Original subtitles

MUSIC: 'Set For Glory' by Richard Myhill

DEBBIE CHAZEN: Welcome back to the 1980s,

a decade that went super sized.

Everything was big.

Big hair, big clothes, big phones.

Britain was changing at breakneck speed.

We went from a steel-producing, coal-mining, struggling nation

to a shoulder-pad-clad, money-obsessed powerhouse.

It was the era when technology changed our lives.

My mum had one of the very first microwaves,

and people came round to look at it.

New foods tempted our palates. CUCKOO CHEEPS

Nothing says '80s more than a slice of Viennetta.

And our supermarkets became enormous.

These were monsters.

Nobody had ever seen these things before.

Now we're taking a step back in time...

Oh, wow!

To discover the products we loved...

WOMEN GASP

It's magic. Yes!

Despised...

It's abysmal.

And ones that caused a stir.

It's not an attractive product, is it? No.

Much like a kind of artistic vagina.

THEY LAUGH

We'll also lift the scientific lid on the fun...

Say hello to my little friend.

And the, quite frankly, bizarre.

This is transglutaminase, also known as meat glue.

And we'll whip up some '80s classic dishes

that got our taste buds tingling.

Today, I'm making French bread pizza.

So, zip up your shell suit,

pour yourself a Cinzano,

and sit back as we reveal

the secrets of the 1980s supermarket.

SCANNER BEEPS

Piece-za cake. Do you get it? SHE LAUGHS

I'm not very good, am I, with jokes?

The late '80s was a tale of two shopping baskets.

It was the richest of times. It was the skin test of times.

It was the age of megabucks. It was the age of the dole queue.

It was the era of fine dining.

And the era of the potato waffle.

But the one thing that united us all was our desire to appear classy...

no matter the size of pay packet at the end of the week.

And nowhere could that be seen more

than in what we liked to serve for dinner.

For starters, you might have some deep fried Brie

with a red currant jelly

or some breaded garlic mushrooms.

For a main, a chicken Marbella or a chicken a la King.

Ancl if you were, you know, on a date or some special occasion,

you'd push the boat out and have a steak Diane

or a surf and turf.

HE LAUGHS

And when it came to dessert,

the supermarkets were suddenly offering us an explosion

of new and decadent options.

You could buy all sorts of gateaux.

Your black cherries, your coffee and mandarin,

strawberry and cream, basically any sponge and cream.

But then the Viennetta arrived.

ADVERT: Wall's Viennetta

could leave you with one small problem...

One slice is never enough.

Although first launched as a Christmas dessert in 1982

by ice-cream giant Walls,

Viennetta proved so popular

that by 1984, it was stocked in supermarkets all year round.

It's basically a bar of ice-cream

layered with chocolate, very thin, crispy chocolate.

It was all sort of frilly, and you'd slice it,

and you could hear that crunch and little flakes of chocolate,

and I was really excited to try it.

It cost well under a pound,

but was seen as the most up-market of desserts.

Nothing was more sophisticated than a Viennetta at the time.

Nothing tasted like it.

Nothing looked like it, before or since.

A Viennetta was actually posh.

I know you'd been and bought it from Sainsbury's,

but it was still posh.

Although in reality, its origins were a little less glamorous.

It sounded really exotic. You know, Viennetta.

It's like, "Where did it come from?" You know?

I was expecting it to be some

mysterious sort of Venetian factory or something.

But actually, it was made in a factory in Gloucester.

But no-one seemed to mind

as it became an overnight success in the freezer aisle.

One of my first memories of Viennettas

is waking up having nightmares about the thing

cos I just hadn't ordered enough.

Sales were just huge.

Viennetta may have been the ultimate slice of sophistication

for the adults of the '80s,

but suddenly, everywhere, children were rising up

and saying with a single, clear voice,

"We want classy desserts, too."

The result was Ice Magic,

which was launched in the UK in 1982 by custard kings Bird's.

RUMBLING

ADVERT: Something different is about to happen.

The most exciting thing that's ever happened to ice-cream.

New Ice Magic from Bird's.

A rich, smooth, chocolatey topping like no other.

Ice Magic was a chocolate sauce that you'd keep in a cupboard,

and it was liquid in the bottle,

but you poured it on your ice cream,

and when it came into contact with the cold ice cream,

it immediately went solid, and there was the magic.

