A "Look-in" to the Seventies: 1971

 

The Seventies were a time of great change as we swung from the swinging sixties where there lots of love and hope for the future (which I was a bit too young for) to the more down to earth outlook on life. These were mixed times with widespread industrial disputes, power cuts and the UK began negotiations to join the EEC.

The Prime Minister was Edward Heath (Conservative) and Doctor Who (now in colour) was played by Jon Pertwee. Into this mix cam the ITV magazine Look-in subtitled the "Junior TV Times". This was a mix of articles on television programmes, pop music and comic strips based on popular shows and TV personalities.

This was also the year we introduced Decimal Currency. Wilfred Bramble explains... 

As for me I was in my second year at Secondary School in the middle of rural Surrey. I had just started building a mainly Tri-ang Hornby model railway and was less interested in comics though I still had a largish collection of both British and American editions. Unfortunately Look-in passed me by at the time. I wasn't to return to the hobby until I went to Polytechnic in 77.

However TV and music was something we all watched and listened to. There were just three TV channels and the only commercial radio was broadcast by Radio Luxemburg which a lot of us used to listen under the bed sheets with our small transistor radios. We didn't get a telephone until 1974 when I was old enough to be politically active in a youth group.

This all meant we generally watched the same TV programmes in numbers unknown by modern broadcasters. Look-In is of course devoted to the ITV channel and it's regional variations plus London Weekend TV which just took over at the weekends down south.

One of my favourites was Please Sir starring John Alderton and Deryk Guyler which was not just featured on the cover but had a comic strip inside as well!

Also heavily promoted was Timeslip which I didn't watch but was aware of. We were probably watching the BBC while this was on. One of the features of Look-in were "pin-ups", full or double centre page "pullouts" that you could stick on your wall. 

This edition had photos of the charming Cheryl Burfield and her companion Spencer Banks. The centre pages featured full colour adventures of the pair being taken to a galley ship in ancient times in this issue.

Other programmes promoted included ITV's rival to Blue Peter, Magpie and How which featured the wonderful Jack Hargreaves who went on to have his own programme and Fred Dineage of Police 5 fame!

Photo: By Sibadd

There was a small column promoting Lift Off the children's pop music show presented by the very lovely Ayshea which I didn't get to see much of but not out of choice. The remote control in my day was called Dad. 

This clip is from 1972:

Then of course there were the comics:-

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Look-in is a wonderful resource of nostalgia and over the next seven days I'll be looking at seven issues (inckuding one Annual) from different years in the seventies.