CELEBRITIES both home grown and otherwise were in Swindon Advertiser stories this week in 2005.

One was singer Gareth Gates, then 21 years old.

Although his immediate post-Pop Idol fame had waned and his re-invention as a musical theatre performer wouldn’t come for another few years, Gareth was easily famous enough to draw attention whenever he made a public appearance.

He made just such an appearance at the corner of Regent Street and Canal Walk, to promote something called the McGuire Programme.

The programme, which Gareth himself had been through, helps people to conquer stammering by using the costal diaphragm – the diaphragm used by opera singers to achieve projection and tone.

At the end of the course, participants are encouraged to speak in public, and Gareth came to greet and support one such group.

He said: “It’s great to be back here in Swindon for the second time this year, and I just want to say thank you to all the students taking part on the course for working so hard.”

Also doing their bit for a good cause were Swindon celebrities Melinda Messenger and Billie Piper, who shared childhood memories to promote the Action Aid charity’s Child Poverty Action Day.

Melinda said: “My favourite childhood memory was running around a carpet shop with my brothers. It was so much fun partly because we shouldn’t have been doing it, but also because it seemed so huge.

“I still love the smell of new carpets and can’t wait to chase my kids round the carpet shop.”

Billie, who had lately begun playing Rose Tyler in the revived Dr Who, said: “One memory is of me and my dad singing and playing his dodgy double bass.

“I would sit on top of the bass, something I wish I could still do, and Dad would play along to the band Fairground Attraction. It was magic.”

The death from cancer of former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam was greeted with widespread dismay. With politicians of all parties increasingly mistrusted and even despised, she was remembered for honesty and decency, even though she had been a skilled Westminster operator.

Her several visits to Swindon had included one to our festival of literature three years earlier.

Festival director Matt Holland recalled: “She was offered the chance to go to a hotel for a rest but she said, ‘I don’t want to go to a hotel, isn’t there somewhere homely?’ “Her publisher rang me and I said, ‘Well, there is my home.’ “She went up and had a lie down on my wife’s bed. Then she came down and did the washing up because she saw it needed doing.

“Then she sat down and had tea with us and talked to the children about their exams and whether they should go into politics or not. Then she finished the washing up and went to the Wyvern and wowed 400 people.”

The then North Swindon MP, Michael Wills, recalled her visit to the women’s refuge in 1996: “She kicked off her shoes, sat on the floor and talked to some of the women there. It was very personal and that was typical of her.”

This week exactly a decade ago also saw a celebration in Bradenstoke, near Lyneham, where Dorothy Eatwell celebrated her 101st birthday.

Originally from Purton, Mrs Eatwell lived with daughter Valerie Jenkins, 60, and put her longevity down to hard work.

“I worked between the ages of 12 and 80,” she said. Mrs Eatwell, the daughter of a farm labourer, had worked in many jobs, including stints at the Wills cigarette factory in Swindon and a dental factory. She and her late husband, Percy, a railwayman who had served in World War One aged 15 after lying about his age, had three children.

Mrs Eatwell took her final job aged 70, delivering morning newspapers.

“I only gave that up when I had problems with my hip aged 80,” she said. “I worked because I enjoy it. I don’t like not doing anything.”

Her oldest friend – in more ways than one – was fellow Purton native Mabel Goodings, who had recently turned 105.

“I’ll be seeing her on Friday and I expect we will have a good chat,” said Mrs Eatwell. We were best friends at school and we used to play together.

We last wrote about Mrs Eatwell in 2007, when she celebrated her 103rd birthday.

Mrs Goodings died, aged 107, in November of that year, shortly after giving up smoking.

A centenarian of a different kind made the news in Highworth, but this one was for sale with a price tag of at least £100,000.

Whisky specialist Ken Thomas of Arkwright’s General Stores was handling the sale of what was thought to be the sole remaining bottle of Nun’s Island Distillery Malt Irish Whiskey. The distillery ceased production very early in the 20th century.

He was selling it on behalf of a customer who had brought it to the shop in a plastic bag and asked whether it might be valuable.