You'd have to crack it to get into the ice cream.

We used to have so much fun with that.

HE LAUGHS

Sadly, Ice Magic is no longer available to buy in the UK,

but we've imported some.

Well, ordered it off the internet all the way from Australia,

where it's still guzzled by the gallon load

to see what Brits today make of this magical marvel.

Remember? Do I remember Ice Magic? Oooh!

Oh! |Ce Magic! Yes!

That was one of my favourite things in the entire world.

That was pure gold.

Fond memories all round.

But does it still live up to the hype?

So what do I do with this? Just pour it on?

Ready? Yeah, yeah.

Look at that.

Do you just wait? Says it sets hard in seconds. OK.

It's not quite set yet. Oh, come on! Hurry up, hurry up!

This isn't giving Disneyland. No.

This has definitely taken longer than a couple of seconds.

Yeah. SPOON TAPS

Oh-ho-ho! GASPS

That's the moment. Ah!

Yes! It's doing the thing.

Mm!

Yeah, it's pretty good.

This is beautiful.

Beautiful, beautiful, comforting memory.

I miss Ice Magic.

I don't know why they'd ever discontinue something like that.

But what witchcraft and wizardry

can be used to recreate a mystical miracle like this?

And is it all that magical?

Well, here's our very own '80s alchemist Dr Chris Clarke

with his own take on how he thinks the magic might be made.

So, the magic is fat. Specifically, these two fats.

Coconut oil and sunflower oil.

Well, that doesn't sound particularly magical.

Now, these are both oils, ie fats,

but the big difference is

the sunflower oil is a liquid at room temperature,

whereas the coconut oil is a solid at room temperature.

Ancl that is the key.

The reason why some fats are liquid at room temperature,

compared to some which are solid,

is actually down to the saturated fat content.

If something has very low saturated fat content,

like sunflower oil, with around 13%,

then it is a liquid at room temperature.

Whereas something much higher in saturated fat,

like lard, butter, or coconut oil in this case,

it has 87% saturated fat,

which means it packs very well and forms a solid at room temperature.

But how do they come together

to make a magical, physics-defying chocolate sauce?

To explain, Dr Chris is going to attempt to make his own version.

So, to get a chocolate sauce that can be liquid,

but then quickly change into a solid,

we need to use the properties of both.

We're gonna mix them together.

So to kick things off, chocolate sauce needs chocolate.

We've got here a nice milk chocolate

that I've heated up to keep it nice and liquid.

Now, it looks nice and smooth and saucy right now,

but as soon as I let that cool down, it's going back to a solid,

so that's no good for us.

So to stop that from happening, Chris adds the coconut oil.

In it goes.

Followed by a glug of the sunflower.

Now, we only need a small amount of the sunflower oil

because its purpose is to stop the saturated fat

from gathering together and reforming a solid.

Once it's all mixed and melted,

Chris is left with a delicious chocolatey sauce.

So obviously, this is nice ancl saucy because it's been heated up.

But if I was to let it cool a little bit,

then you get something a little bit more

like this one I made earlier.

So as you can see, I've got a nice chocolate sauce here

that's still liquid at room temperature.

But what will happen when it touches ice cream?

Well, to answer that, we're going to need some ice-cream.

Say hello to my little friend.

Wowse rs!

I've heard of a sundae, but that's a month of sundaes.

So, it's the moment of truth.

Let's see just how magic this really is.

Oooh!

Getting some nice coverage on there.

No sense in skimping with a sundae this big.

OK.

And now...

I think we give it a second, but...

..| can already see that it's going a kind of a matte colour,

which suggests that it is solidifying.

But there's only one way to find out for sure.

Oh! Look at that.

Ancl abracadabra, we have solid chocolate.

Not sauce any more.

Or at least not while it stays cold.

Mm.

Magical.

Who needs Tommy Cooper when you've got Dr Chris?

Coming up, because you've been very good and eaten all of your pudding,

we've got a treat for you in part two.

Yuppies.

I'm a yuppie. Look at my phone.

And then they had posey cars as we“.

And sun-dried tomatoes.

I mean, you look at it,

and it looked like a tomato that had gone off, didn't it?

Something that you got out of the bin in your garden.

