New Wave, Day-Glo, Big hair, Dallas, Dynasty, Thatcherism, Reaganomics, skinny ties, starving Ethiopians saved by pop stars, Nightmare on Elm Street, Compact Discs, Hands Across America, the fall of Communism, Wall Street, the first mobile phones . . .

Day to day technology that we take for granted today seemed like Logan's Run in the early 80s: The silicon micro chip was now served with everything to further the technological revolution, providing pocket calculators, word processors (like the Sinclair ZX home computer of the early 80s, or the Amstrad PCW 9512 of 1987), home video recorders and more advanced electronic games. Fiber optic cables began to replace telephone cables, and compact discs, camcorders, cordless phones, cellular phones, faxes, email, watches you didn't need to wind, the internet and drum machines all began to appear.

Casio-riddled pop songs dominated the music charts, while concern grew over ecological and environmental issues such as acid rain, chemical emissions, and the effect of CFCs on the ozone layer. True romance may not have worked for Charles and Diana, or for Andrew and Fergie, but their weddings were two of the highlights of the 1980s, watched by over 700 million people worldwide. The world had become a global village, but a village that became increasingly vulnerable to a new disease identified in 1981 - the AIDS virus.

The stock market crashed; Kylie Minogue became huge; Michael J Fox was the darling of America; the space shuttle seemed to blast off into space almost weekly; Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands prompting a war with Great Britain; Australia won the Americas Cup; Communism fell (as did most Television Evangelists); Oliver North took the heat for the US Government; Yuppies filled their Filofax's with dinner dates ('nouvelle cuisine' of course!) and in Australia "The Dingo took my baby!" . . .

The space shuttle Challenger exploded on take-off killing the crew of seven and a few months later a catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor became the worst nuclear accident in history. October 1987 saw the collapse of the world stock markets and an end to an era where "Greed Is Good" became the catch-cry of the young and upwardly mobile. The 1980s were a brutal decade in which high unemployment created ever-widening social divisions, but the barriers to freedom - sexual, economic and political - came crashing down. The punishing stock market crash of 1987 looked to many to be a case of just desserts for the new breed of 'Yuppie' who was over-paid, over-confident and (as it turned out) over-reaching themselves.

In Britain a new leader came to power and dominated the life of the country for a decade and a half. Her radical zeal affected, for better or worse, every person in Britain as she took on the trade unions and privatized many state-owned industries. In the USA, the policies of President Ronald Reagan sought to effect a similar rebirth of national self-esteem after the setbacks of the 1970s, and 'Reaganomics' were born. And on the world stage, the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev added two new words to the Western vocabulary - "perestroika" and "glasnost".

The 80s brought an outbreak of shootings. It seemed to start when JR was shot in Dallas- but while millions tuned into the most popular soap of the decade to find out whodunnit, other shootings were all too real. Ronald Reagan and The Pope both survived their shootings. John Lennon and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat were not so fortunate. And as the decade drew to a close, things looked bleak. 

The final year of the decade seemed to top it all off when the Chinese Army massacred protesting students in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. And it was on television that most people watched the highlights of the decade - In 1989 the Berlin Wall crumbled - not in secret as it had been constructed, but before the eyes of the entire world. The Cold War was over.