< TERM 2 WEEK 10

Monday March 24th BBC 1, 11 am: Merry-Go-Round - When We Won the Cup: an episode about the 1979 FA Cup Final, which I write about in my English book under the title Football ITV, 11.39 am: Making a Living - in the last of the series, Mary Whitehouse joins the Yorkshire TV audience to extol the virtues of marriage. ITV, 7 pm: The Kenny Everett Video Show, Series 3 Episode 6 - featuring: • Toccata - Sky • Keep It Up Boomtown Rats • Street Life The Crusaders (via Hot Gossip) • There’s also a lovely moment where Kenny complains that, instead of being here from 7 to 7.30, he could be at home watching Blake’s 7 - which may have been what half his target audience were already doing BBC 1, 7.15 pm: Blake’s 7 - Death-Watch - in which Steven Pacey plays a dual role as both Del Tarrant and his twin brother Deeta. Also features yet another snoggy/killy scene between Servalan and Avon. Tuesday March 25th Robert Runcie is installed as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher unsuccessfully tries to persuade him to change the date when she realises the budget is scheduled for the same day. Instead, the budget is rescheduled for tomorrow. Wednesday March 26th Chancellor Geoffrey Howe presents his second budget to the House of Commons. Opposition leader Jim Callaghan calls it ‘the meanest since 1931’. Among other measures, he announces a rise in prescription charges from 45p to £1 and a 50p increase in the duty on a bottle of whisky. The lowest rate of 23% income tax is abolished (meaning the lowest rate is now the basic rate of 30%), sickness and unemployment benefits are made taxable and supplementary benefits will no longer be paid to families of striking workers. Altogether, the people hardest hit by the new measures are the poor, the low-paid, the sick, the unemployed and alcoholics. There’s a full transcript of Howe’s speech here. BBC 1, 7.30 pm: A Song for Europe - 12 finalists compete to be chosen as the UK’s entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. It is not a vintage year. The winner - a schmaltzy throwback to 1972 which even The New Seekers would find too cloying - is fairly obvious in retrospect but definitely isn’t obvious on the night, being given a serious run for its money by a truly dreadful middle- of-the-road dirge. Definitely worth watching if you miss Terry Wogan’s mildly subversive asides. If you think we were somehow better at Eurovision in the past, watch it and have your illusions truly shattered. (And just to turn that on its head, if we did more stuff like Song 11, we’d still have a chance of winning it.) Thursday March 27th The Alexander L Kielland Platform collapses in the North Sea, killing 123. At the time, it was the deadliest offshore rig disaster in history. Meanwhile, back on land, Marvel UK launches its Marvel Digest Series - a collection of four monthly Pocket Books specifically designed to appeal to a boy like me. Somehow I manage to convince my parents to buy me them all, though I didn’t manage to keep them all into adulthood: • Spider-Man Pocket Book No 1 • Fantastic Four Pocket Book No 1 • Chiller Pocket Book No 1 • Star Heroes Pocket Book No 1

Monday March 24th - Sunday March 30th, 1980

TERM 2: Week 11

It’s difficult to work out which days Marvel’s monthly magazines were published. Occasionally an ad will specify a date, but by and large it’s guesswork. On this occasion, I worked out the date by reading the Mighty Marvel Checklist in one of the Pocket Books I did manage to keep, which suggests the mags came out the same time as the weeklies below. But in the future, other ads and lists suggest the comics regularly appeared on the third Thursday of every month. Star Wars Weekly No 110 Incredible Hulk Weekly No 57 Spectacular Spider-Man Weekly No 369 Doctor Who Weekly No 25 Superhero Fun & Games No 2 Marvel Superheroes No 360 BBC 1, 7.20 pm: Top of the Pops - presented by Peter Powell, with: • Dance Yourself Dizzy Liquid Gold • Stomp Brothers Johnson (via Legs & Co) • Sexy Eyes Dr Hook • Living After Midnight Judas Priest • My World Secret Affair • No One Driving John Foxx • Going Underground The Jam BBC 1, 8.30 pm: The Real Thing - This Way Up: the second episode of James Burke’s brilliant series about perception, focusing on how we use our senses to figure out where we are in the world and which way is down. Lots of lovely footage from Blackpool. Friday March 28th The last day of my second term in Fairburn. Though I don’t know it at the time, I am already over a quarter of the way through my life here. English: The Return of Supersilver Saturday March 29th 2000 AD Prog 159 ITV, 9.45 pm: Tales of the Unexpected - Poison: another one I remember seeing at the time, which instilled in me a healthy fear of poisonous snakes. I know it seems a bit late for an eight year old to be staying up and everything, but I always stayed at my Gran’s on Saturday. We usually stayed up watching TV together until she went to bed around 11. Sunday March 30th UK SINGLES CHART No 1: Going Underground The Jam No 14: Night Boat to Cairo Madness No 26: Talk of the Town Pretenders No 40: Silver Dream Machine David Essex No 51: My Perfect Cousin The Undertones No 55: Clean Clean The Buggles No 60: Modern Girl Sheena Easton No 61: Toccata Sky No 72: Dear Miss Lonely Hearts Phil Lynott UK ALBUMS CHART No 1: Duke Genesis No 29: Women and Children First Van Halen No 52: Look Hear? 10cc

TERM 2 Easter 1 >

TERM 2 (Jan - Apr 1980) New Year (Jan 1 - Jan 6, 1980) Week 1 (Jan 7 - Jan 13, 1980) Week 2 (Jan 14 - Jan 20, 1980) Week 3 (Jan 21 - Jan 27, 1980) Week 4 (Jan 28 - Feb 3, 1980) Week 5 (Feb 4 - Feb 10, 1980) Week 6 (Feb 11 - Feb 17, 1980) Half Term (Feb 18 - Feb 24, 1980) Week 7 (Feb 25 - Mar 2, 1980) Week 8 (Mar 3 - Mar 9, 1980) Week 9 (Mar 10 - Mar 16, 1980) Week 10 (Mar 17 - Mar 23, 1980) Week 11 (Mar 24 - Mar 30, 1980) Easter 1 (Mar 31 - Apr 6, 1980) Easter 2 (Apr 7 - Apr 13, 1980)

TERM 2 IN LINK FORM

TERM 1 (Sep - Dec 1979)

Hi-de-Hi! Jan 1, 1980

Steelworkers Strike Jan 2, 1980

St Pauls Riots Apr 2, 1980

State of the Union Jan 23, 1980

My Girl Madness

Blake’s 7 Returns Jan 7, 1980

Barbara Woodhouse Jan 7, 1980

Grange Hill Roof Death Feb 25, 1980

Mugabe Elected Zimbabwe PM Mar 4, 1980

Atomic Blondie

Echo Beach Martha and the Muffins

Games Without Frontiers Peter Gabriel

Robin Cousins at the Olympics Feb 21, 1980

Underpass John Foxx

Judge Death Jan 19, 1980

TERM 3 (Apr - Jul 1980)