DEBBIE CHAZENI It's the late '8OS

in our romp through the decade supermarkets,

and whilst many were struggling to make ends meet,

there was one part of the population who were spending money

like it was going out of fashion.

It was the era of the yuppie.

"Young, urban professional."

It was all about the power dressing -

showing that you have money and you plan to make more.

It didn't matter whether you were a man or a woman.

You had big shoulder pads and a phone.

"|'m a yuppie, look at my phone!

Ancl then they had posey cars, as well.

I mean, you should have seen me in the '80s.

Everything about me was huge, as well, particularly my hair.

You mean like this, Jonathan?

HE LAUGHS

And with all this extra cash around,

the supermarket soon realised

that there was some serious money-making potential.

We started to see an array of higher-end products on the shelves.

Products such as smoked salmon, terrines, pates.

And a whole host of new and exciting herbs and condiments.

Basil, coriander, pesto.

Asian-inspired dressings with chilli, lime, soy,

things that we hadn't really seen before.

And it was a similar affair in the wine aisles, too.

The supermarkets were introducing us

to a world of exciting and exotic new wines,

and there was one type of plonk we all went potty for in the '80s -

Chardonnay.

There was nothing more posh and up-to-date

than a glass of Chardonnay, darling.

I loved Chardonnay.

You felt quite sophisticated if you're...

"Oh, I'll have a Chardonnay, please."

For the formerly Liebfraumilch-obsessed

British public,

Chardonnay offered something new and exciting,

and we were buying it by the bucket load.

I think Chardonnay was popular

because it sort of sat between the two.

It was neither dry, and it was neither sweet.

And as we quaffed, swilled, and swigged our way

through Chardonnay by the shed load,

we needed some posh nibbles to soak it all up.

And the supermarkets had that covered, too.

In the '80s, sun-dried tomatoes were all the rage,

the height of sophistication.

You were really posh in the '80s

if you had a sun-dried tomato

and you picked it up with a cocktail stick

and popped it in your mouth.

Suddenly, it was like, "Oh yeah, well, you know,

"look at me, I've been to Tuscany, and I've got a sun-dried tomato.

"How about you?"

But it wasn't the Italians we had to thank

for them first appearing on our supermarket shelves

in the late '80s.

The reason they became so popular

is because of Italian restaurants in California.

California had a very similar growing climate to parts of Italy,

so they began to make them, too,

but used them in their restaurants and recipes.

And they were brought to the UK by an intrepid team

of individuals who scoured the globe

in an arms race aimed at finding new and exciting tastes

for yuppies to spend their money on.

One of my jobs in the '80s,

as a product developer with Marks and Spencers,

was to travel and find new ingredients.

And whilst on a trip in New York,

in one of the delis, we saw sun-dried tomatoes.

And we thought,

we'll bring them back and use them as an ingredient.

But back then, it was going to take some serious convincing

to assure customers and staff

that they were worth forking out for.

I mean, you look at it,

and it looked like a tomato that had gone off, didn't it?

Something that you got out of the bin in your garden.

So we were underwhelmed. It didn't look great.

We honestly thought,

"This is never gonna sell. This just doesn't look good."

And look at the price that we're asking

for a shrivelled-up old tomato.

And then you taste one.

When we brought them back, people, as soon as they tasted them,

they understood that they really were very flavoursome

and very different to anything that we'd tried before.

They may have tickled our taste buds in the '80s,

but what do today's shoppers make of these dried delicacies?

I mean, it's not an attractive-looking food item, is it?

This is like something from Mars. It's very big.

They do look quite alien, don't they?

Yeah, they do. They're very veiny. This one in particular.

It looks like a human ear. Yeah.

Not the best start. But what about the taste?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

They taste way better than they look.

It's not an attractive product, is it?

Much like a kind of artistic vagina.

This would go on display in the Tate Modern, wouldn't it?

Absolutely. Probably win the Turner Prize.

Well, if that's put you off sun-dried tomatoes for life,

here's a lady who might be able to turn things around.

It's the Gordon Ramsay of the '80s.

Except with laughing instead of swearing.

TV's Rustie Lee.

Today, I'm going to be making a really lovely

sun-dried tomato and spinach roulade.

Ooh-la-la! SHE LAUGHS

That's rolled up sponge, by the way.

A bit like a posh, savoury Swiss roll.

Rustie starts by making a cake mix, swapping sugar for some spinach.

