SHOWBUSINESS in one form or another drove many of our stories this week in 1980.

Two of those stories featured 17-year-old singer, dancer and actress Pollyann Tanner, daughter of Tanwood School of Dancing Principal Mollie.

First came the news that she’d landed a presenter’s job on a forthcoming London Weekend Television talent show and then, 48 hours later, we revealed that she’d also been lined up for a Record Breakers special with Roy Castle.

Pollyann said of her talent show role: “I shall be going around the country, auditioning young talent, and will be taking part in the programmes as well as presenting. I’ll be dancing, singing, probably playing the piano, maybe even roller skating.

“In fact, I’m having to polish up any skills I may have.”

The Tanwood School of Dancing itself was also in the news – or rather, six of its young students were.

The group had been selected for the first six months of a new West End Musical called Barnardo, which was about to begin its opening win at the Royalty Theatre.

Some of the reviews from the opening night can be found online. Although the critics generally praised the performers, they didn’t have many kind words for just about every other aspect of the show.

In Wroughton, four other singers performed for rather smaller audiences, but fans were so impressed that they provided the stars with shelter.

Day’s Garage and the Lister engine factory each found themselves home to a pair of blackbirds.

The ones at the factory built their nest on top of a pile of parts, while the ones at the garage chose an even more precarious location the clutch and brake linkage of “…a breakdown vehicle that to the knowledge of Mr David Day has gone to motorway recovery jobs twice since the nest was built.

“Mr Day says that since he discovered the nest – he had some starter trouble and found it when he went to repair it after returning from an early morning crash on the M4 – that the truck will stay put until the chicks hatch out.”

Returning to the human showbusiness world, Pollyann Tanner wasn’t the only Swindon person preparing for a stint on TV.

Another was an insurance broker called John Lewis. Although not a singer or dancer, he was potentially in line for a £1,000 prize.

We explained: “He is one of four contestants in the fully-networked ITV show Winner Takes All, presided over by genial comedian Jimmy Tarbuck.

“Mr Lewis, of Marshfield Way, Stratton St Margaret, was born in Belfast and spent 19 years in the Royal Air Force as an electronics fitter before going into the insurance business, specialising in mortgage-type finance.

“The contestants on Winner Takes All gamble on their ability to answer general knowledge questions which start fairly easily but are followed by harder ones.”

The show, usually broadcast in the early evening, had run for five years and would continue for another eight.”

Unfortunately, we can find no mention in our archives about whether Mr Lewis was victorious.

Swindon was visited by a major radio celebrity of the day, one who by the end of the year had claimed a melancholy place in rock history.

Wiltshire Young Farmers proudly announced that they had secured the services of Radio 1 dj Andy Peebles for a Friday evening social event they were hosting at the Brunel Rooms.

It was open to the public, with tickets priced at £2.

On December 6 that year, Peebles would be at New York’s Dakota apartment building for the first interview John Lennon and Yoko Ono had granted to a British radio station in several years.

Lennon spoke of, among other things, his desire to return to live performance, something he had not done since 1975. He also planned to visit Britain for the first time in a decade.

It was one of the final handful of interviews Lennon and Ono gave to publicise their Double Fantasy album, which marked their return to music.

Lennon was murdered a little over 48 hours later.

To this day, the dj is asked to deliver talks about the afternoon and evening he spent with the couple.

That late May week in Swindon, there was even a touch of showbusiness in a story about a charity auction.

Thamesdown Rotary Club secretary Frank Reynolds organised the sale in aid of a variety of good causes and appealed for items to go under the hammer.

It’s impossible to tell what he was expecting, but it’s fair to assume that he wasn’t expecting the organ from the old Granada Cinema in Acton.

Nevertheless, that is what an anonymous Swindon collector offered.

We can find no record of how much the instrument raised or how it found its way to Swindon, but the Grade II Art Deco cinema had by 1980 been a bingo hall for several years.