Two plastic balls linked by a skinny rope caused the most ridiculous moral panic at at the start of the 1970s. Clackers was a toy that, it was claimed, could leave you blinded or seriously injured. Very rapidly it went from being the must-have item in the school playground to a shunned and dangerous creation….
Nearly forty years ago, a police officer was hacked to death during a night of violence in north London. Police Constable Keith Blakelock stumbled during a riot on the Broadwater Farm estate and never stood up again. His neck was hacked at with a machete and knives with one report suggesting he lost fingers as…
Doctor Who was a 20th century TV success story that soared but then crashed as historian Tony McMahon discovers
1985 saw two double agents exposed. KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky and US Navy officer John Walker were not what they seemed. Tony McMahon reports
Corporal punishment was a constant feature of 1970s schools reducing children to a terrorised state as TV historian Tony McMahon remembers
Night clubs in the 1980s and 1990s were often subjected to police raids for various reasons as TV historian Tony McMahon recalls
In 1989, TV historian Tony McMahon spent the last New Year’s Eve of the decade in Bellshill just outside Glasgow and it was a culture shock!
Clubbing in the 1990s meant when you left your front door, you had no idea when you’d return home as Tony McMahon remembers
In 1981 – Coventry really was the Ghost Town but local heroes like Neville Staple and Errol Christie were trying to make a difference – as Tony McMahon reports
Clifford Olson was a notorious Canadian serial killer and yet has slipped into obscurity compared to some American mass murderers as Tony McMahon reports