Yum.

Which she adds to a blender along with a tablespoon of from age frats.

That goes in.

Plus some self-raising flour and five egg yolks.

I've kept the egg whites because I'm going to be using that next.

She then blends it all up until she has a nice smooth mixture.

I think that's clone.

Oh, I say, look at it.

It looks like something ready for Halloween, doesn't it?

It looks a bit....

It's going to be lovely.

Before you make any comments!

As if we would, Rustie!

Rustie then sets her gruesome green mixture to one side

as she whips up the remaining egg whites into stiff peaks,

ready to be folded into the cake mixture.

That's nice and stiff now, as the bishop said to the nun.

We pause this program me

as our HR department issues Rustie with a final warning

for out-of-date jokes.

And we're back.

Suitably reprimanded,

she next gently folds the egg whites into the cake mixture.

That's nicely folded in now.

All I need to do is spread it out on the baking tray.

Spreading complete,

Rustie pops the cake mix in the oven for about 15 minutes,

taking out one that was made earlier.

Oh, look at this. Doesn't it look lovely?

As green as Grotbags, if you know who Grotbags was.

Moment of truth. The turning out.

Kittens' time.

Oh'. SHE CACKLES

I've clone it!

It wasn't that funny, Rustie.

There she goes, professional chef.

Whilst it's still warm and pliable,

Rustie rolls up the cook's cake so it holds its shape

and puts to one side to cool whilst she starts on the filling,

which is a mix of garlic and herb cream cheese

and from age frats.

Just mixing it all together so it's nice and smooth,

ready to go into the filling.

I think that should do it.

Oh, it smells lovely.

Next, Rustie unrolls her roulade and spreads over the mix.

Put the mixture on and just smooth it out,

like you're doing some decorating at home.

Now for the most important ingredient of them all,

the sun-dried tomatoes, and make sure you put quite a lot in there.

Don't be stingy with it.

Make sure they're right up to the edge

so when it's rolled, you're able to see them.

That's it.

Now it's time to roll this roulade.

Here we go.

One false move, and Rustie's roulade could be toast.

Ah, that looks lovely.

Oh.

Roulade successfully rolled, all that's left to do is serve up.

What a lovely board to put it on.

Ancl there you have it -

a dinner party treat that will make all your guests green with envy.

When it came to people's fortunes in the late '80s,

Britain was a divided place.

Not everyone was having a great time.

Yes, there were the sort of yuppies having a ball, drinking Champagne.

But places in North England and South Wales

were having real trouble

because they'd lost their mining and their shipping

and their car manufacturing,

and entire communities of skilled workers were left unemployed.

And whilst Maggie and her boys thought the answer lay

in controversial policies like the Youth Training Scheme,

the supermarkets took a much more pragmatic approach.

Supermarkets recognised

that there were large parts of the country

that needed cheap and cheerful food,

and they responded to it.

We saw the likes of Fine Fare,

Britain's third-largest supermarket at the time,

offer the country's first own-label value range.

It was called Yellow Price Pack,

and as you can imagine, it came in a yellow pack with black writing,

and it was very, very cheap.

No frills, just a plain yellow label

with a very plain, clear description on it and a price.

But the ultimate place to go for a bargain in the '80s

was your local Happy Shopper.

The Happy Shopper was cheap, it was cheerful,

and it fed a lot of families.

And quite a few students.

Famous for its bright orange-and-yellow packaging

with that smiley face,

shops that stocked the range offered an array of household staples

at bargain basement prices.

They sold bleach, washing-up liquid, cornflakes,

lard and cola.

None of it very glamorous, but it served a purpose.

It offered a quality range at an extremely good-value price.

It was very basic,

but what it did do was give the convenience stores

a price point that they hadn't had before.

Happy Shopper was really created for independent grocery stores

to be able to compete with big supermarket chains.

And by the end of the decade, this value corner-shop range really was.

It even launched its own TV advert with an A-list voice-over artist,

although you could argue that was the only thing about the ad

that was A-list.

CHRIS TARRANT: It's the dawning of a new era.

The Happy Shopper advert

is cheap and cheerful, like its products.

Helping you to keep down the cost of living

with prices like Happy Shopper back bacon,

a seven-ounce pack for only 99p.

Ancl when you buy ten eggs for only 79p, you get two free.

