Back To The Ogdens'...

One of my favourite photographs of the Ogdens - happy in each other's company.

Thanks to Anonymous who came up with the answer to my quiz question - the Charles and Diana 1981 wedding plate hung at the Ogdens' house.

It did! I grew up with their back room, and looking back at it, I find myself smiling at memories of the Ogdens' and similar rooms I knew.

There were quite a lot of working class living rooms like that in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. And probably well into the 1990s.

The selected glories on Hilda's sideboard changed over the years. Look at those lovely candlesticks there! Real antiques, them! And that radio - that was the one Noah listened to weather forecasts on.

Nowadays, many people go for a carefully cultivated 'shabby chic' look, and ironically horrible wallpaper, but those were the days when people accumulated treasures - like Aunt Aggie's 'antique' ducks - and mixed and matched them with other treasures - like the battered chalkware mermaid they'd won on the fair in the 1940s, those lovely old 'silver' vases of Grandma's, and that lovely plate of Charles and Diana's wedding from 1981.

In fact, like the mural, Hilda had two different such plates. The first was a head and shoulders shot of the happy couple. It was there for several years from 1981 onwards, before being replaced. Perhaps Hilda knocked it off the wall while dusting it? I wondered. But then, if I remember rightly, the second plate disappeared and the first one returned. Gawd knows what 'appened there, chuck.

'Orrible Avril Carter, seen here with Hilda and Stan in 1983, was no good. She was after Hilda's late brother's chippie. Hilda's original Charles and Diana plate is behind Avril.

Moving on to 1986, and ain't young love grand- even with taches and mullets and bulldog clips? Well, yes - as long it's decent. The second 1981 Royal Wedding plate is on the wall, and Aunt Aggie's middle duck is determinedly pursuing its downward path on the 'muriel'.

Double take - Sally Dynevor and Michael LeVell on the reproduction set of the Ogdens' living room. The 1981 Royal Wedding plate isn't the same, but it's close enough. Hilda's light switch is missing, and the picture rail is a bit high over the door, but the set captures the atmosphere of Hilda's dear old room extremely well. The photograph of Bernard Youens on the sideboard, placed there by Hilda in the storyline after Stan's death in 1984, reminds us poignantly of how much Jean Alexander appreciated Bernard's contribution to the legend of the Oggies...

... as further illustrated by this 1986 photograph of Jean. A rose had just been created and named after Hilda. Jean took Bernard's photograph from the sideboard and brought it to the table as a tribute to Bernard and Stan.

Hilda, like so many, was susceptible to a bit of 'posh' one up-manship - and when lovable conman Eddie Yeats flogged her a mural, sorry, muriel, in 1976, she thought it looked fabulous in her cramped backroom, with the same wallpaper Mrs Walker had in her bedroom on the other walls.

Oh yes, very classy.

Hilda, Eddie Yeats and Stan with the first 'muriel'. Didn't last long - thanks to that flaming Suzie Birchall and Stan. Never mind, chuck. The next one would last for nearly a decade.

The trouble was there was no overall plan in rooms like that, no attempt to coordinate, no 'style'. Or perhaps that wasn't a problem. After all, the Oggies' backroom had a lot more character than dear Sally and Kevin's revamp when they moved in. Don't get us wrong, we loved the Websters' style, but it couldn't hold a candle to the Oggies' mishmash.

And a serving hatch? Great, Stan! Never mind that it's canteen sized...

Stan and Hilda's ruby wedding in 1983. I love the outdoor snap of Hilda in the background, which stood on the sideboard for many years. She looks as daft as a brush - but happy.

The first scenic mountain mural didn't last, of course. Firstly, Suzie Birchall lobbed a brick down the chimney and turned it into a slag heap with soot smuts all over it in 1977, then, in 1978, Stan fell asleep while running a bath, the overflowing water seeped through the ceiling onto the mural, and that was it.

Enter the new cliff and sea panorama in August 1978.

A few years ago, the Corrie production team attempted to reproduce the Oggies' backroom as a tribute to actress Jean Alexander, who had just died.

And didn't they do well? Hilda's mac hung on the door, Stan's photograph, the one Hilda had framed after he died in 1984, which she kept proudly on her sideboard, was all present and correct, and a 1981 Charles and Diana Royal Wedding plate hung by the door - not the same as Hilda's, but quite close to her second plate in appearance and near enough. 

Unfortunately, in the reproduction set, there was a 1980s video recorder under the telly, and Hilda never had a VCR (a lot of the UK population didn't, 5% of households in 1980, up to around 25% in 1985) but, that aside, the whole effect was like stepping back in time and I expected Hilda to walk through the door at any moment.

And most, importantly, the mural and the ducks - one, of course, hanging crooked.

