, having opened in 1978.
The arcades had Space Invaders machines, but this was still an exciting
novelty. Everything else is a mystery.
Sunday August 26th
OFFICIAL UK SINGLES CHART: TOP 25
No 1: We Don’t Talk Anymore - Cliff Richard
No 2: I Don’t Like Mondays - Boomtown Rats
No 3: Bang Bang - BA Robertson
No 4: Angel Eyes - Roxy Music
No 5: After the Love Has Gone - Earth, Wind and Fire
No 6: Gangsters - The Specials
No 7: Duke of Earl - Darts
No 8: Money - Flying Lizards
No 9: Reasons to Be Cheerful, Pt 3 - Ian Dury and the Blockheads
No 10: Ooh What a Life - Gibson Brothers
No 11: Just When I Needed You Most - Randy Vanwarmer
No 12: Hersham Boys - Sham 69
No 13: Is She Really Going Out With Him? - Joe Jackson
No 14: Angel Eyes / Voulez-Vous - ABBA
No 15: Gotta Go Home / El Lute - Boney M
No 16: Street Life - Crusaders
No 17: Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller - Showaddywaddy
No 18: When You’re Young - The Jam
No 19: The Diary of Horace Wimp - ELO
No 20: Cars - Gary Numan (NEW ENTRY)
No 21: Morning Dance - Spyro Gyra
No 22: If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me? -
Bellamy Brothers
No 23: Love’s Gotta Hold On Me - Dollar
No 24: Lost in Music - Sister Sledge
No 25: Duchess - The Stranglers
Other notable singles in the Top 75 this week
No 32: Beat the Clock - Sparks
No 35: Strut Your Funky Stuff - Frantique
No 36: Spiral Scratch EP - Buzzcocks
No 38: Don’t Bring Me Down - ELO (NEW ENTRY)
No 39: Can’t Stand Losing You - Police
No 42: In the Brownies - Billy Connolly
No 43: Rock Lobster - The B-52’s
No 53: Good Times - Chic
No 54: Breakfast in America - Supertramp
No 56: My Sharona - The Knack
No 58: Bad Girls - Donna Summer
No 59: Silly Games - Janet Kay
No 62: Are “Friends” Electric? - Tubeway Army
No 65: Highway to Hell - AC/DC (NEW ENTRY)
No 70: Getting Closer / Baby’s Request - Wings (NEW ENTRY)
No 74: The Prince - Madness (NEW ENTRY)
OFFICIAL UK ALBUMS CHART
No 1: The Best Disco Album in the World - Various Artists
No 2: Discovery - ELO
No 3: Breakfast in America - Supertramp
No 4: Voulez-Vous - ABBA
No 5: I Am - Earth, Wind and Fire
No 7: Some Product - Sex Pistols
No 8: Parallel Lines - Blondie
No 9: Outlandos d’Amour - The Police
No 10: Highway to Hell - AC/DC
No 14: Replicas - Tubeway Army
No 21: Do It Yourself - Ian Dury & The Blockheads
No 26: Manifesto - Roxy Music
No 28: Bat Out of Hell - Meat Loaf
No 29: The B-52’s - The B-52’s
No 31: Risque - Chic
No 33: Out of the Blue - ELO
No 38: War of the Worlds - Jeff Wayne
No 39: Lodger - David Bowie
No 42: Go West - Village People
No 43: Drums and Wires - XTC (NEW ENTRY)
No 45: The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle - Sex Pistols
No 52: New Boots and Panties - Ian Dury & The Blockheads
No 53: Back to the Egg - Wings
No 56: Tubular Bells - Mike Oldfield
No 57: Plastic Letters - Blondie
No 59: A New World Record - ELO
No 60: Mingus - Joni Mitchell
No 75: The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Monday August 27th
Lord Louis Mountbatten is assassinated by the IRA and 18 British soldiers
are killed in County Down. I remember talking to Gran about it as we walked
round a department store (probably Lewis’s) in Blackpool. Gran explained
that Lord Mountbatten was Prince Philip’s uncle and was therefore a
member of the Royal Family. I struggled to get my seven-year-old head
around why someone would want to kill a member of the Royal Family and
who these IRA people were that I kept hearing about.
