By far and away the most recognisable member of the squad had to be B.A. Barracus played by ex-wrestler Mr T. You simply could not have had the A Team without B.A. The fact he managed to look aggressive whilst dripping in more gold jewellery than Jimmy Saville was astounding, probably due in no small part to his trademark mohawk hair cut.

I was therefore more than pleased when the fancy dress costumes website Jokers’ Masquerade got in touch to offer me the chance of taking a look at one of their extensive range of costumes. I promptly took them up on their offer and a couple of days later a big box arrived containing their Mr T Fancy Dress costume.

The Mr T costume comprises four parts. The first is a padded top half which gives you an instant six pack and bulging biceps. The sleeves of the top finish with two denim cuffs each emblazoned with a shiny gold letter T. Velcro fasteners at the back of the neck and on the cuffs keep everything nicely in place.

Next is a pair of denim dungarees that feature a built in belt with another big golden T for the buckle. The dungarees again fasten at the front with velcro, but have two big fake golden buttons on the straps. One nice feature is that you can wear normal clothes underneath still if you wish as the dungarees feature holes on either side to allow you access to trouser pockets.

A generous length of gold sequins is included to replicate the gold chains worn by the man himself, although you might want to consider getting some more fake bling to complement this, since Mr. T was normally dripping in gold.

The final part of the package is probably the most important part of any Mr T fancy dress costume. The mohawk hair style is incredibly important so included is a brown rubber bald cap that has a stripe of black hair running along it. The hair on my cap looked a little flat to start off with thanks to being folded up in the packaging, but a quick tussling with a hair brush soon sorted that out.

All in all the Mr T costume seems like a very good product, being well made from quality materials. I was quite expecting the dungarees to be a bit on the thin side but they are actually made from a light weight denim that looks like it should more than cope with the rigours of the average fancy dress party and not immediately self destruct as soon as you leave the house.

I was also sent a rather cool blow up machine gun to add to the ensemble. Made from black plastic, with white printing to pick out some details, when inflated it looks surprisingly effective as it features triggers and a built in ammo clip, and is just the right size to tuck under your arm and make gutteral machine gun noises whilst pretending to shoot all the other fancy dress party guests.

All in all I heartily recommend the Mr T costume, but if you fancy dressing up as another favourite from your youth then there is a wide range of other 80s fancy dress costumes available from the Jokers’ Masquerade website.

However, if you are a Doctor Who fan, it may interest you to know that my friend Phil’s blog, An Episode a Day Keeps the Daleks Away, is chronicling every episode ever made of Doctor Who, right from the beginning and in order. As such, his site has now reached the Eighties era Who, so you might be interested in taking a look if your currently missing a fix of everyone’s favourite Timelord.

At the time of writing this the cause of her death is still not known, but it is for sure that she was discovered in her hotel room in the Beverley Hilton, where she had been staying before being due to sing at a pre-Grammy awards party.

Whitney Houston was born in New Jersey in 1963. The daughter of John Houston, an entertainment executive, and Cissy Houston, a noted Gospel singer, her upbringing meant that becoming an entertainer was probably always very likely. Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick were her cousins, and Arethra Franklin was her Godmother, so singing was kind of in her blood.

She started her singing career when she used to get up on stage and sing in some of the nightclubs that her mother worked at. In 1977, at the tender age of 14, she became a backing singer for the Michael Zager Band, and the following year she featured as a backing singer on Chaka Khan’s hit I’m Every Woman, a song that Whitney herself would become noted for in later life.

The years that followed saw her mixing singing with modelling work, until in 1985 she got her own solo recording contract and her first album, title simply Whitney Houston, was released. Featuring such hits as The Greatest Love of All, How Will I Know and Saving All My Love For You, the album shot Whitney to stardom.

In 1987 her second album, named just Whitney this time, carried on this success and contained some of the songs for which she is best known, including I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me), Didn’t We Almost Have It All, So Emotional and Where Do Broken Hearts Go. These four tracks, plus the three mentioned above from the first album, gave Whitney seven consecutive number one singles in the US.

The late Eighties saw Whitney meeting singer Bobby Brown, who she married in 1992, which was also the year that she moved into acting, starring with Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. Whilst critics maintained that Houston wasn’t so much acting as just being herself on screen, given the film was about a pop starlet, the movie did extremely well at the box office and is fondly remembered by many today.

