The Fulcrum in Slough hosted two very different TV and film superstars in 1980 when Petula Clark and David Soul brought their singing talents to the stage.

Petula Clark, now 85, began her career on BBC Radio during the Second World War, went on to star in the Huggetts flims.

She gradually developed an international reputation as a singer with hits like Downtown and This is My Song while also appearing in many British movies.

Clark, who went on to record in French, was originally looked after by a nanny in Trinity Place, Windsor while a child star.

Her biggest chart success came with the single Down Town which reached No1 in the pop charts in November 1964.

David Soul launched his singing career on the back of his acting success in the hit TV series Starsky and Hutch, with two UK number one singles Don’t Give Up on us Baby and Silver Lady.

Slough Council’s former housing chairman, George Brooker, was defending himself after he suggested that – following the recent Homeless Persons Act – “pillocks from everywhere” would come to the town to demand housing from the authority.

His defence was that he only used the identical phrase that Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, had also recently said.

Teams from six Slough schools battled it out in the finals of the Borough Council’s road safety competition and Wexham Court Middle School were jubilant, as they pipped Lea Middle School to the winning post by a meagre five

points.

During the First World War a young Slough soldier penned a poem in the trenches of Flanders, Belgium and posted it to the Observer.

Unfortunately, it never arrived, but Bill Gutteridge, then aged 85, was given the chance to publish his poem with its emotional tribute to his comrades in arms from sixty-six years before.

Bill admitted to the Observer that his offering would be unlikely to earn him a retrospective niche alongside more famous Great War poets such as Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon, but he felt that it did testify to any of their wartime experiences.

Having already answered the call to enlist for King and Country when war broke out in 1914, Bill was already serving in the Royal Fusiliers, having “cheated” on his age to enlist.

Speaking just before his 86th birthday, Bill explained to the Observer: “When I lost my brother I made my mind up to stay and look after my mother, but in the end she persuaded me to go back to

France.

“If she hadn’t I suppose I would have been shot as a deserter!”