Here’s a BBC documentary about it from 2019.
Thursday August 30th
Star Wars Weekly No 80 – features a Green Cross Code Man ad on the back.
The Green Cross Code Man was, of course, played on TV by the real Darth
Vader, David Prowse, whose likeness appears in the ad.
Friday August 31st
BBC 1’s Nationwide broadcasts a special film following Kate Bush on tour.
Saturday September 1st
Probable date for return home from Blackpool. I like to think that Mum and
Dad moved house while I was away, and everything was miraculously ready
for me upon my return. No one has any memory of whether or not that’s
true. But Mum told me that, when she asked for time off work to move
house, her boss at the sweet factory refused. So she told him to go to Hell,
walked out and did it anyway. The following week she was sent a letter of
apology and asked very nicely if she wanted her job back. This may have had
something to do with the enormous respect many of those who worked
there still had for her father and grandfather, who had both worked in
senior blue collar positions at the factory before her.
In the evening: an exciting new series of Doctor Who begins with Part One of
Destiny of the Daleks. Written by Who veteran Terry Nation, it promises
thrills galore as the Doctor and his newly-regenerated companion Romana
return to Skaro, the home planet of the dreaded Daleks, where a mysterious
excavation is taking place which threatens to alter the fate of the entire
galaxy. Looking back on it now, this story’s pretty rubbish, but at the time, it
was event television. Not only was it the first story to feature the Daleks for
four years, it was also the first story to feature Lalla Ward as Romana, and
the first story script edited by Douglas Adams, who would become much
more famous for other things as the years wore on. It also introduces the
Movellans, one of the very few species of black aliens in Doctor Who
(though, typically, one of them is a white woman blacked up).
2000 AD Prog 129
Strips this week include Judge Dredd (Battle of the Black Atlantic), Black
Hawk, ABC Warriors, Disaster 1990 and The Mind of Wolfie Smith. The comic
had merged with sister publication Tornado only two weeks before. There’s a
nice blog here which details one man’s mission to read every available
edition of 2000 AD. Prog 129 is about halfway down this page.
Sunday September 2nd
After almost a year of inactivity, the Yorkshire Ripper claims another victim,
his eleventh murder in four years (though at the time it was assumed to be
his twelfth). Barbara Leach was discovered in an alleyway in Bradford in the
early hours of Sunday morning. In context, the infamous hoax letters and
tape were sent over the period of 1978 to 1979, with the tape arriving on
George Oldfield’s desk on June 17, 1979. This threw the Ripper hunt
completely off course, and by August 1979 the police believed the Ripper’s
home town to be Castletown, near Sunderland. They were wrong, but only
two people actually knew that.
OFFICIAL UK SINGLES CHART
No 1: We Don’t Talk Anymore - Cliff Richard
No 53: Slap and Tickle - Squeeze
OFFICIAL UK ALBUMS CHART
No 1: In Through the Out Door - Led Zeppelin
No 2: Slow Train Coming - Bob Dylan
No 73: No. 1 in Heaven - Sparks
Saturday August 25th - Sunday September 2nd, 1979
TERM 1: Week 0
TERM 1 (Sept - Dec 1979)
Week 0 (Aug 25 - Sep 2, 1979)
Week 1 (Sep 3 - Sep 9, 1979)
Week 2 (Sep 10 - Sep 16, 1979)
Week 3 (Sep 17 - Sep 23, 1979)
Week 4 (Sep 24 - Sep 30, 1979)
Week 5 (Oct 1 - Oct 7, 1979)
Week 6 (Oct 8 - Oct 14, 1979)
Week 7 (Oct 15 - Oct 21, 1979)
Half Term (Oct 22 - Oct 28, 1979)
Week 8 (Oct 29 - Nov 4, 1979)
Week 9 (Nov 5 - Nov 11, 1979)
Week 10 (Nov 12 - Nov 18, 1979)
Week 11 (Nov 19 - Nov 25, 1979)
Week 12 (Nov 26 - Dec 2, 1979)
Week 13 (Dec 3 - Dec 9, 1979)
Week 14 (Dec 10 - Dec 16, 1979)
Week 15 (Dec 17 - Dec 23, 1979)
Christmas (Dec 24 - Dec 30, 1979)
New Year’s Eve (Dec 31, 1979)
TERM 1 IN LINK FORM
Cars
Gary Numan
ITV Returns
Oct 24,1979
Saturday August 25th
We start this story in Blackpool, where I
am enjoying my annual summer holiday
with my Gran. We went every year for
the last week of August from 1976 to
1983, then again in 1985 and 87, each
time staying at the Kenbarry Hotel on
Albert Street, which was run by a bloke
called Barry. Barry just happened to be
the son of one of my Gran’s next door
neighbours, which meant we were
always welcome. I never found out who
Ken was. The last time I went there it
was closed for refurbishment and had
changed its name to The Blackpool. I
understand it was also once the subject
of a reality TV programme of some kind.
