A FUTURE EastEnder was stabbed in the back nightly on the Wyvern stage this week in 1972.

In 1985 Oscar James would become one of the original stars of the soap opera, playing Tony Carpenter for two years.

In 1972 he was an increasingly acclaimed up-and-coming actor with the starring role in a groundbreaking production called Black Macbeth.

The role of Lady Macbeth was taken by another rising star, Mona Hammond, who would later become a familiar face on British screens thanks to roles in programmes such as classic sitcom Desmond’s.

She would herself become an EastEnder in the 1990s, playing Blossom Jackson.

Black Macbeth director Peter Coe took Shakespeare’s story of a doomed king and shifted the action from Scotland to an unnamed African country.

He told us: “With Shakespeare, one is constantly looking for ways to make him more comprehensible to an audience today.

“We are all doing this as directors – I think we do it more with Shakespeare’s plays than with those by anyone else, possibly because they are so important to us.”

The costumes for the production included copper bangles, but they weren’t the creations of specialist theatrical costumiers.

Rather, they were the work of Swindon College’s plumbing department, and the raw material was taken from an old water tank belonging to Wyvern administrator Brien Chitty.

It was well over a decade before EastEnders would be so much as a twinkle in a BBC producer’s eye. In those days the soap opera landscape was dominated by a single colossus, and its name was Coronation Street.

Stars of the Northern saga were among the most famous people in the country, and few were more recognisable than Pat Phoenix, who played the feud-loving and flirtatious Elsie Tanner.

Soap stars were paid modest salaries in those days, but the more famous ones could boost their incomes with public appearances.

The Adver announced that Pat Phoenix would be at Bon Marche – now Debenhams – in the town centre near the end of the month.

Her mission was to promote a new department called 44 Room. The actress had already opened dozens of them across the country.

“And every woman,” we said, “who has complained that so much of today’s fashion is for the dolly-girls will be glad to know this.

“This is fashion for the 25 to 40-year-olds and onwards, and for all with what the store calls ‘the fuller figure,’ one that the fashion world too often forgets.”

Miss Phoenix duly appeared at the store, autographed some 2,000 photos and was shown around by general manager DB Totterdell.

The actress left Coronation Street in 1984 and died in 1986. As trivia fans may be aware, on marrying fellow actor Tony Booth she became Tony Blair’s mother-in-law.

An unusual article that week saw us track down one of the last surviving staff members of the old workhouse in Stratton St Margaret.

Completed in 1846, the workhouse stood on Highworth Road and was the last resort for poor and infirm people who would otherwise have been on the streets. In exchange for food and shelter, those capable of work were expected to perform a variety of menial tasks including picking fibres from cloth for re-use.

The Highworth Road workhouse had operated until 1929, when it became what was known as a public assistance home. In 1948 it had been turned into a home for the elderly, and in 1971 the residents were moved elsewhere and the building scheduled for demolition.

We interviewed Ethel Beale, 73, who as a young nurse had worked there during its final years as a workhouse.

She insisted that inmates had always been treated humanely, and recalled singing for them.

Not every memory was happy, though. Recalling some of the female inmates, the former nurse said: “They had to have a bath and if they had children you sat with them in case they tried to drown their children.”

As things turned out, the building survived as part of the St Margaret’s Hospital complex until about 1990.

The story of the workhouse is told in a 2014 book, In The Shadow of the Workhouse, by Caroline Ockwell and Swindon Advertiser columnist Graham Carter.

Swindon Town FC revealed a new badge that February week 44 years ago, courtesy of a Town fan and Adver reader called Cedric Davies.

We had promoted a design competition run by the club and Mr Davies won the £15 top prize.

Mr Davies, 54, lived in Burford Avenue. He approached the project with the technical expertise he used in his career as a technical illustrator at Vickers.

He said: “I made the design simple, realising it would have to be reproduced for short badges.

“I kept the modern image of Swindon Town in mind when I designed the motif.”

Mr Davies had been a fan of Town since coming to Swindon in 1946.

The image he created was used not just on badges but on programmes and other material for several years.