THIS week in 1978 was the second National Smile Week.

Begun the previous year, the annual event organised by the British Dental Health Foundation to encourage us to look after our teeth is now National Smile Month.

The Adver took the opportunity to run lots of cheery pictures of people from all walks of life, proclaiming a wish to cheer up Swindon as well as keeping grins pearly.

All images were stamped with the Smiley Face logo, which carried no confusing connotations as rave culture wasn’t due for another decade or so.

We also enlisted the help of one or two visitors, and the most prominent was surely comic Max Boyce, who had a growing reputation at the time as Wales’ answer to Billy Connolly.

“To keep your sunny side up as summer steps in,” we said, “how about a welcome in the hillsides from Welsh wizard Max Boyce?

“Max, who’s been playing to packed houses in Swindon’s Oasis Pleasuredrome, is kicking off National Smile Week for us.”

The comic even supplied a joke, albeit one which was fairly old even in 1978: “Next to me in a bus queue in Swindon was a man and an Alsatian.

“I said: ‘Does your dog bite?’ ‘No,’ he said. So I went to pat the Alsatian on the head and it leapt up and sank its teeth into my shoulder. ‘I thought you said your dog didn’t bite.’ ‘It isn’t my dog,’ he said…”

Also getting into the spirit of the week was the reigning Miss Thamesdown, Cheryl Hughes, who was photographed cuddling the golden lion statue in the town centre.

We said: “On Sunday she’ll be surrounded by them when she starts a sponsored walk organised by Highworth and District Lions Club.

“Cheryl, 17, of Eldene, will lead walkers on a 12-mile hike starting from Highworth at 10am.”

A rash of counterfeit pound notes appeared in Swindon, but the people passing them seemed to rely on shopkeepers not examining the cash closely if at all.

Had they done so, they might have noticed the lack of a watermark or embedded metallic thread. Failing that, there was a less subtle clue in the form of a pornographic photograph of a naked woman where the Queen’s head should have been.

A Treasury spokesman said: “We believe these pornographic notes are coming from Holland.

“There is nothing we can do to stop them coming into the country.”

We added, perhaps mischievously: “Swindon police - who had no knowledge of the forgeries – picked up a porno pound from the Evening Advertiser offices late yesterday.

“Det Sgt Tom Fraser said the porno pound might well end up with the Vice Squad of the Metropolitan Police. But it would be thoroughly investigated by the Wiltshire police – perhaps even the Bristol force – before it was sent on.”

In more wholesome news, a select team at Swindon’s best-known workplace had been tackling a special project.

We said: “Full steam ahead…Swindon Works of British Rail Engineering Ltd have just completed the general repairs of a Fairyland steam locomotive built in Swindon 55 years ago.

“No 8 Llwelyn, together with her sister engines No 7 and No 9, work the beautiful Vale of Rheidol 1 foot 11 ½ in narrow gauge railway in central Wales – the only steam line on British Rail – from Aberystwyth to Devil’s Bridge.

“The lads pictured aboard this delightful little engine are the team who repaired her to the standards that made Swindon famous during the great steam era.”

In 1989 the railway became the first part of the British Rail system to be privatised, although it was sold to railway enthusiasts rather than a large company.

No 8 Llwelyn hauls happy trippers along its beautiful route to this day.

A paragraph at the bottom of our 1978 story announced that Evening Star, the last steam locomotive to be built for British Rail – it left the Works in 1960 – was to come out of retirement.

The loco, then an exhibit at the National Rail Museum in York, was to be used on a summer pleasure trip route taking in Harrogate and Leeds.

Evening Star returned to Swindon for two years from 2008, ahead of its golden anniversary, and was a popular attraction at Steam.

A piece of flesh-and-blood history was also celebrated that week 40 years ago.

We said: “Edward Beard is 100 today – so he took a day off work and enjoyed a cup of tea in bed.

“It made quite a change for Swindon’s oldest builder. Usually he’s up at the crack of dawn to bring his daughter and son-in-law their morning tea.

“The firm he founded 81 years ago, EW Beard Ltd, is going great guns – and Mr Beard still goes to the office every day.

“A sackful of congratulatory telegrams – including one from the Queen – arrived at his home in Belmont Crescent, Swindon.”

Edward Beard died in 1982, having reached the age of 104.