BY this week in 1979 mainland Britain had been without ITV for more than a month.

It would be another month or so before commercial television returned to the airwaves.

A strike by technicians and other back room staff took the network off the air.

With Channel 4 not due for another three years or so, the only terrestrial channels broadcasting were BBC1 and BBC2.

Like any responsible local newspaper, the Adver took to the streets and asked people how they were bearing up.

They seemed to be doing just fine.

Jannie Andrews, 16, of Fosse Close, confessed to missing certain ITV programmes, especially Mork and Mindy, but didn’t mind watching the BBC instead.

“They’ve been putting on better films since the strike,” she added.

The splendidly named Mrs Hilda Virgin, of Albion Street, found that reading and doing crosswords were good ways to spend the time when she would usually have been watching ITV.

Sandra Thompson, of Masefield Avenue, said: “It doesn’t bother me. I’m out most nights and never watch television.”

If the public were underwhelmed by the effect of the strike, the people who ran Swindon’s theatres and cinemas were absolutely delighted.

“There’s been a definite increase in bookings,” said Fran Toner at the Wyvern Theatre.

A spokesman for the ABC cinema in the town centre said: “We’ve done much more business since the strike started. Every night was busy last week, and Thursday, Friday and Saturday were chaos.”

Pub landlords also toasted the strike action, with Fred Hamblin of the Cross Keys in Old Town reporting: “We even ran out of beer last weekend.”

The week also saw a Swindon family welcome a visitor from a place with rather more choice when it came to TV channels. Her father had been in the US Air Force and her late mother was a Swindon woman.

“Jo Wildermuth,” we said, “was just a baby when her father took her to America.

“Her mother had died giving birth to a second child. But now Swindon has returned to Britain after 27 years – to a tearful reunion with her mother’s family in Swindon.

“Jo, now 27, is staying for eight days with her aunt and uncle, Jean and Ronald Bradfield, of Dudmore Road.”

Jo, we added, was married with three children, and had travelled alone to her birthplace from Piqua, Ohio.

He aunt and uncle planned to show her not just Swindon but also the sights of places including London.

Swindon was visited by two celebrities that week, each of them able to claim a small place in history.

One was wrestling star Adrian Street. Born in a Welsh mining community, Street had a unique gimmick of combining extreme flamboyance – he favoured glittery make-up, pigtails and occasionally kissing opponents – with being as hard as the proverbial nails. It made him one of the sport’s most famous faces.

An advert in the paper announced his appearance that Saturday at the Oasis, where he was to top the bill in a bout with Johnny Kincaid.

Street would later find even greater success in America.

Also in town, for an appearance in a play called Ten Times Table at the Wyvern Theatre, was an actress called Betty Alberge.

She has a permanent place in the annals of soap opera thanks to having appeared as shopkeeper Florrie Lindley in the first scene of the first episode of Coronation Street in 1960.

Later she would be a major star of another soap, playing the put-upon Edna Cross in Brookside.

Her co-stars in Swindon included future Coronation Street stars Amanda Barry and Mark Eden, as well as veteran continuity announcer McDonald Hobley.

Another Adver story that week was about reactions to breast-feeding in public.

Reader Michele Samm-Dymond, returning to visit Swindon after two years in Denmark, reported being told by a staff member in a Canal Walk café to feed her daughter, Siobhan, in a basement.

When such things happen today, of course, the officious people responsible can expect a well-deserved social media backlash, but in 1979 the local newspaper was the first port of call in such circumstances.

Michele asked: “What perverted minds find breast feeding such an intolerable act? Why is this such an anti-mother and baby society?”

Other mothers we spoke to had similar stories to tell and were similarly angry.

The Adver reported their thoughts - and also coincidentally highlighted the strangeness of prevailing attitudes when we ran a full-page ad for the latest cosmetics offers at McIlroys. The major feature of the page was a full-length pen-and-ink drawing of a nude woman, artfully turned about 90 degrees to the right.

Swindon’s most famous department store offered not just the latest perfumes and potions by the likes of Givenchy and Lancome but also its own sauna, nail bar, beauty parlour and hair salon.

Services included a £2.80 blow dry and £14.95 for something called a Bio-Style. Perhaps a Rewind reader can tell us what the latter entailed.