By the end of the Nineties and into the new century however, things were looking less rosie for Whitney. Her marriage started to falter, before finally coming to an end in 2007, and it became apparent that drugs had taken a hold of her. Many believed her singing talents were slipping away from her and that she lacked the power and emotion that her singing used to deliver.

Whitney Houston was one of the world’s biggest recording artists, and is said to have sold more than 200 million albums and singles worldwide. She is ranked as the fourth best selling female artist of all time in the United States.

Scott Bakula played Dr. Sam Beckett, a scientist who in the year 1999 invented the Quantum Leap accelerator, a device that allowed time travel within the lifetime of the person travelling. Faced with having his funding cut Sam tests out the machine by using it himself, and so begins his travels through time.

Trouble is, something went a little wrong (or caca as the original introduction to the programme put it) and whilst Sam does indeed travel through time, he does so by having his consciousness jump into the bodies of people from the past.

Seemingly stuck, and initially not knowing where he is due to his “swiss cheesed” memory, he soon comes to rely on his erstwhile assistant Al Calavicci (played by Dean Stockwell). Al is broadcast back through time in the form of a hologram, and tries to help Sam out in whatever predicament he finds himself in.

The pair soon come to realise that in order for Sam to leap again, he must first put something right in history that initially went wrong the first time around. Al uses Ziggy, the Quantum Leap computer, to try and discover what Sam must do, presenting possible options for Sam, each helpfully given a probability that it is the correct course of action to take.

Whilst having an obvious science fiction slant due to the presence of time travel and holograms, the show also had a far more traditional feeling about it at the same time. I suppose it was kind of Star Trek meets The Littlest Hobo in a way. The situations that Sam ended up in were usually all very human in the end, involving reuniting people, calming feuds and that kind of thing.

As viewers we always saw the person Sam had leapt into as Sam, but there was always a reveal at the beginning of each episode where Sam would look in a mirror to see who he had become. It was always a little strange when you saw that Sam had leapt into the body of a woman, as you would then usually see Scott Bakula in a dress for the rest of the episode. Sometimes this was played out for laughs at Scott Bakula’s expense, but more often than not you soon accepted the idea and didn’t even notice that you were enjoying watching a man solve problems whilst wearing a dress.

The show aired for five seasons, and has garnered itself a huge following of devoted fans over the years both from the original showings and repeats. There have also been rumours that there is currently a Quantum Leap movie in production, although it appears that Bakula and Stockwell may only feature in cameo roles, which rather questions the point of making a film in the first place.

Search for Quantum Leap items on Amazon.co.uk

OK, at the end of the day all they were was regular old salted crisps, but there was something strangely compelling about opening a packet, rummaging around inside for the little blue sachet of salt, sprinkling said salt over the crisps, then holding the packet closed at the neck and furiously shaking it about in the hope that the salt might just reach the crisps at the bottom of the packet. It was just fun!

The brand was first launched in the 1920′s, making them one of the UK’s oldest types of crisps. They were apparently invented by Frank Smith and sold to pubs in the Cricklewood area of London. Prior to the invention of the “little blue bag of salt”, Smith had provided salt cellars for people to salt their crisps with, but the sachet came into existence simply because people were using too much salt and the cellars were emptied too quickly.

The little blue bag unsurprisingly became the identifier for these crisps, eventually being turned into a little character who appeared on the packets. Strangely he was square in shape, whilst the sachets were rectangular.

I have two very vivid memories of these crisps from my childhood. The first was the day we bought a packet of Salt ‘n’ Shake and found no less than six little blue bags of salt. I needed a drink after finishing that packet I can tell you.

The second memory was of a short lived attempt to expand the brand with the introduction of Flavour ‘n’ Shake crisps. As you can probably guess in these instances the little sachets contained flavourings of different types, although if I remember correctly they were only standard flavours like Cheese and Onion or Salt and Vinegar. I think the sachets may have been different colours depending on the flavour, but I don’t remember for sure.

