TIMELINE
What this is and why
A few years ago, while I was
exploring the books I wrote in
Fairburn, I started to create a
timeline, partly to jog my
memory of contemporary
events but also to work out
what order everything came in.
Now that I’ve started to post
the books online, it seems like
a good idea to share the
timeline, so anyone who reads
them might be able to place
themselves in the same
context. Hopefully this will
serve as a handy resource for
anyone who wants to explore
the time period, wallow in
nostalgia or just marvel at how
I could possibly find the time to
do all this.
September 1979 - February 1982
But I didn’t care about any of
this. I was seven years old. All
I cared about was Doctor
Who, Star Wars, Marvel
Comics and the occasional
pop song. I knew who Maggie
Thatcher was and what title
she held, but I thought it was
spelt “priminister” and had no
idea what one did. Mum had
a part-time job at a sweet
factory (making me the envy
of my peers) and Dad had just
landed an office job at
Wheldale Colliery in
Castleford. This new dual
income meant they could
finally afford to buy their first
home. They found that home
in Fairburn.
The cliche dictates that I
should remind you we only
had three TV channels back in
those days, but the truth is
that when we moved to
Fairburn, there were only two,
thanks to a technicians’ strike
which kept ITV off the air for
three months. Grim days
indeed. But in the last week
of August 1979, I was having a
whale of a time on my annual
summer holiday in Blackpool
with my Gran (we always
went for the August bank
holiday), playing Space
Invaders, drinking Coca Cola
and pressuring her into
buying me Star Wars figures.
If you know some of the information in this timeline
to be absolutely false, please don’t hesitate to tell me
and, if you’re right, I’ll sort it out.
A note about comic dating: the
common practice was always
to place next week’s date on
the front of the magazine. I
never understood why as a
child, but they did. So if a
comic is dated 09 Jun 1980, it
was probably in the shops on
June 2nd. 2000 AD, however, is
a special case. I remember
buying it every Saturday when I
went to visit my Gran, and my
memory tells me that it really
was published and in the
shops on Saturday. The cover
however clearly states it was
“In orbit every Monday”. Still,
my memory tells me I queried
this at the time - “Why does it
say it’s out every Monday when
it’s actually out on Saturday?” I
thought, and then forgot about
it and just read the damn thing
instead. To further complicate
matters, the dates on the
covers are actually Saturdays -
so I assume the comic did
come out every Saturday and
the date on the cover is, as
with the Marvel comics I
bought, next week’s date.
Fact Checking & Comic Dating
Since I started working out this timeline over a decade
ago and was only doing it for my own benefit, I didn’t
always save hyperlinks to some of the websites I used
for research. Some of the sites I did save links for may
have disappeared in that time. Some of the info in the
timeline also came from contemporary comics or
magazines which don’t exist on the internet. What I’m
saying is, some of the evidence for my timeline claims
could be missing. But I’m working on it, and have
included links to the source material wherever
possible.
Naturally, I don’t control the
internet. So any and/or all of
the pages I link to from the
timeline might suddenly
disappear without warning.
Especially on sites like
YouTube, where copyright
strikes delete accounts on a
regular basis. I’m trying to
keep on top of all that, but it’s
not always immediately
possible.
It’s also worth saying that I
haven’t finished it yet.
Uploading this all to the web,
complete with pictures and
fancy layout (which now has
to be two completely different
fancy layouts because it has
to look totally different to
work on both a desktop and a
smartphone), is going to take
time. But I’m determined to
do it, so please bear with me
while I try.
I’ve usually left out things which weren’t relevant to
me at the time. So if you’re looking for a description
of what was on Polish television on August 31, 1980,
you won’t find it. Well, OK, you might. But the
essential idea is to recreate the life of a little boy
growing up in 1980s Yorkshire. I may have included a
few news stories (and albums, and film releases)
which didn’t enter my childish consciousness back
then, but they would have been there for me if I’d
been listening and/or allowed to engage with them.