But they couldn't reproduce the mermaid. The mermaid? Good grief, yes - we used to call her 'Miss Boobies' because she was... er... without upper attire and we were not politically correct. But it all made perfect sense to Hilda to have her in front of the muriel.

Water, mermaid, ducks... yep.

I suppose such a mermaid in the reproduction set would would have been asking too much. It was ancient tat in the 1980s, so goodness knows where you'd find one nowadays.

Hilda, seen  here in 1986, disapproved of that there Sally Seddon from Arkwright Street. But Sally and the shockingly topless mermaid (behind Sally in this shot), both living under Hilda's roof, seemed happy enough. Hilda, of course, soon revised her opinion of Sally.

The repro mural was, of course, not the original - the second of two Hilda proudly displayed - which adorned the wall for nearly a decade, but it's atmosphere that counts and the reproduction set certainly has that. Where was the gorgeous scene depicted on Hilda's pride and joy - what was the location? I think I know, but I'd love to hear others' opinions.

The ducks were inappropriate, of course, against that background, but, as Hilda said, they'd kept her hand off the gas tap a number of times, winging their way across there.

And this was how things worked. We had no World Wide Web, no great knowledge of the world compared to now, and for us, the bottom of the class system heap, well, we lived in very small worlds which we made the best of.

The Oggies and Eddie Yeats - faced with the prospect of eating Little Hilda in 1979. Oh dear. That radio is a bit more up to date, isn't it? Henry VIII had one just like it.

Were we happier? I'd say no. Different times, different problems. I had some of my most miserable times long before all mod cons and I see many problems happening alongside, and some courtesy of, all mod cons, now.

Of all the houses in the Street, the Oggies' decor and facilities were probably the closest to my family's. We had no telephone - like most people in our street (less than 50% of UK households had a landline until the 1980s and mobiles did not become available here until 1985 - at a price), no colour TV, a VCR was unimaginable and, of course, no microwave or central heating. When I left home in 1983, VCRs were just beginning to move into the ascendancy (slow but sure), and my mother rented one in 1984. She was one of the first in our street. Fat lot of good that was for me!

Of course, things changed radically with the credit boom of the mid-to-late 1980s, and technology was galloping on. But Hilda was set in her ways. A bit like my gran's cousin. You may not believe me, but she had no indoor toilet or bathroom and still did her ironing with flat irons heated by the fire to the end of her days in 1987. And she had gas lamps either side of her fireplace, which the gas board safety-checked every year. She had electricity and the telly, of course, but the gas lamps came in handy whenever there was a power cut and she had several boxes of mantles on standby.

Hilda left the Street at Christmas 1987. She was finally going up in the world to housekeep for posh Doctor Lowther - but she'd have swapped that for Stan any day.

In my family, we'd started the decade with a black and white telly (the horizontal hold was 'going' and the picture was a narrow band across the screen), a record player and a radio. At the end, we had VCRs, colour TVs, microwaves, and we all had landline phones (mobiles were new and too expensive - 'yuppie toys' we called them - although Del Boy was trying to flog a few cheap 'uns off the back of a lorry). My younger cousin was getting heavily into computers.

A sad time for Hilda - and us. I loved Stan. His needs were few and simple - leisure, grub, beer, fags, his pools coupon and the odd bet on the gee gees. Nothing that exorbitant, bless him. The mermaid smiled on. Personally, I think she was a bit doolally. I wonder if Eddie Yeats found her in one of his bins?

Looking back, the Ogdens' house looks so dated. But, as I grow older, my own house is becoming an increasingly eclectic collection of 'treasures' - loaded with sentimental memories. My Adam Ant mirror hangs alongside my posh turquoise, pink and yellow 1987 clock, and my sad-eyed 60's cat picture in its cheap plastic frame and my great grandmother's flying wall swallows and her ceramic plate pictures of Great Yarmouth Model Village are in the living room. Not to mention the gonk I've had since I was seven, and my wife's grandmother's vase (broken in 1992 but stuck back together - obvious mend, but never mind...) and...

Stan and Hilda's back room had one more lease of life, just after Kevin and Sally's new-look room debuted on the telly. The old set was featured on the brand new Granada TV Tour in 1988 - complete with mural, sideboard, mermaid, ducks, serving hatch and royal wedding plate. And a life-size effigy of Hilda, with a rather accentuated nose! I wonder why?! 

Sadly, I didn't go on the tour until 1991 and it had gone. However, I did get to explore Jack and Vera's living room a year or two later. With their collection of tat - mostly from the 1950s and 1960s - their decor was very much 'THE OGDENS - THE NEXT GENERATION'.

Here's me (physog censored) in Jack and Vera's back room. Lovely, eh? Just look at that bar!

When Hilda left the Street in December 1987 she took her treasures - mermaid and ducks - with her but, sadly, had to leave the 'muriel'.