Thursday 22 January 2009

1982: A Shock For Hilda Ogden

I recall working as a care assistant in a Social Services home for the elderly in the 1980s, and being told by one female resident: "You young people think you invented sex - well, you didn't!" She delighted in telling staff about her wartime exploits. Or perhaps I mean sexploits!

Nevertheless, although lots went on, society only slowly relaxed its view that sex outside marriage was wrong - until the arrival of the 1960s, when, with National Service gone and the Pill available, things altered dramatically. Call it Peace. Call it Love. What it often boiled down to was promiscuous nookie, with no "hang ups" about it.

Not everybody was glad of this loosening of morals, and even in the 1980s, the likes of Hilda Ogden could be found being shocked by the likes of Mike Baldwin.

Daily Star, July 28, 1982:

Nosey gossip Hilda Ogden gets a shock when she arrives to clean Mike Baldwin's flat in CORONATION STREET (ITV, 7.30).

The breakfast table is set for two - and Maggie Dunlop (Jill Kerman) appears from the bedroom wearing a dressing gown.

"Just to put you in the picture, she's moved in," says Mike (Johnny Briggs) to an astonished Hilda (Jean Alexander).

Flaunting it in the 1980s - Mike and Maggie traumatised a boggle-eyed Hilda. Maggie was the owner of Maggie's Flowers, the shop where Eddie Yeats' (Geoffrey Hughes) CB romance partner Marion Willis (Veronica Doran) worked.

Awful '82 - Hilda would undoubtedly have been shocked by Erika Roe "streaking" at Twickenham. Perhaps deelyboppers (below) were more her scene?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Its about time we heard something about Erika. I was in a pub the other day and heard she was in the middle of a huge divorce battle while running a farm and rearing her 3 children with no help from mean old hubby.... Come on Erika. Tell us your life story.