The brand did disappear for a time, probably sometime during the Nineties, but they were brought back in 2003 by Walkers, who now own all the Smiths Crisps brands. Whilst it’s good to see them back on shop shelves, they do now go under the name of Walkers Formerly Smiths Salt & Shake Crisps, which is both a bit of a mouthful and has dropped the old abbreviated ‘n’ for a boring old ampersand…

It consisted of a circular piece of plastic that had pictures of different animals running around it. In the centre of the toy there was a plastic arrow with a picture of a farmer on it. You turned the arrow to point at a particular animal, let’s say the cow, then pulled a string on the side which caused the arrow to spin around like mad and for the toy to utter the words “The cow says… Moo!”.

Somehow this toy mesmerised me. Perhaps it was the hypnotic spin of the arrow, or more likely just the crackly pronunciation of the recorded voice, but I sat there twisting the arrow and pulling the string until I had heard everything the farmer had to say, much to the annoyance of my mate who probably wanted to go off and play with toy cars or something with me.

A little on the history of this toy then to finish off. The first version was released in 1965 by Mattel and the sounds were stored on a little plastic disc, a bit like an old vinyl record. It has undergone surprisingly few revisions over time, with the first major change being replacing the pull string with a lever in the late Eighties. This change occured after a little girl was blinded by the string snapping and flicking into her eye.

The modern version appears to have more sounds to choose from now, as the ring with the animals on it is now a hinged piece of plastic which can be flipped over like the pages of a book. Apparently the exact same animal sounds are still used in it, although they are now digitised onto a computer chip rather than etched into a plastic disc.

Buy The Farmer Says at Amazon.co.uk

All three Telebugs looked somewhat similar, with sleek curved bodies and a television screen for a head. They differed in size and colour. CHIP (Coordinated Hexadecimal Information Processor) was the notional leader, and was the tallest and white in colour. SAMANTHA (Solar Activated Micro Automated Non-inTerference Hearing Apparatus) was yellow and, being a girl had a red ribbon moulded to the top of her head (in so far as a robot can be called female anyway).

The smallest Telebug was called BUG (Binary Unmanned Gamma camera) and he was red in colour, and was, I suppose given his name, the cameraman of the group. He also had a pet named MIC (Mobile Independent Camera) who flew alongside him and helped in filming duties.

The Telebugs travelled around by flying. Instead of legs they had booster rockets, which enabled them to both hover in place and fly off to the rescue of some poor hapless civilian.

Professor Brainstrain was the inventor of the Telebugs, though unfortunately he had a bit of a problem pronouncing the letter R, so he referred to himself as Pwofessor Bwainstwain.

Of course, as with all good superheroes there were a number of baddies who they went up against on a regular basis, and were generally the cause of all the problems that the Telebugs had to put right. The big bad guy was called Baron Bullybyte, who owned a super computer called Angel Brain which he used to cause most of the trouble.

Bullybyte’s sister Magna was also a bit of a trouble maker, as was Zudo Bug. Zudo Bug was also invented by Professor Brainstrain, but unfortunately he ended up turning evil thanks to a bit of mis-programming caused by Brainstrain’s cat Grumble.

The cartoon was made by Telemagination and 86 episodes were made, first airing in 1986 and 1987.

I confess that before Blockbusters came along I don’t think I had ever heard of Bob Holness, but both him and the show for which he is best known soon became firm favourites in our household, with everybody in the family joining in with the quiz whilst we were having our evening meal.

Whilst Bob Holness was probably best known to many for TV quiz shows, being the host on Blockbusters, a revival of the word panel game Call My Bluff and indeed his first appearance on British TV on the show Take A Letter (don’t worry if you’ve not heard of this one, it was on in the early Sixties) his career spanned almost 60 years with the main stay of his career being in radio presenting.

Holness was born in South Africa in 1928, although his family moved to the UK when he was a child and this is where he was educated. In the Fifties he returned to South Africa and in 1955 became a radio presenter. In 1956 he became the second actor to ever portray James Bond when he recorded a radio version of Moonraker, voicing the secret agent.

Bob was also the subject of an urban myth that claimed he had played the saxophone on Gerry Rafferty’s hit Baker Street. Not one to disappoint Bob used to play along with this myth and also embellish it, as he would also lay claim to being the lead guitarist on a song called Layla by Derek and the Dominoes.