You see the sun rising.

You can get loads of eggs for not very much money,

and you can buy back bacon for not very much money.

Ancl it's gonna be available everywhere

in many stores in your neighbourhood.

You'll find these price-mark packs at the Happy Shopper shops,

which are springing up here, there and everywhere.

What I remember most about the commercial

is Chris Tarrant's voice-over being really sort of jaunty and upbeat.

You've got Chris...

AS CHRIS TARRANT: ..Tarrant being happy

and telling you to be happy all the time, and shopping...

IN OWN VOICE: and laughing while he's telling you.

Like, makes you just forget

how depressing the products actually look.

Happy Shopper, a brighter way of life.

If I'm truly honest about it,

it would have made me run a mile from a Happy Shopper.

I'd have got on the nearest bus and gone to Waitrose.

But every jar has its lid, right?

Coming up, an egg-traordinary crisis for Britain's supermarkets.

Sales plummeted by 60%,

and the egg aisle was like a ghost town.

Look at this!

And Rustie gets busy with the fizzy in the kitchen.

A SodaStream. My goodness, this is so '80s.

Look at the colours!

MACHINE FIZZES Oh-ho!

It's the late '80s in our jaunt through the decade's supermarkets,

and as the economy continued to boom,

superstores everywhere started to look for more ways

to make us part with our new-found cash.

But when it came to selling household electrical items,

they were still very much in the dark.

Before the 1980s, you had places like Be jam and Iceland,

and they might sell white goods - the fridges and things -

because that's the kind of market they were in.

But nobody was really selling electrical items,

brown goods, as they were known.

In fact, the idea of selling brown goods

like TVs, radios, record players, and so on,

that was unheard of.

And there was one very clear reason for that - the price.

TVs, record players and Hi-Fi,

that kind of stuff was really expensive.

The latest must-have gadget, a VHS recorder,

could cost you as much as a whopping £799.

That's over £3,250 in today's money,

and even most colour TVs

cost well over four times the average weekly wage.

It was almost unheard of

for people to actually own their television outright.

Most of us just rented them

from places like Radio Rentals and Rumbelows.

But change was afoot,

and an electronic revolution was about to take place.

Mass production was becoming much more of a thing.

Ancl if you're producing a lot more of an item,

you can bring the price down.

These huge factories sprung up.

There was sort of no unions, so the workforce was much cheaper.

There were things like imports happening.

So this brought the cost down.

And as the prices plummeted, the supermarkets stocked their shelves

with a whole host of new and exciting gadgets.

You could now buy from the supermarkets

things like fax machines, Casio watches.

Boombox. A Walkman, a Polaroid camera.

There was everything. There was Hi-Fi, there were computers.

And if you were really lucky,

you'd get a Breville cheese-sandwich maker.

First invented back in the 1920s,

toasted sandwich makers only really became popular in the late '70s,

when Australian brand Breville launched their version in the UK,

and by the '80s, they were selling like hot, um... toasties.

It had to be white bread, it had to be butter,

it had to be cheese and Branston Pickle.

Perfect, I loved it.

Although, it wasn't without its dangers.

It got really hot.

So when you bit into one, and the cheese stuck

to the roof of your mouth, that really could burn.

And once all those toasted sandwiches were eaten,

we needed something to wash it all down with.

And there was a gadget for that, too -

SodaStream.

♪ Hey, an unexpected scene

♪ So get busy with the fizzy With SodaStream. ♪

It was fantastic because, for the first time,

you could make your own flavour of fizzy drinks.

You could sort of take flavours that were already there,

and like I did in my house, mix them together

to create something completely new and horrible.

♪ Mix a little mixer Add a little dash... ♪

It may have been an iconic appliance in the '80s,

but its origins go way back.

♪ Busy with the fizzy SodaStream. ♪

That's fizzy!

A lot of people think that SodaStream came from the USA,

but it was actually invented in England in 1903.

It was originally called an aerating liquid machine,

and it was very exclusive and very popular with the aristocracy.

Including the royal family.

But it would take another 70 years before it became a household name.

The SodaStream's popularity waned during the 20th century until 1979,

when it was relaunched in a brown-and-cream colour scheme,

which kind of matched a lot of the kitchens at the time.

And it became really popular, and most households had them.

But how exactly do SodaStreams work,

and what do they taste like?

