1987

Top Selling Singles

1. Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up
2. Starship – Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now
3. T’Pau – China In Your Hand
4. Whitney Houston – I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
5. The Bee Gees – You Win Again
6. Mel & Kim – Respectable
7. MARRS – Pump Up The Volume / Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance)
8. Judy Boucher – Can’t Be With You Tonight
9. Pet Shop Boys – It’s A Sin
10. Madonna – La Isla Bonita

Christmas No.1:  Pet Shop Boys – Always on my Mind

Top Selling Albums

1. Michael Jackson – Bad
2. U2 – The Joshua Tree
3. Whitney Houston – Whitney
4. Now 10 Various Artists
5. Hits 6 Various Artists
6. Fleetwood Mac – Tango in the Night
7. Rick Astley – Whenever You Need Somebody
8. T’Pau – Bridge of Spies
9. The Phantom of the Opera Original London Cast
10. Hits 7 Various Artists

At the Box Office

1. The Living Daylights [clip]
2. Beverly Hills Cop II
3. The Witches of Eastwick
4. Platoon
5. Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol
6. Dragnet
7. Superman IV: The Quest For Peace
8. The Secret of My Success
9. Cry Freedom
10. Wish You Were Here

Cost of Living

Average house price	£54,000
Average salary	£12,000
Average car price	£9,679 Ford Sierra Sapphire 2.0i GLS
Petrol	£1.70 / Gallon
Pint of beer	86p
Packet of 20 Cigarettes	£1.43
Pint of milk	46p
Prescription Charges	£2.40

In the News

• Margaret Thatcher is relected as Prime Minister
• Personal equity plans (PEPs) permitting tax-free investments in shares are introduced
• Terry Waite, the special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Lebanon, disappears in Beirut whilst negotiating for the release of hostages; he remained a hostage for 4 years
• British Airways is privatised and listed on the London Stock Exchange
• Church of England’s General Synod votes to allow the ordination of women.
• Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes while leaving the harbour of Zeebrugge, Belgium, killing 193 on board
• Christie’s auction house in London sells one of Vincent van Gogh’s iconic Sunflowers paintings for £24,750,000
• Arsenal win the Football League Cup for the first time in their history with a 2–1 win over Liverpool,
• 25 years after the first James Bond film was released, the fifteenth, The Living Daylights, premieres in London, with the role now being played by Timothy Dalton.
• £60,000,000 (sixty million) is stolen during the Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery
• Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up is released, the first of eight of his singles to reach the Top 10 in the UK. It’s also the biggest selling song of the year
• The Channel Tunnel is given the go-ahead after Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand ratify the Treaty of Canterbury.
• The Docklands Light Railway in London, the first driverless railway in Great Britain, is opened by The Queen
• The Attorney General institutes legal proceedings against The Daily Telegraph to prevent it publishing details from the book Spycatcher on security grounds
• AIDs was big news – One person a day in Britain is now reported to be dying of it
• It was the Hungerford massacre: Michael Ryan shoots dead fourteen people in the Berkshire town of Hungerford before taking his own life
• Ford completes its takeover of the luxury sports car company Aston Martin.
• Black History Month first celebrated in the UK
• IKEA opens its first British store at Warrington
• £1,000,000 Operation Deepscan in Loch Ness fails to locate the legendary Loch Ness Monster
• Black Monday: Wall Street crash leads to £50,000,000,000 ( 50 Billion) being wiped of the value of shares on the London stock exchange [clip]
• Lester Piggott is jailed for three years after being convicted of tax evasion
• The first acid house raves are reported in the UK, many of them being in derelict buildings
• London City Airport opens.
• Eleven people are killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb at a Remembrance Day service in Enniskillen
• A fire on an escalator at King’s Cross station on the London Underground kills 31 people
• The Government announces that eye tests will no longer be provided free of charge on the NHS
• Ireland’s Johnny Logan wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1987, held in Brussels, with “Hold Me Now”.
• Britain is hit by the worst storm for 284 years – the one that Michael Fish failed to forecast [clip]

On the Telly

• Debuts:
• Fireman Sam
• Inspector Morse
• Filthy Rich & Catflap
• French & Saunders
• Through the Keyhole
• The Cook Report
• The Ruth Rendell Mysteries
• Going Live!
• ChuckleVision
• The final of:
• Saturday Superstore
• The Tube
• Terry & June
• And…
• Sylvester McCoy becomes the seventh actor to play the Doctor
• The first episode of EastEnders to feature a gay kiss airs on BBC1
• ITV enjoys a record-breaking audience when more than 26 million viewers tune in to the Christmas Day episode of Coronation Street in which Hilda Ogden (Jean Alexander) makes her last appearance in the show after 23 years

Top Selling Christmas Toys

• World of Wonder’s Lazer Tag
• Storytelling Alf – Alf’s ears and mouth would move when you inserted a cassette tape into his back and pressed the play button.

Gadgets

• Nike Air Max
• Windows 2 – It was the first version of Windows to allow for overlapping application windows, desktop icons and VGA (16 color) graphics.
• The best-selling video game of 1987 was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

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