But presumably under different
management.
This may well have been the same
summer that I got an autograph from
Darth Vader. It’s also likely the same
week Gran bought me a Palitoy Star
Wars Cantina. I almost certainly visited
the Tower, the Doctor Who Exhibition
and the Pleasure Beach. Coral Island
was still new, having opened in 1978.
The arcades had Space Invaders
machines, but this was still an exciting
novelty. Everything else is a mystery.
Saturday August 25th -
Sunday September 2nd, 1979
TERM 1: Week 0
TERM 1 IN LINK FORM
Cars
Gary Numan
ITV Returns
Oct 24,1979
Sunday August 26th
OFFICIAL UK SINGLES CHART: TOP 25
No 1: We Don’t Talk Anymore - Cliff Richard
No 2: I Don’t Like Mondays - Boomtown Rats
No 3: Bang Bang - BA Robertson
No 4: Angel Eyes - Roxy Music
No 5: After the Love Has Gone - Earth, Wind and Fire
No 6: Gangsters - The Specials
No 7: Duke of Earl - Darts
No 8: Money - Flying Lizards
No 9: Reasons to Be Cheerful, Pt 3 - Ian Dury and the Blockheads
No 10: Ooh What a Life - Gibson Brothers
No 11: Just When I Needed You Most - Randy Vanwarmer
No 12: Hersham Boys - Sham 69
No 13: Is She Really Going Out With Him? - Joe Jackson
No 14: Angel Eyes / Voulez-Vous - ABBA
No 15: Gotta Go Home / El Lute - Boney M
No 16: Street Life - Crusaders
No 17: Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller - Showaddywaddy
No 18: When You’re Young - The Jam
No 19: The Diary of Horace Wimp - ELO
No 20: Cars - Gary Numan (NEW ENTRY)
No 21: Morning Dance - Spyro Gyra
No 22: If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You
Hold It Against Me? - Bellamy Brothers
No 23: Love’s Gotta Hold On Me - Dollar
No 24: Lost in Music - Sister Sledge
No 25: Duchess - The Stranglers
Other notable singles in the Top 75 this week
No 32: Beat the Clock - Sparks
No 35: Strut Your Funky Stuff - Frantique
No 36: Spiral Scratch EP - Buzzcocks
No 38: Don’t Bring Me Down - ELO (NEW ENTRY)
No 39: Can’t Stand Losing You - Police
No 42: In the Brownies - Billy Connolly
No 43: Rock Lobster - The B-52’s
No 53: Good Times - Chic
No 54: Breakfast in America - Supertramp
No 56: My Sharona - The Knack
No 58: Bad Girls - Donna Summer
No 59: Silly Games - Janet Kay
No 62: Are “Friends” Electric? - Tubeway Army
No 65: Highway to Hell - AC/DC (NEW ENTRY)
No 70: Getting Closer / Baby’s Request - Wings (NEW ENTRY)
No 74: The Prince - Madness (NEW ENTRY)
OFFICIAL UK ALBUMS CHART
No 1: The Best Disco Album in the World - Various Artists
No 2: Discovery - ELO
No 3: Breakfast in America - Supertramp
No 4: Voulez-Vous - ABBA
No 5: I Am - Earth, Wind and Fire
No 7: Some Product - Sex Pistols
No 8: Parallel Lines - Blondie
No 9: Outlandos d’Amour - The Police
No 10: Highway to Hell - AC/DC
No 14: Replicas - Tubeway Army
No 21: Do It Yourself - Ian Dury & The Blockheads
No 26: Manifesto - Roxy Music
No 28: Bat Out of Hell - Meat Loaf
No 29: The B-52’s - The B-52’s
No 31: Risque - Chic
No 33: Out of the Blue - ELO
No 38: War of the Worlds - Jeff Wayne
No 39: Lodger - David Bowie
No 42: Go West - Village People
No 43: Drums and Wires - XTC (NEW ENTRY)
No 45: The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle - Sex Pistols
No 52: New Boots and Panties - Ian Dury & The Blockheads
No 53: Back to the Egg - Wings
No 56: Tubular Bells - Mike Oldfield
No 57: Plastic Letters - Blondie
No 59: A New World Record - ELO
No 60: Mingus - Joni Mitchell
No 75: The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Sunday September 2nd
After almost a year of inactivity, the Yorkshire Ripper claims