Well, there's only one lady to help us find out.

It's TV chef Rustie Lee.

Wow, look at this!

SHE CHUCKLES A SodaStream.

My goodness, this is so '80s. Look at the colours.

MACHINE FIZZES Oh-ho!

Ancl a toasted sandwich maker.

So, what's on the menu?

Today, I'm going to be making the ultimate '80s treat -

a soda cola float and a fabulous toasted sandwich.

Ee, it's gonna be lovely!

But if you think health and safety

would let a national treasure like Rustie Lee

loose on a 40-year-old SodaStream gas canister,

think again.

No, thank you. I don't wanna be blown up.

So the fun police have given Rustie

something a little more modern to work with.

Now, then. Now, what do I do with this?

I've never made one of these before.

I'm gonna have to figure it out.

This should be interesting...

Rustie starts by filling up the clear flask

with some plain old tap water.

I think that'll do it, I hope.

Oh, heck.

How'd you connect this?

WATER BUBBLES Ooh-hoo-hoo!

WATER FIZZES Whoo-hoo-hoo!

Keep going!

I don't think I've clone it right!

No, Rustie, I don't think you have.

Oh, there's a lever here.

SHE CLEARS THROAT There we go.

Now we've got it.

Now let's have a go.

Hallelujah.

With the bottle safely fitted,

Rustie pumps in some carbon dioxide to make the drink fizzy.

RUSTW. CHUCKLES

And then adds some cola syrup.

There we go.

It's bubbling away nicely. Look at it.

Ooh!

She then puts the cap on, gives it a good shake,

and has a little taste.

Cheers.

Wow.

Tastes like the real thing!

Cola made, Rustie then sets the SodaStream aside

to focus on her toasted sandwich.

You might think that making a toasted sandwich is easy for me,

so I'm going to Rustie it up by making a tuna crunch melt.

Ooh!

Crunchy tuna - yum.

She starts by adding some tuna to a bowl,

followed by a good dollop of mayonnaise.

I'm now going to add my crunchy bits.

Which, for Rustie, are chopped-up celery and gherkins,

as well as a pinch of chilli flakes.

Ancl a little bit of salt.

Ancl add a bit more pepper.

Pinch of black pepper.

She then gives it a good stir

before setting to one side to butter her bread.

Now, a tip is,

I like to butter both outside and in,

so when it's clone, it's nice and golden on the outside.

There we are. Here we go.

So, pieces of bread in.

Can you hear that sizzle already? SIZZLING

She then adds her tuna mix, followed by some tomatoes.

And some cheese.

Lots of cheese.

Well, it wouldn't be a tuna crunch melt without a bit of... melt.

She then tops it off with the remaining slices of bread

and closes the sandwich toaster.

There's quite a lot in there. Hope it's going to shut.

Ooh! Yes, it is.

All that's left to do is have a quick clear-up

whilst the sandwich is toasting and, er, smoking!

It's getting a bit feisty.

Maybe I've put too much in it.

Er, fun police, should that be happening?

I think it's ready - the green Light's on.

Ooh, look at that.

Just as it looks in the '80s, with cheese oozing out.

Whilst Rustie lets the sandwich cool slightly,

she returns to her cola float.

She pour the cola into a glass, adds two scoops of vanilla ice cream

and pops in a straw.

How easy is that?

My cola float. Look at this!

Oh, that's lovely!

All that's left to do is for Rustie to plate up her sandwiches.

I think it's time to have a bite.

Oh!

Crunchy.

[And mew]!

Delicious.

In true '80s style, I'm going to take this and these,

curl up on the sofa and watch Dallas.

Rustie, you're gonna have kittens when you find out who shotjR.

Gadgets like SodaStreams and toasted sandwich makers

may have been flying off the supermarket shelves

in the late '80s...

but by 1988, there was one supermarket staple that wasn't -

eggs.

And it was all down to one individual in particular.

In an interview on ITV News on the 3rd December, 1988,

a then junior health minister known as Edwina Currie

made the statement...

Most of the egg production of this country, sadly,

is now infected with salmonella.

The resulting health scare hit the British egg industry,

and supermarkets, hard.

So it was headline news.

Everyone was talking about it.

The salmonella scare was a huge incident,

and it was absolutely catastrophic for the supermarket industry.

