THE Queen Mother celebrated her 80th birthday this week in 1980.

It was the biggest royal event since the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, although both commemorations would be eclipsed in scale the following year by the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

The Adver and its weekly sister papers elsewhere in the county ran a special supplement called The Four-score Years.

Among the familiar official photographs was a page of images showing her visits to Wiltshire.

They included one taken in 1964 when Her Majesty visited the Royal Military College of Science in Shrivenham.

Her only known visit to Swindon, when she opened the Bible Society’s headquarters in Westlea, wouldn’t come until 1986, so we struggled for truly local angles.

Fortunately one came courtesy of a group of café staff at British Home Stores who hosted a party in the store, complete with a special cake.

A copy of the supplement was sent with a bouquet to the Queen Mother’s home, Clarence House. Four days later we proudly reproduced a letter of thanks signed by Lady-in-Waiting Frances Campbell-Preston.

The royal birthday also managed to feature in a local controversy.

We said: “Thamesdown councillors have handed a snub to the Queen Mother – they threw out a suggestion to name a new avenue of trees after her.

“Councillors decided to name the trees at Lydiard Park after a Swindon mayor of the 1930s instead.”

An avenue of elms – a species in the process of being devastated by Dutch Elm Disease – was to be replaced with less vulnerable small-leafed lime. Conservation group the Tree Council suggested new plantings for 1980 should be named in honour of the Queen Mother, but Thamesdown councillors voted instead to honour Coun Harry Hustings, who was remembered by older people in the town for his work to relieve the misery of unemployed people in the 1930s.

Motorcycle stuntman Eddie Kidd had recently made an appearance at Blunsdon Stadium. The 21-year-old Londoner was a record-breaker, having leapt 14 double-decker buses in 1978.

For his Swindon appearance he confined himself to a more modest trajectory over eight cars, but that was enough to delight a 2,000-strong crowd - and inspire at least two youngsters to try a few stunts for themselves.

An alarming front page picture showed a boy leaping over another on a pushbike.

We said: “You’ve seen Evel Knievel and Eddie Kidd…now let us introduce you to the Palmer brothers from Wroughton.

“Matthew is the high-flying eight-year-old who uses all the pedal power he can muster, while brother Craig uses all his nerve to lay perfectly still for his brother to make his leap from a home-made earth ramp at home in Wroughton.

“But don’t try it without asking your mum and dad first!”

Later in the week we ran an interview with Eddie Kidd himself.

Asked why he did what he did, he answered: “Simply because I like it. I get a great feeling when I’m riding through the air and I want to prove I’m best.”

We added: “The jumps aren’t as easy as they look, he says, and people who think they are easy usually end up killing themselves.”

The stuntman made thousands more leaps before a crash in 1996 left him with career-ending injuries. He was made an OBE in 2012 for his charity work.

Another celebrity in the Adver that week 37 years ago was Noel Edmonds, still at the height of his Multi-Coloured Swap Shop and Radio 1 fame.

Noel’s mission was rather less strenuous than Eddie Kidd’s - he had been invited by property developer Barratt to open a show house at the new Westlea Down development in Swindon.

He appeared with a young woman called Delma Browne who was described only as Barratt Girl.

Local celebrities appearing in our pages included a pair of world champions.

Husband and wife Sylvia and Anthony Farrell, of Swindon’s Ashbury Avenue, had just returned from the World Old Time Sequence Ballroom Dancing Championships, which were held in Perth, Australia.

The victorious couple, the first Britons to be entered in the event, were sponsored by the Sports Council and the British Amateur Dance Association.

Sylvia was correspondence manager for Book Club Associates and Anthony an industrial engineer.

Sylvia said: “We felt we were paving the way for future dancers which is why we we’re so thrilled to have won.”

Two more local double acts were also the subject of Adver stories during the week.

Singers and entertainers Vera Bennett and Mike Chivers, professional partners who starred in countless local theatre productions, were in the midst of a packed summer season at the Embassy Theatre in Skegness, but revealed that they had landed an impressive variety circuit booking for later in the year.

The two were to appear at the Palace of Varieties Theatre in Leeds, location for many a TV show focused on old-time entertainment.

“All we need now,” said Vera, “is some decent weather so that we can relax on the beach, which is, of course, one of the perks of a summer season.”