Advanced Stuff About Comic Dating (feel free to
skip this if you don’t care about comic dating)
It’s actually harder than you think trying to work out
when the Marvel weeklies came out. At first it
seemed pretty straightforward - Doctor Who Weekly
says every Thursday, so the cover date must be next
Thursday’s date. Star Wars says every Wednesday. All
fine until I remember they all usually came out on the
same day. Oh and even when it says Every Thursday,
the date on the cover is a Wednesday. And it’s also a
Wednesday when it says Every Wednesday. So they’re
all out on Wednesday then? No, because some ad in
Blah Blah No 243 says they’re always out on a
Thursday. And then No 118 comes out and finally it
says “Every Thursday” on the cover, but you look at
No 120 and it’s back to saying “Every Wednesday” -
like one week it’s a special edition, so they’ve got an
enthusiastic new guy - or maybe even just some kind
of editor - to design the new-look cover and he
notices the mistake and changes the template. But
the following week the grumpy old lazy guy comes
back and uses his old template. Except now it says
“Every Wednesday” but the actual date’s a Thursday!
And none of them are the actual date it came out
anyway! At which point you start repeatedly banging
your head against the desk going
“AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!” until the
blood is literally streaming down your stress-worn
face.
That’s when you realise you’ve spent way more time
thinking about it than the people who made the
comics ever did, and that you’ve just got to basically
make a decision and stick to it. So I’ve got all the Star
Wars Weeklies coming out on Thursdays, the same
day as the Doctor Who Weeklies and all the other
Marvel comics (which to be honest I haven’t even
bothered putting in there yet, but you can probably
understand why). I don’t want to hear about it if you
think I’m wrong.
Can’t wait to get started on the monthlies!
Comic Dating Update (March 2022) - for serious
nerds only
So I started inserting Marvel’s monthly comics, just to
see if I could do it, and naturally it’s been fairly soul-
destroying. From what I can gather, they only ever
came out on Thursdays, but which Thursday is
anyone’s guess. Different monthly titles came out on
different Thursdays, but not necessarily the same
Thursday every time. Sometimes I got lucky and
found an ad or an editorial which specified a
publication date. Other times I found checklists
which told me which comics were out that week. But
other than that, it’s purely guesswork. I assumed at
first there’d be some regularity to the titles - like if
Starburst got published on the third Thursday of one
month, it would always be the third Thursday. But
clearly I don’t understand the publishing world,
because they seem to change at random. It didn’t
help that there was a strike during the infamous
Winter of Discontent at the end of 78/beginning of 79
which had a knock-on effect on Marvel UK
throughout the year. There’s a fascinating little
editorial by Dez Skinn in this issue of Starburst which
gives us a tiny glimpse into that, detailing a few
months where they were putting out a new Starburst
every three weeks, just to play catch-up. So yes, I’ve
inserted what I think are the likely publication dates
for Marvel’s monthlies. I’m probably wrong about a
lot of them. But rest assured that I’ve tried very, very
hard not to be.
Past Imperfect
I’ve tried, where possible, to write it in the present
tense, which seems to be the default way of writing
timelines like these and hopefully gives you more of
a sense of being there in the moment. But this has
drawbacks, and sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes
I end up writing about 1979 in the past tense, if I
want to comment on it from a future perspective.
Other times I end up writing about both 1979 and
the present day (currently 2021 and rising) in the
present tense, but having to tell you which year I’m
talking about. All of which is very clumsy. There’s a
long-winded bit here about how I felt when Season
17 of Doctor Who ended prematurely where I
commit all these grammatical crimes at once and I’m
sorry. But I’m lazy and tired and I’ve no idea what I’m
doing, so that’s the way it has to be.
The Pop Charts
As far as the pop charts go, I’ve taken all my info
from the Official UK Charts website. There’s no point
in writing out the entire chart every week - you can
look that up yourself if you care that much - but I
usually just list whatever was at Number One that
week, followed by the week’s most notable new
entries. Sometimes I might miss one, so please do
tell me if there’s a glaring omission.
And that’s everything I need to say about it. So let’s
get going!
Basically I started with Wikipedia, cross-referencing
events where I could. Then I added my own work to
the timeline, adding the English work first, which
usually included dates. Then I filled in other info
which might have been relevant to me, such as which
Doctor Who episode was on that week and what was
at No 1 in the UK pop charts, plus any other info I
came across about TV show debuts and which comics
I might have bought that week (many of which I still
have).
PERIOD DETAIL
Who Shot
JR?
May 26, 1980
Royal
Wedding
Jul 29, 1981
JUMP STRAIGHT IN:
TERM 1 (Sep - Dec 1979)
TERM 2 (Jan - Apr 1980)
TERM 3 (Apr - Jul 1980)