Sales plummeted by 60%,

and the egg aisle was like a ghost town.

And it wasn't just the sales of eggs that were affected.

People became scared.

They became scared of eating eggs

or anything connected or cooked with eggs,

and, literally everything stopped selling.

It just came to a screaming halt.

Anything that had egg as an ingredient

had lost the confidence of the public.

So cakes, Yorkshire pudding mixes.

Sales just declined along with eggs.

For the farmers, it was catastrophic.

In the end, 400 million eggs had to be destroyed.

Just two weeks after that fateful news broadcast,

threatened with legal action from both the British egg industry

and the National Union Of Farmers,

Edwina Currie was forced to resign her position

as junior health minister.

From that moment on, she was forever known as "Egg-wina" Currie.

In Edwina's defence,

a government report over ten years later

said that there had been a salmonella epidemic,

and she was probably right to highlight the risk.

Poor old "Egg-wina".

Coming up, an '80s advert that perked up a nation.

50 million people cared that much

about two characters in a coffee commercial.

And Dr Chris dresses to impress...

And we're good to go.

As he reveals the secrets behind freeze-dried instant coffee.

Ancl this... is the end result.

It's the late '80s in our deep dive into the decade supermarkets,

and whilst there was financial hardship for many,

it was economic boom times for others.

And those who had money to spend

were spending it in all manner of new and exciting ways.

Trendy restaurants were popping up all over the place.

Nightclubs were in their heyday,

and coffee shops were hugely in vogue.

Until then, we were very much known as a nation of tea drinkers.

But then, suddenly, coffee became all the rage.

And as the decade progressed,

we saw an explosion of coffee shops hit the high street.

The first Costa Coffee opened in 1981.

The first Pret opened in 1986,

and from there, there was literally a coffee house on every corner.

And the supermarkets were in on the act, too.

By the late '80s, plenty of Tesco, Morrisons, Asda, Sainsbury's

and M&S stores over a certain size now offered on-site coffee shops.

But it was on the supermarket shelves themselves

where the real revolution was taking place.

Tea sales dropped by a staggering 20% over the '70s and '80s,

and by 1986, coffee sales had outpaced tea for the first time.

Former tea-obsessed Brits everywhere

were swapping their Tetleys and PG Tips

for instant freeze-dried coffee.

Brands such as Mellow Birds,

Kenco,

and Maxwell House were flying off the supermarket shelves.

But there was one brand that outsold all the others

by a country mile - Nescafe Gold Blend,

thanks to its iconic advertising campaign.

Hello. I'm sorry to bother you,

but I'm having a dinner party, and I've run out of coffee.

Nescafe Gold Blend adverts.

We'd never seen anything like that before.

There's a gorgeous Sharon Maugham knocking on Anthony Head's door.

She says, "|'ve run out of coffee. Do you have any?"

He goes and gets his bottle of Gold Blend and says...

Will Gold Blend be too good for your guests?

Oh, I think they could get used to it.

It's a very sophisticated coffee.

They have very sophisticated taste.

Clearly, they fancy each other. It's very flirtatious.

And you know that there's a great future ahead for both of them.

It was successful because it really embodied that '80s decadence -

classy yuppie lifestyle, quality clothes.

She looks so sophisticated.

She's got a little bit of the Princess of Wales sort of hair.

Ancl that's why it worked so well.

The casting was fantastic,

and there is absolutely a lovely chemistry between them,

and you wanted to know what was coming next.

Which was precisely the point,

as a whole string of equally opulent adverts followed suit.

You saved my life the other night.

The dinner party? The coffee.

What was memorable in particular about these adverts,

is each one moved the story on a little bit further,

and it was almost like a soap opera in ad form.

The story just kept evolving,

and these people almost became part of our life.

The next "episode" of the advert takes us on a little further,

and we see more tension, more flirting.

Look, I'm in the middle of something right now,

but perhaps... Perhaps.

Ancl by the third episode,

plucks up the courage to ask us out for dinner.

Are you always this late? I won't be tomorrow.

What's happening tomorrow?

I'm inviting you for dinner.

Oh, what makes you think I'll accept?

You can't resist my coffee.

Every single one, however,

always leaves us with that little bit of a cliff-hanger.

Ancl it strung us out over a period of time

with this "Will they, won't they get together?"

