From Charles and Diana to Dynasty and Dallas, package holidays to picket lines, Jenni Murray looks back on life in the Eighties – and, as we mark our milestone year, turns the pages of our very first issue.
It’s time for a celebration. It’s our birthday!
Saga Magazine was first published in autumn 1984 so here we are at our 40th anniversary – and going as strong as ever.
Of course, in 1984 I was only 34, so I can’t say I was Saga’s target audience.
It was, though, something of a revolution, because it set out to inform and entertain the older generation, so often sadly neglected.
Think that 1984 was year of the Walkman? Think again.
In fact, this was the year Sony pioneered the Discman D-50, the first portable CD player. Elsewhere, Steve Jobs was about to change our lives with the innovative Apple Macintosh 128K personal computer going on sale in January that year, while video games were making inroads into our lives, too.
And in White Plains, New York, a baby named Mark Zuckerberg was born. He would launch Facebook 20 years later.
Much of what was vitally important information in 1984 is every bit as necessary today. How best to handle your money will never lose its popularity; gardening will always be a favourite, whether it’s how to prune the roses or get rid of slugs and snails – my current obsession.
Interesting comment on current affairs invariably puts a new spin on the topics of the day and gives you something to talk about over dinner.
Then there was entertainment, just as there is today – interviews with people in the forefront with inspiring things to say.
As with so many things, I guess you could say I grew into Saga and began to discover what a help and a pleasure it could be as I arrived at my 50s, 60s and now 70s.
It’s no surprise that the cover photograph of that first edition was a homely picture of the three people generating more interest than anyone else in the country. Relaxing on a bench in the Highgrove garden are Prince Charles – now the King, of course – Princess Diana, holding a ball, and a two-year-old Prince William, now the Prince of Wales.
His little brother Harry was not in the picture. He was newborn, so I guess was in the nursery. The subject for discussion on the Royal Family at the time was the raising of the Queen’s grandchildren. Would their lives be run on the kind of strict, tough lines that Charles had endured, or would their mother ensure their lives would be full of fun and knowledge of how more ordinary people lived?
Tragically Diana was to die in that terrible car crash in Paris only 13 years after that picture was taken, though her influence on the young princes can still be seen in them today.
That photograph takes me back to one of the most fascinating incidents in my working life. My main job at the time was as a presenter and reporter on Newsnight at the BBC. Women in 2024 are greatly respected as radio and TV journalists, as is only right and proper, but that was not the case in 1984.
The tiny number of women and I who had made it to such an admired position on the BBC’s most respected current affairs programme did not get the respect we deserved. We were known, shockingly, as ‘the Newsnight wives’.
Unsurprisingly, as we all struggle with a cost-of-living crisis now, you could get a lot more bang for your buck 40 years ago.
Average wages were around £8,000 a year compared to around £33,000 now. But then an average house would set you back just £25,589, compared to £282,000 now.
A pint of milk (94% delivered via a milk float) was around 20p compared to 90p, and butter 50p as opposed to £2 for 250g.
And for fact fans, it was the year that the halfpenny was withdrawn.
I did, though, have a little sideline. I was asked to make a documentary for BBC Two about the Duchy of Cornwall and the money that Prince Charles, then Duke of Cornwall, made from it. This involved going to Highgrove to interview the Prince with a full film crew.
To be fair, he could not have been more charming despite the tough and probing questions I put to him. He called me the KGB.
As William would become the next Duke of Cornwall and Prince of Wales, the director asked if we could film the two of them looking at the pond at the side of the house. It has a fountain in the middle and the sculpture is of two whales. The Princes of Wales – geddit?
Charles agreed and Diana was asked to bring William to join us. Charles introduced me to his son very formally and William’s response, to the horror of his father, was to stick out his tongue and make a gesture with his fingers.
Charles told him off.
I said, "Don’t worry, I have one of those at home."
I did. My older son, Ed, is William’s contemporary and was every bit as likely to be naughty when good manners were required. It did not surprise me that the Wales’s marriage did not last for very long. Diana had taken William back to the nursery but was to join the crew for a drink with the Prince in the sitting room when the filming was finished.
He poured our drinks himself and then his own – tomato juice in a can.
As he opened the top of the can, juice squirted out and fell on the carpet. A white carpet. He rubbed it in with his foot, left his foot over the stain and said, "Jenni, please don’t tell my wife I’ve made such a mess."
When Diana came in, she told him off because his tiepin was too low on his tie. "You should have made more effort for the television," she said, crossly. It was obvious we were not witnessing a happy marriage.
What a vintage year 1984 was for films and music.
Many of the biggest screen hits of the decade were released, including Gremlins, The Karate Kid, Ghostbusters and The Terminator. The airwaves were dominated by Band Aid’s charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas?, while Frankie Goes to Hollywood got their single Relax banned by BBC Radio 1.
Rolling Stone dubbed it Pop’s Greatest Year – putting Prince’s When Doves Cry at the top of its 100 best singles of the year.
To celebrate, we've got a round up of music firsts from 1984.
