RIP Julie Stevens

[andrec]

I remember a game we would play in junior school in the early 70s. So we stood in line facing a wall. Someone else acted as quizmaster and asked a question, usually something like 'Who sang...' They would then say 'go' and we would run to the wall, touch it, then run back to where we started, turn and...

[andrec]

Rip.

[andrec]

I don't remember watching Play School when I was young pre-school, but around 7 or 8, so Julie Stevens would have been around my era circa late 60s/early 70s. Like many, though, I watched it when I was much older. I still enjoy watching episodes on YT; it's such a shame so many shows were wiped.

[andrec]

Popular presenter of Play School Julie Stevens has passed away aged 87 years. She was born in 1936 and trained as a nurse, but switched to the entertainment industry after winning a talent competition. Her most prominent early role was as the occasional sidekick to John Steed in The Avengers as Venus...

[andrec]

Just watching random videos about Christmas on YT brought back memories of when my late mom would make a Christmas cake every year. We rarely had a shop-bought one, don't think I tasted one of those until I was well into my twenties. For me, they don't taste so good as a home-made one. I am not really...

[andrec]

Wow I had forgotten all about the Jelly Tots glove puppet. Yes, I had at least one of those....

[andrec]

Can't say I was a big collector of football stickers. The only two albums I remember having were one for the 1973 football season and one for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. The latter I exerted considerable effort into filling with stickers. England had a double page of stickers, while other countries...

[andrec]

Just looking at Amazon, I was surprised to see just how expensive model kits seem to be now. The Airfix 'Dambusters' Lancaster I built in the 70s is now £37 and the RRP is north of £40. I remember buying Airfix kits in their 'series 1' range - they came in bags rather than boxes - and they were about...

[andrec]

I built quite a few models from kits, mostly Airfix, with some Frog, Matchbox and Revell, the likes of Tamiya etc being difficult to obtain in my area. The majority were aircraft, followed by ships, then land vehicles. I also bought the Airfix Modellers magazine quite regularly. Remember Dick Emery...

[andrec]

I was thinking of Golden Cup only very recently. There was a VG store a five minute walk from my secondary school and I would very often go there at lunchtime and buy one. I've been trying to remember the price circa 1977 and keep coming up with 3p, but no idea how accurate that is....

[andrec]

From 1976 to, I think, 1982 my uncle and his two children would spend Christmas at our house with us. He had gone through a divorce earlier in 1976 and had custody of his kids. They would arrive Christmas Eve afternoon and leave around the 29th of December. As we only had a three-bedroomed house, my...

[andrec]

That's very sad news. Like so many people I watched snooker quite a bit in the 80s, and terry was one of the most prominent players. I remember John Virgo and his impressions of players, and his playing on Terry's slow style, in contrast to Alex Higgins' far more frenetic style. There were so many characters...

[andrec]

I think the first time I saw colour TV was in 1969 or 1970, when I would have been 8 or 9. I remember my gran or mom took me to a relative's house as their son had a Chopper bike and I wanted to have a go on one - my parents were going to buy one for my birthday and also wanted to see if I was big enough...

[andrec]

Yes, Bottle Boys got a bit of a drubbing at the time and it seems to have a bad reputation now. I thought they were trying to emulate the vibe of On the Buses. To be honest, I quite enjoyed it, though I can see why it can annoy/offend.

[andrec]

The Capri from The Professionals, Granada from later series of The Sweeney and Steed's Rover SD1 from The New Avengers. I wouldn't mind Purdey's TR7, especially if the gal herself was my chauffeur

[andrec]

What is also almost forgotten now is the people who fled South Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Thousands fled in small boats for neighbouring countries, and were called the 'Boat People'. It was big news at the time. Added to that was the tragedy of Cambodia under Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge and...

[andrec]

I didn't get pocket money as such, but my parents would buy me a couple of comics a week or something else, so costing them maybe 20p or so . I got a paper round, working for the paper - Express & Star - itself, so no middle-man shop and papers were delivered to our house. I got £4 per week, which...

[andrec]

I remember at Junior and maybe infants school the dentist, optician and nit nurse coming to examine us. In, I think, the 2nd year of secondary school we had a test for, I believe, TB, and depending on the result we were vaccinated. We also had a medical examination, possibly the same year - this would...

[andrec]

We seem to be putting our tree and what passes for decorations up later each year. This year it will probably be around the 20th Dec when I bite the bullet, trudge into the loft and get them down. We have a big Santa that sings but haven't put it up for years as our dog eyes it with suspicion.
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[andrec]

Sad to hear of his passing. Speaking non-politically, he came across as a decent man to me. Certainly one of the old breed of Labour MPs and he did stick out a bit among Blair and Mandelson's 'New Labour', but probably what Blair needed as he re-aligned the party to keep more 'traditional' Labour supporters/voters...