Ancl that was, I think, in essence,

the way that they got us hooked on Gold Blend.

It was a clever campaign, and just like any good soap opera,

the road to true love was far from straightforward.

There's other men, there's other women.

Then there's arguments.

There's the strains of a long-distance relationship.

I mean, it was a bit like watching Dynasty or Dallas.

The campaign ran for six years and featured a total of 12 adverts,

all chronicling the trials and tribulations of Sharon and Tony.

And the final, well-crafted instalment,

which saw Tony finally profess his love for Sharon

was every soap writer's dream.

I don't know why I let you do that.

Because I serve... You serve better coffee.

Besides...

I love you.

That moment was huge.

30 million people tuned in to watch Tony declare his love for Sharon.

30 million people cared that much

about two characters in a coffee commercial.

The Queen's funeral only got 28 million.

But more importantly, it increased sales of Nescafe Gold Blend by 70%.

I'd say that is an incredibly successful ad campaign.

But what exactly is freeze-dried coffee, and how on Earth is it made?

Back to reveal all is Dr Chris Clark.

Freeze-drying. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

It dries food using very low temperatures.

The idea is, that if you remove all the moisture from something,

it will last a lot longer.

This is because all the bacteria that makes food spoil

cannot live without water.

This means a product like coffee, once freeze-dried,

can be stored for a long period without going off.

To demonstrate how it all works,

Chris is going to attempt to make his own instant freeze-dried coffee,

and he starts by making some coffee the posh way.

You want to put quite a lot in,

because we want to make as much instant coffee as possible.

He then tops it up with hot water

and leaves to brew for a few minutes.

Coffee made, now time to freeze it.

Now, for optimal freezing, we want a nice, big surface,

so I'm going to pour all of my coffee...

HE STRAINS ..into my very large tray here.

The larger the surface area,

the thinner the coffee layer is, and the quicker it freezes.

Ancl we're going to pour that all over

and try and get a nice thin coating with a very big surface area.

With the coffee perfectly poured, it's time to get chilling.

Now, the freeze dryer

is in a strictly controlled part of the laboratory,

so I'm going to need some very fashionable accessories.

Ancl we're good to go. Follow me.

Looking good, Dr Chris.

He then carefully and, er... elegantly carries the hot coffee

to the freeze-drying lab,

where the process will take place in two stages,

the first of which is freezing it very, very quickly.

We've got here a blast freezer,

a very impressive piece of kit

that will freeze my coffee in about 20 minutes.

So I'm going to open this up and pop the coffee in.

Here we go.

And, yep, you guessed it - here's one that was frozen earlier.

You can see it's lovely and solid,

but as you can see, it's still full of water, albeit as ice.

So we need to now go to the next stage - the freeze dryer.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any more

like Stranger Things...

Right.

So, this bad boy is the freeze dryer.

It's essentially a giant vacuum

which forces all the little ice crystals

to turn straight into a gas because of the low pressure.

You might remember from your school science clays

that water goes from solid to liquid, to gas,

but, in a freeze dryer under low pressure,

you can skip the water phase altogether

and go straight from a solid to a gas,

which leaves just the coffee with no moisture in it.

So, we've had some in the freeze dryer now for about 24 hours,

and this is the end result.

A solid that is completely dry, all the moisture gone.

Nothing left but coffee.

It doesn't look exactly like the coffee you'd get in jars

at the moment, which means we have one last step.

Back to Dr Chris's lab.

Now, you may remember instant coffee in the '80s

being in larger granules.

However, to get that,

I'd have to compress the coffee and then break it up.

In my case, I'm going to make a posher coffee, a fine grind.

Oh, very fancy. Get that man a Vienetta.

Next, Dr Chris, pops some of his freeze-dried coffee

into a grinder

and gives it a good blitz.

Voila!

We have a beautiful instant coffee,

which will last infinitely longer than the fresh stuff.

Impressive! But the proof is in the highly caffeinated hot beverage.

And you know what? That's not ha“ bad.

I might call this Platinum Blend.

We you see what you did there, Chris.

Well, that's all from us, folks.

Our frolic through the decade

that transformed the way we shopped and ate forever

has come to an end.

From mouthwatering, tasty treats like potato waffles and Vienetta,

to trailblazing grannies and irresistible new discounts.

We hope you've enjoyed the ride.

We certainly have.