The names of contributors on the cover of the magazine take me right back to 1984. Stirling Moss was to describe his greatest race. I at the time had a beloved, speedy Triumph convertible. I can’t tell you the number of times people would say to me, "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?"
Brian Redhead was there for current affairs. When I joined the Today programme in 1985 he was frequently my partner in the mornings. I learned so much from the best broadcaster ever.
Russell Grant featured with "Your autumn stars". I watched him on breakfast television and always believed what he said was in store for Taureans, my star sign.
Then there was Derek Cooper on Food for Thought. His Radio 4 food programme was required listening; his voice was the most beautiful I’ve ever heard.
All but Russell are gone now, sadly. They are much missed.
I loved the 1980s. I loved the four-bedroom terrace house we bought close to Clapham Common in south London for £90,000. It had a lovely kitchen and great little garden and was within easy walking distance of a first-rate nursery and primary school.
The last time I checked, similar houses were on the market for £1.5 million. My boys would never be able to afford to live so close to the centre of the capital. It’s outrageous that family homes are now far from affordable for the young.
We didn’t have to worry about childcare. Our two salaries meant we could afford a nanny who lived with us during the week and went home at weekends. I didn’t earn anything like the hundreds of thousands paid to broadcast journalists today. We were comfortably off and we managed even in the scary times when the mortgage interest rates rocketed to a terrifying level.
The children raised by my generation are often afraid to have children. Both men and women work at jobs they’ve trained for and care about but are only too aware they won’t be able to afford the childcare they would need. It’s sad to see them holding back.
What I remember best about the Eighties was being ridiculously devoted to shows such as Dallas and Dynasty and staying in for fear of missing an episode. You don’t have to do that any more. You can just set the TV to record and watch whenever you choose.
It’s not the same though; watching a recording is not like seeing it at the same time as everybody else and turning up for work in the morning to discuss how amazing Joan Collins was and how much you wanted to dress like her.
Today, of course, there’d probably be no one at work with whom to discuss last night’s TV viewing. They’re all working from home.
The last 40 years has seen a revolution in the workplace. In 1984, just 55.5% of women worked full time, compared to 78.2% of men.
That latter figure has barely changed – but now it’s 72.1% of women.
Unemployment is down from 11.9% then to 4.2% now and women and men have the same retirement age of 66 – in 1984, women retired at 60, men at 65.
A married weekly pension then was £57.30. It’s £442.40 now.
It seems to me we’ve lost much of what was good in the Eighties. Yes, there were some daft things – we could smoke wherever we chose, even in the cinema, which did no one any good at all.
Shoulder pads went a bit far, leg warmers were ugly and largely pointless, and some of the music was pretty dire.
I exclude Stevie Wonder and Madonna from that comment. Their songs were brilliant and her openness about sex and what women can get away with was admirable. On and on she goes. She’s the ultimate survivor and way more interesting than the vapid Taylor Swift.
Travel was great in the 1980s. Package holidays began to boom and it felt exciting to be travelling somewhere abroad. It was easy to get through an airport. Today it’s just such a nightmare.
That’s why I love cruises. Easy on, easy off and the car parked right outside the terminal when you get home.
It was also a time when there was no social media and no mobile phones. People would go to a restaurant to enjoy a meal and talk to each other!
The good news is we are getting older. In 1984, women could expect to live until they were nearly 78, and men 72. Now women are living until 82.6, and men 78.6.
The bad news?
We are all a lot larger. In fact, from 1984-1994, obesity levels in children started to rise – with little increase seen in the previous decade.
Crudely put, 1984 was the year we started to get fat, despite Diana Moran, the Green Goddess, putting us through our paces on BBC One’s Breakfast Time.
Politically it was a disturbing time for a Yorkshire girl like me. The most distressing story I had to cover for Newsnight was the miners’ strike. I found myself filming a picket outside the pit at which my grandfather had worked all his life. Thatcher was hated by everyone I met there; Arthur Scargill was adored.
Unemployment rocketed and towns like my home of Barnsley were destroyed. I have no doubt the riots we’ve seen in recent weeks and the cruelty towards immigrants are partly fired by the broken white working class I got to know in the Eighties.
Would I want to go back to that decade? You know, I think I would.
The much-missed Queen with her ability to hold us all together would still be with us.
I would also love to be back at a time when I had two little boys to look after. They’re men now and they’re often looking after me. They’re the best sons anyone could hope to have, but I’d like to go back and see if I could be a better mother. They deserved more of my attention than I had to give.
This year, Saga is celebrating an incredible 75 years – and we’d love you to be part of the celebrations. For a limited time only, you can subscribe to Saga Magazine for just 75p an issue.
Receive the next 6 print editions delivered direct to your door, plus 6 months’ unlimited access to the Saga Magazine app – perfect for reading on the go.
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The TV historian on overcoming a difficult childhood and what it was like to appear on Celebrity Traitors.
The wildlife filmmaker on his close call with a polar bear and why hanging out with lions is less scary than driving in the UK.
The Irish author, 62, on escaping the news through writing, staying sober and scrolling the internet for pretty things.
The actress opens up to Jenni Murray on Saga's podcast Experience is Everything.
