The Great 1980s Courgette Explosion...

So, the 1980s kicked in, and we grotty working class types still ate bread and dripping and considered curry to be the finest foreign food ever invented. Peppers? No plural - pepper was something you shook over your dinner. Mayonnaise? What the 'ecks that? I'd 'ave salad cream, ta! Courgettes? Never 'eard of 'em, mateyboots!

Alf Roberts of Coronation Street stocked some courgettes in 1981, but failed to sell them because his customers had no idea what they were and were not impressed with them when they were explained. In fact, it was very unlikely that staid old Alf would have tried stocking them in 1981, but then Corrie was a fantasy of very well-heeled scriptwriter types.

But in the mid-1980s, as the credit boom boomed and yuppies arrived and consumers finally had a bit of dosh to consume with, courgettes swept in as the thing to be seen dishing up. Even I fell for them, and my local Sainsbury's seemed to be bursting full of them. In May 1984, Weekend Magazine printed the Greenfingers feature above to tell us what courgettes were and how to grow the little blighters.

Of course, in the 1980s we were bombarded with strange new foodstuffs - as "posh nosh" arrived in force and even impacted on the Great Unwashed (people like me).

Read our feature here.