another victim, his eleventh murder in four years (though at the
time it was assumed to be his twelfth). Barbara Leach was
discovered in an alleyway in Bradford in the early hours of Sunday
morning. In context, the infamous hoax letters and tape were sent
over the period of 1978 to 1979, with the tape arriving on George
Oldfield’s desk on June 17, 1979. This threw the Ripper hunt
completely off course, and by August 1979 the police believed the
Ripper’s home town to be Castletown, near Sunderland. They were
wrong, but only two people actually knew that.
Saturday September 1st
Probable date for return home from Blackpool. I like to think that
Mum and Dad moved house while I was away, and everything was
miraculously ready for me upon my return. No one has any
memory of whether or not that’s true. But Mum told me that,
when she asked for time off work to move house, her boss at the
sweet factory refused. So she told him to go to Hell, walked out
and did it anyway. The following week she was sent a letter of
apology and asked very nicely if she wanted her job back. This
may have had something to do with the enormous respect many
of those who worked there still had for her father and
grandfather, who had both worked in senior blue collar positions
at the factory before her.
Monday August 27th
Lord Louis Mountbatten is assassinated by
the IRA and 18 British soldiers are killed in
County Down. I remember talking to Gran
about it as we walked round a department
store (probably Lewis’s) in Blackpool. Gran
explained that Lord Mountbatten was
Prince Philip’s uncle and was therefore a
member of the Royal Family. I struggled to
get my seven-year-old head around why
someone would want to kill a member of
the Royal Family and who these IRA people
were that I kept hearing about.
Here’s a BBC documentary about it from
2019.
Thursday August 30th
Star Wars Weekly No 80 – features a Green
Cross Code Man ad on the back. The Green
Cross Code Man was, of course, played on
TV by the real Darth Vader, David Prowse,
whose likeness appears in the ad.
In the evening: an exciting new series of
Doctor Who begins with Part One of
Destiny of the Daleks. Written by Who
veteran Terry Nation, it promises thrills
galore as the Doctor and his newly-
regenerated companion Romana return
to Skaro, the home planet of the dreaded
Daleks, where a mysterious excavation is
taking place which threatens to alter the
fate of the entire galaxy. Looking back on
it now, this story’s pretty rubbish, but at
the time, it was event television. Not only
was it the first story to feature the Daleks
for four years, it was also the first story
to feature Lalla Ward as Romana, and the
first story script edited by Douglas
Adams, who would become much more
famous for other things as the years
wore on. It also introduces the
Movellans, one of the very few species of
black aliens in Doctor Who (though,
typically, one of them is a white woman
blacked up).
2000 AD Prog 129
Strips this week include Judge Dredd (Battle of the Black Atlantic),
Black Hawk, ABC Warriors, Disaster 1990 and The Mind of Wolfie
Smith. The comic had merged with sister publication Tornado
only two weeks before. There’s a nice blog here which details one
man’s mission to read every available edition of 2000 AD. Prog
129 is about halfway down this page.
OFFICIAL UK SINGLES CHART
No 1: We Don’t Talk Anymore - Cliff Richard
No 53: Slap and Tickle - Squeeze
OFFICIAL UK ALBUMS CHART
No 1: In Through the Out Door - Led Zeppelin
No 2: Slow Train Coming - Bob Dylan
No 73: No. 1 in Heaven - Sparks
